Introduction
Enterprises normally have many buyers purchasing their products such that they do not get a chance to know each of them personally. In such a case the business is required to pursue a rigorously tested study concerning consumer behavior. People are definitely different, but at some point their minds tend to react in the same way, and comprehending the aspects can assist the company to formulate strategies that will make customers accept their items or services. The creative measures should be ethical to conform to the universal values of the consumer base. This article articulates a critical review of Nichols, Raska, and Flint’s article titled the Effects of consumer embarrassment on shopping basket size and value: A study of the millennial consumer to develop a better understanding of consumer behavior.
A customer can be viewed as an individual who buys products or utilizes the services given by a particular business. A study of the behavior of the consumer is a fundamental consideration for a corporation to design and deliver useful items. Various factors are considered in the research. They include the cultural, social, and psychological aspects of the buyers that influence their decision-making and attitudes towards a particular product. The information is crucial to the company’s marketing strategies since it directs them to manufacture and distribute items that the customers’ desire. The discipline is a hotbed for psychological analysis as it ties together concepts related to identity, physical health, social status, mental health, and decision-making (Solomon, 2014, 27).
Critical Review
Abstract
The paper written by Nichols, Raska, and Flint examines how the feeling of embarrassment can impact the shopping activities of an individual in a retail setting. Through an array of three studies, the writers explore the concept of masking that refers to the coping mechanism used by shoppers when they feel embarrassed while purchasing a certain item. The first evaluation provides the buyers’ insights concerning the masking practices amongst Millennials. The second one examines the level of embarrassment associated with buying personal care goods as well as the size and value of the shopping basket. The final study looks at value and size of the basket in relation to counterbalancing and complementary products for the Millennial and non-Millennial customers. Collectively, the research develops the copings strategies of the two types of buyers during anticipated humiliation regarding the size and value of their shopping baskets. The authors’ ideas contribute to the comprehension of the ways the emotion of embarrassment affects shopping activities providing insight to retail practitioners. Hence, the abstract covers the research problem and provides relevant measures to tackle the issue (Nichols, Raska and Flint, 2015, 42).
Introduction
Feelings in general influence people’s shopping behaviors. However, little research has been conducted regarding embarrassment as a factor that affects shopping. Therefore, the article directs its attention to broadening the scope of information in the area. Primary focus is provided to the emotion of embarrassment in purchasing health related and personal products. The particular interests of practitioners and researchers are the spending and generational power of the millennial buyers. The types of customers comprise of the largest consumer segment exceeding 80 million. They spend more than $600 billion annually. College students hold the biggest proportion of Millennial customers. They are essential to retailers since they spend more than $400billion yearly. The learners use most of their money in purchasing personal and health-related items meaning that they are most affected by the feeling of embarrassment (Reny, 2015, 189).
Every month the college students have to buy personal products that include items related to their sexuality and hygiene conditions. They also have to treat themselves regularly to avoid medical checkups. For these factors, it is essential to understand why they get embarrassed and how they cope with such conditions as compared to the rest of the consumer population. The writers’ research contributes to the existing knowledge of Millennials and their shopping habits. As for the strategies of dealing with embarrassment, the article introduces the concept of masking where buyers conceal the products to avoid public scrutiny. In the three examinations, they enable readers to comprehend how masking is associated with embarrassment. Essentially, the results indicate that Millennials are more prone to behavioral modifications compared to non-Millennials when they encounter undesirable identities in their shopping experience (Nichols, Raska and Flint, 2015, 44).
Literature Review
The feeling of embarrassment is a natural segment of life. The emotion erupts when a person’s actions fail to obtain social acceptance or threaten his or her identity. Models of social anxiety are utilized in explaining the feeling of humiliation. The authors draw on the theories as well as relevant literature related to the emotion and the activities that people use to deal with embarrassment. According to the articles they refer to in their research, when individuals involve themselves in a form of social interaction, they adopt behaviors or activities that will prevent them from being humiliated. They actively reinforce their reactions to maintain a good impression on others. Indeed, embarrassing moments are capable of motivating people to conform to activities that eliminate the chances of being socially judged or rejected (Mullen and Johnson, 2013).
