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Buyer beware of your shadow: how price moderates the effect of incidental similarity on buyer behavior
Author(s) -
Kachersky Luke,
Sen Sankar,
Kim Hyeong Min,
Carnevale Marina
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/jasp.12255
Subject(s) - similarity (geometry) , common value auction , database transaction , context (archaeology) , preference , psychology , shadow (psychology) , social psychology , advertising , microeconomics , economics , business , computer science , image (mathematics) , psychotherapist , biology , paleontology , artificial intelligence , programming language
Using both a lab experiment and actual transaction data, we investigated whether and how incidental similarities (e.g., shared letters between buyer and seller's name) might influence buyer behavior. Particularly, while prior work suggests that consumers generally prefer incidental similarity, we use the context of Internet auctions to show that this preference reverses when prices are high. Under these conditions, buyers avoid incidentally similar sellers. We speculate that this effect is tied to individuals' motive to self‐protect. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.