From Fear to Loathing? How Emotion Influences the Evaluation and Early Use of Innovations

Nothing will make you feel like an alpha geek more then successfully installing  and running Linux. Earlier in my academic career, when I was on the techie IT trajectory, anyone who ditched Windows and used Linux was the king of geeks. Accomplishing this feat immediately gave you a throne built of pure ego that all other lesser geeks had to bow before. As my user interface professor, Dr. Murli Nagasundaram, would say about learning the command line interface "It makes you feel like more of a man [once you've learned it]." That said, it was a big goal of mine to be the Linux king. For about 3 summers I went through this cycle: I would remove Windows, install Linux, get familiar with it then abandon it when classes began, until the next summer when the cycle restarted. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but after the pain of getting Linux working on my machine, even though I enjoyed its benefits once it was working, it left a bad taste in my mouth. Consequently, when the decision to drop Linux and go back to Windows came, it was an easy choice. Furthermore, I didn't promote using Linux or talk much about it afterwards.


Stacy L. Wood and C. Page Moreau address this phenomenon in their research article "From Fear to Loathing? HowEmotion Influences the Evaluationand Early Use of Innovations" that was published in The Journal of Marketing in July of 2006. Their research showed how consumer's view of a product can be tainted by difficulties in learning new technologies, despite enjoying the product once they figure it out. In addition, oversimplifying the difficulty of learning a product can also have negative effects on consumer's view of a product. I ran into this similar problem from reading RedHat Linux's installation and operating instructions on how easy their flavor of Linux was to operate; keep in mind this was in the early 2000's when Linux was light years less user friendly then today. The study also suggests that products that are difficult to learn should come with an advocate, Best Buy's Geek Squad is mentioned, to help you get started. Years after giving up my alpha geek dreams of being the Linux master, I noticed that nearly everyone I met that had been successful in solely using Linux had a geeky mentor that helped them out. 

Citations:
From Fear to Loathing? HowEmotion Influences the Evaluationand Early Use of Innovations
Journal of Marketing, Vol 70, p. 44-57
AMA Link to Article

Stacy L. Wood (University of South Carolina) and C. Page Moreau University of Colorado at Boulder)

Chasing the Hottest IT: Effects of Information Technology Fashion on Organizations

During my internship at Boise State University I worked with a fellow student that was everything geek. He played D&D regularly, had an amazing amount of knowledge about everything IT, was up on all the latest versions of Linux, and could implement nearly anything thrown at him. While everyone working there, especially our boss, admired him there was tricky part of working with him: he loved to implement new stuff for the sake that it was cutting edge. Often we were at odds over this, we were from two different worlds, techie and business. He was looking at what the technology could do and I was running a cost-benefit analysis. 


In the March of 2010 volume of MIS Quarterly Ping Wang investigates companies that are always after the hottest technology and those that still have an ENIAC in the basement. Ping approached this study by using information published and annual IT budgets for 109 large comapnies. With this information he found that companies that invest in the next hottest thing in IT don't necessarily perform better; however, they do gain stronger reputation and executive compensation in the short term. 


As Ping mentions in his research, this can mean different things depending on the company. If you are following the newest IT trends and seeing poor performance, perhaps you should scale back a bit. On the other hand, this also means that if your company's IT department is viewed as a house full of dinosaur tamers, perhaps following some of the newest IT trends might improve your image. As the author suggest, a balance between the two extremes is the best choice.

Citations: 
Chasing the Hottest IT: Effects of Information Technology Fashion on Organizations
MIS Quarterly Vol. 34 No. 1, p. 63-85
University of Denver link to study
Ping Wang (University of Maryland at College Park)

Let Us Eat and Drink, for Tomorrow We Shall Die: Effects of Mortality Salience and Self-Esteem on Self Regulation in Consumer Choice

I've come to enjoy research that Baba Shiv, Professor of Marketing at Stanford, has been producing. While, at times, his research could seem strange, it really gets to the core of consumer behavior. Baba, along with Rosellina Ferraro and James R. Bettman from Duke, produced an interesting paper "Let Us Eat and Drink, for Tomorrow We Shall Die: Effects of Mortality Salience and Self-Esteem on Self Regulation in Consumer Choice" that was published in The Journal of Consumer Research in June of 2005.

The study looks to investigate self-regulation in consumer decision making when faced with thoughts of death.

As is common, and fun, in Baba Shiv research the choice of chocolate cake and fruit salad is used in two of the three the experiments to get an idea of how well subject's self-regulatory systems kicked in.

Experiment one's purpose is to "examine the effects of mortality salience on choices of an indulgent food option and the role of gender and body esteem in moderating these effects" (Shiv, 67). Subjects were under the guize that they they would be asked to talk about an event that occurred recently and afterword the choice of chocolate cake or fruit salad was the snack provided for taking part in the research. Questions for one group asked about the September 11th attacks, while the control group was asked about a fire that occurred on campus in November of 2001, no deaths occurred from this fire. Once the questions were asked the subjects then were allowed to choose chocolate cake or fruit salad in private. Subjects were asked questions about their body esteem as well. The results of this experiment showed that women with low body esteem chose the chocolate cake more often when they were asked about the September 11th attacks than the campus fire. Women with high body esteem chose fruit salad more often when asked about the September 11th attacks. Men were not affected by talking about either event.

Experiment two's purpose is to "examine the role of making earlier coping behaviors salient in moderating the effects observed in experiment one" (Shiv, 69). Only women participated in this experiment. The same experiment was performed, but asked the female participants to focus on explaining their emotions about past events. The findings were similar in women of experiment one, that chocolate cake was chosen higher among women with low body esteem when asked about September 11th. Women of high body esteem chose fruit salad when asked about September 11th.

Experiment three tried to reproduce the findings of experiment 1 and 2 by using charitable donations instead of food choices. People high on virtue as a source of self-esteem, were more likely to give to charity. Individuals low on virtue as a source of self esteem were less likely to donate more. Both men and women were more likely to react the same way.

While on the surface the findings are really common sense; if someone recalling events that cause anxiety about death they will seek out products or activities that boost their self-esteem. I saw this with my mother after a near miss car accident caused a little overboard shopping trip. We also see this with the massive amounts of blood and money donations whenever there is a disaster. I think it is normal, and healthy, for people to seek out comfort when presented with the fact that they may die sooner then they think.

While it would be clearly unethical to give your customers near death experiences as they walk in the store or blast TV screens showing the 9-11 attacks, I'd like to argue that marketing what comforts people is essentially going along with nature. This NPR article, released around the same time as this study, talks about this effect: "Anthropologists tell us that our predecessors would chow down on high-calorie, fatty foods because some brain wave told them to grab a leg of deep fried Tyrannosaurus Rex whenever possible to store up fat for leaner times". In a way products and services are easing the burden of already busy therapists during tragedies (almost).

Citations:

Let Us Eat and Drink, for Tomorrow We Shall Die: Effects of Mortality Salience and Self-Esteem on Self Regulation in Consumer Choice

Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 32, June 2005, p. 65-75

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/429601

Rosellina Ferraro (Duke)

Baba Shiv (Stanford)

James R. Bettman (Duke)