The writers adopt Goffman’s approach of behavioral modification and social interaction as the foundation of studying their consumer behavioral contexts. They also use the model of planned behavior to show that an individual’s beliefs about how others view him or her can create a mental effort to control his or her activities to impress the people. According to the theory, the behavioral achievement depends on the intention and motivation to pursue a particular reaction. The application of the planned behavior approach would suggest that individuals consciously enact and execute shopping behaviors to assist them to reduce social judgments and rejection (Kardes, Cronley and Cline, 2014, 10). The literature the authors present highlights the essence of the influence of anticipated emotions on planned reactions. Regarding coping strategies, the writers give extensive details concerning ways given in previous research to cope with humiliating occurrences.
People devise ways to handle emotional distress and unwanted attention that could lead to embarrassment. In a research done by Moore and Berger (2015, 13), the participants expressed a high level of purchase self-assurance and rehearsal where they would play the shopping scenario in their minds regarding what they would say or do. The behavioral modification also occurs. For example, individuals may purchase sanitary napkins instead of grown-up diapers to prevent others from knowing that they have a urinary issue. College learners formulate measures to avoid the social eyes when buying condoms since they will be labeled as promiscuous (Juster, 2015, 72). The students may purchase additional items to conceal the condoms. The evidence of masking suggests that the shopping activities are characterized by humiliating and non-humiliating items in which case the later will have fewer items in the basket.
Methodology
The research encompasses three studies to understand the relationship between embarrassment and masking. The first analysis is an explanatory examination to garner information concerning how the millennial generation copes with humiliating purchases in a drug store setting to view the extent of masking. The study draws on a group of 65 marketing pupils who were requested by the lecturer to take part in an online exam. The learners were asked to recount and elaborate a shopping experience. Once they joined the research, they were provided with a brief definition of the term masking and were questions if they had ever encountered such an incident. Those that answered yes were requested to narrate the event. In the second evaluation, the writers used controlled mechanisms to show the importance of the phenomenon of masking. Here, they investigated on how the embarrassment-procured masking activities affect the shopping basket value and size in the drugstore and how the personal differences define the extent of the use of the practice (Nichols, Raska and Flint, 2015, 45).
Given the minimal studies conducted on the topic of humiliation in shopping experiences, the authors aimed to provide informative outcomes that could serve as the basis for future reflections and research. A different set of volunteers that comprised of 300 students in the Midwestern University was used in the second study. The online research procedure took place for two weeks with the learners having free reign on when and where they could take the test. The information procured from the second analysis was more of a quantitative nature, and it was classified in tables. The tabular formation considered the type of product and the average number of people who bought them item as well as the standard deviation. The final study attempts to understand how a non-embarrassing product was used conceal the presence of the embarrassing item. All the data volunteers provide is strictly on an anonymous basis to avoid tracing it back to the individuals who gave the comments (Nichols, Raska and Flint, 2015, 46).
Data Analysis
In the first evaluation, sixty-seven percent of the volunteers said that they had purchased a humiliating product indicating that people within the age bracket can relate to the occurrence. The participants who affirmed the aspect went ahead to give a description of the circumstance and item. The activity assisted in finding out the prominent masking strategies, the motives, and the goods that are commonly masked. The highest percentage of products was associated with sexual health followed by feminine care. Eighty-eight percent of the learners agreed that they had purchased extra items such as magazines, groceries, amongst others to conceal the embarrassing goods. More than half of the individuals said that they masked the products to avoid humiliation. The first study is utilized to shed light on the nature and frequency of masking in embarrassing purchases. The qualitative illustrations indicate that some items are responsible for a greater anticipation of humiliation than others (Nichols, Raska and Flint, 2015, 46).
