UCLA

I present three essays that show how consumers react to the negative emotions of loss, embarrassment, and stress. For individual consumers, loss, embarrassment, and stress can decrease consumer well-being. For firms, these negative emotions can decrease consumer satisfaction which then results in decreased loyalty. Therefore, an examination of how consumers react to loss, embarrassment, and stress is of interest to both individual consumers and firms. The first essay examines how experiential vs. material products (and experiential vs. material framing) induce different levels of feeling of loss. I use the endowment effect paradigm, the gap between willingness to accept (WTA) and willingness to pay (WTP), to capture loss-induced overvaluation. The second essay examines how consumers regulate embarrassment-avoidant behavior by taking the perspective of an observer. The third essay examines how consumers regulate stress in social contexts. I distinguish between explicit versus implicit social support and study how older adults versus young adults use these two kinds of social support differently to reduce stress. These three essays provide insights into consumers’ reactions to negative emotional experiences and suggest potential ways to cope with them.