"I like it but cannot have it": desired yet unavailable products lead to negative WOM
Open Access
- Author:
- Yang, Bi
- Graduate Program:
- Hospitality Management
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 09, 2021
- Committee Members:
- Michael Tews, Major Field Member
Seoki Lee, Major Field Member
Anna Mattila, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Lisa Bolton, Outside Unit & Field Member
Anna Mattila, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- product unavailability
defense mechanisms
self-esteem
negative WOM
ownership - Abstract:
- Consumers often encounter situations in which they desire a product/service but fail to acquire it. Despite the prevalence of product unavailability in the tourism and hospitality industry, research examining how people deal with this situation is lacking. To address this gap, this dissertation examines consumer response to a desired yet unavailable product. Drawing upon literature on product ownership and the theory of defense mechanisms, I argue that a failure to own a desired product increases people’s tendency to spread negative WOM (the “ownership failure effect”) and test the proposed effect in a series of empirical studies. The pilot study and study 1 demonstrate the ownership failure effect. In study 2 and study 3, I use different approaches to test the mediating effect of self-esteem and find that an ownership failure poses a threat to self-esteem, thus motivating people to denigrate the product and protect themselves. Study 4 tests a boundary condition for the ownership failure effect and shows that when a person’s friends purchase/have the product, (s)he is unlikely to bad mouth the product. Study 5 proposes a possible remedy to alleviate the negative influence of ownership failure and indicates that activating people’s moral identity effectively decreases their tendency to bad mouth the unobtainable product. Taken together, the results from the above studies lend convergent evidence to the ownership failure effect.