The next research provides an empirical approach to articulate a comprehension of the extent that Millennials feel embarrassed for buying personal care goods. It gives descriptive statistics of the frequencies of the focal products of humiliation. The authors use a manipulation check to assess the levels of embarrassment from the purchase of personal care items. They also conduct hypotheses tests like the independent t-examination to derive the size and value of shopping basket. Next, a series of regressions is used to evaluate the predictions of using additional items to mask humiliating products. The assessments are adopted to define the manner that embarrassing situations affect the shopping activities of Millennials. The statistics prove that the humiliated group purchased more goods compared to the non-embarrassed one indicating that the individuals masked products with more expensive items (Nichols, Raska and Flint, 2015, 48).
The implications of the second analysis imply that people feel an extra commodity or more prevents others from noticing the personal care item. The evaluation supports that masking is a thoughtful and intentional behavior of Millennials. The element is not surprising considering the group’s desire for social awareness and avoiding humiliation. The individuals are more concerned with outward appearances and impression management; hence, they react in ways that shape and protect their self-presentation. The third study is also quantitative like the second one. It provides descriptive statistics of the participants who completed the shopping task successfully. The ANOVAs were utilized to manipulate the knowledge in an efficient manner. The hypotheses examinations investigated the size and value of the shopping baskets. However, in this particular instance, the non-millennials were added into the picture. The non-millennials were not found to have any behavioral modifications towards humiliating items as compared to millennials. The final analysis conducted by the authors give a more holistic conceptualization of how embarrassments impacts different categories of buyers (Nichols, Raska and Flint, 2015, 49).
The third study builds on previous representations that illustrate how the identity constitution of the shopping basket affects the humiliation levels and behavioral modifications that are vital to practitioners. However, the findings lack in terms of a counterbalanced shopping basket and the exact additional purchases used to conceal the embarrassing items. The outcomes can help retailers in acquiring the most returns from the practice of masking. Also, discreet measures can be formulated by the store owners. For instance, a private checkout line can be used to encouraging people from buying the personal care commodities (Jones, et.al, 2015, 615). The distinctions in the generation of buyers also require retailers to engage the Millennials in developing trust and mutual respect with them.
Conclusions and Further Research
Additionally, the targeted group that is susceptible to embarrassment may assist the retailers in boosting their sales. Future reviews should attempt to focus on cultural sensitivity towards controversial commodities and how they affect masking and spending. They should also reveal the specific items that people buy when they try to mask. For instance, if a shopper feels that a certain product is humiliating, what other good does he or she purchase to maintain self-confidence? Through this, it will be possible to institute a counterbalance of the shopping basket. For managers, the information aids them in the acquisition of more data concerning their customers to promote basket evaluations such as count modeling, profiling, and affinity (Escalas, et.al, 2013, 24). The analyses develop a comprehension of the complexity of consumer motivations and psyche. The leaders should not ignore the importance of emotions in controlling shopping behaviors.
Conclusion of the Report and Recommendations
The research has limitations since it constrains itself to the market segments in America and the shopping behaviors in a drug store. Individuals tend to adopt masking in settings that are not controlled since they have a wider variety of products to conceal the humiliating ones. The authors also adopted a simulated study instead of a field research that would have given them a more realistic account of embarrassment during the shopping endeavors. The simulation prevents them from obtaining observable inferences such as the presence of other individuals or the speed of purchase. The future evaluations should use real settings to gauge the effects of the environmental factors like the time, gender or age of the cashier, and social presence (Claiborne and Sirgy, 2015, 6). However, despite the shortcomings, the message that the writers intended to provide is vividly communicated. The authors give retailers a secret ingredient to boost their sales and customer relations. They are advised to focus on the groups that are vulnerable to masking such as the Millennial generation.
More analysis concerning the cultural and social factors that result in humiliation is necessary to understand its impact on shopping behaviors from a better perspective. The writers prove that analyzing the patterns of the reactions and attitudes of buyers is useful to the firms. The information can create leverage over competitors if used in a unique manner to develop the respect and trust with the consumers. Businesses need the buyers so that they can thrive (Ajzen, 2015, 136). Hence, they should direct more resources and efforts to researching about all the relevant factors that may promote or inhibit their purchasing activities. They can then make relevant adjustments where necessary. The research is also essential to psychology since the emotions are a derivation of human nature. It helps in understanding the psychological setup of the motivation of the activities of the consumers as the carry out their shopping behaviors.
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