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In this article we review research from the past decade that explores how elements of social influence in the bricks-and-mortar retail environment impact customers. We focus our discussion on demonstrating how the active and passive social influence of the salesforce and other shoppers in the retail context can impact a focal customer’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Additionally, we utilize our review as an opportunity to highlight a variety of directions future research could pursue to further our understanding of the impact of the social retail environment.’

Past research finds that consumers exhibit weak self‐brand connections to brands associated with out‐groups. We extend this work by demonstrating that products associated with dissociative reference groups have a greater impact on consumers’ negative self‐brand connections, product evaluations, and choices than do products associated with out‐groups more generally. In addition, both situational priming and chronic identification with one’s in‐group moderate the avoidance of products associated with dissociative reference groups. Further, we demonstrate the conditions under which dissociative influence does not occur and discuss the implications of the research.

Companies are increasingly drawing on their user communities to generate promising ideas for new products, which are then marketed as “user-designed” products to the broader consumer market. We demonstrate that nonparticipating, observing consumers prefer to buy from user- rather than designer-driven firms because of an enhanced identification with the firm that has adopted this user-driven philosophy. Three experimental studies validate a newly proposed social identification account underlying this effect. Because consumers are also users, their social identities connect to the user-designers, and they feel empowerment by vicariously being involved in the design process. This formed connection leads to preference for the firm’s products. Importantly, this social identification account also effectively predicts when the effect does not materialize. First, we find that if consumers feel dissimilar to participating users, the effects are attenuated. We demonstrate that this happens when the community differs from consumers along important demographics (i.e., gender) or when consumers are nonexperts in the focal domain (i.e., they feel that they do not belong to the social group of participating users). Second, the effects are attenuated if the user-driven firm is only selectively rather than fully open to participation from all users (observing consumers do not feel socially included). These findings advance the emerging theory on user involvement and offer practical implications for firms interested in pursuing a user-driven philosophy. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.1999 . This paper was accepted by Pradeep Chintagunta, marketing .

In response to consumers’ complaints that they feel rejected in and thus avoid luxury stores, retailers have encouraged sales personnel to be more friendly. However, prior research on social rejection supports the idea that rejection encourages people to elevate their perceptions of their rejecters and strengthens their predilection to affiliate with them. Four studies examine the circumstances in which consumers increase their regard and willingness to pay after brand rejection. In a retail context, the data reveal that after threat, consumers have more positive attitudes and higher willingness to pay when (1) the rejection comes from an aspirational (vs. nonaspirational) brand, (2) the consumer relates the brand to his/her ideal self-concept, (3) s/he is unable to self-affirm before rejection, (4) the salesperson delivering the threat reflects the brand, and (5) the threat occurred recently. The substantive implications of these findings for retailers are discussed, and opportunities for future research are identified.

This research examines how the body type of consumers affects the food consumption of other consumers around them. We find that consumers anchor on the quantities others around them select but that these portions are adjusted according to the body type of the other consumer. We find that people choose a larger portion following another consumer who first selects a large quantity but that this portion is significantly smaller if the other is obese than if she is thin. We also find that the adjustment is more pronounced for consumers who are low in appearance self‐esteem and that it is attenuated under cognitive load.

Crowdfunding has emerged as an alternative means of financing new ventures by utilizing the financial support of a large group of individual investors. This research asks a novel question: Does being crowdfunded carry any signal value for the broader market of observing consumers? Seven studies reveal a consumer preference for crowdfunded products, even after controlling for a product's objective product characteristics. The authors identify two inferences that help explain this effect: (1) consumers perceive crowdfunded products to be of higher quality, and (2) they believe that supporting crowdfunding reduces inequality in the marketplace. The authors further document an important boundary condition of the first inference: the identified effect reverses in high-risk domains (e.g., products that involve high physical risk) due to consumer perceptions that the crowdfunding model lacks sufficient professionalism to mitigate risk. With regard to the second inference, the authors find that the positive crowdfunding effect is particularly strong among consumers who value social equality. Taken together, this work sheds new light on consumer perceptions of crowdfunding, elucidates why and when consumers prefer crowdfunded products, and offers actionable implications for managers.

This study examines the effects of incidental similarity shared between a salesperson and a potential customer. We show that an incidental similarity, such as a shared birthday or birthplace, can result in a more favorable attitude and a higher intention to purchase. We argue and find that the need for connectedness underlies its persuasive effects in an interpersonal context. In addition, we show that the valence of the salesperson’s behavior and the possibility of an extended service relationship moderate the process. When the need for connectedness is mitigated, the positive effects of incidental similarity can be lost or even reversed.

Across six studies, a female mannequin is demonstrated to have negative implications for both male and female consumers low in appearance self-esteem. In particular, consumers who are lower in appearance self-esteem evaluate a product displayed by a mannequin more negatively as compared with consumers higher in appearance self-esteem. As mannequins signal the normative standard of beauty and consumers with low self-esteem in regard to their appearance believe they fail to meet this standard, these consumers become threatened by the beauty standard when exposed to a mannequin and in response denigrate the product the mannequin is displaying. We provide evidence for the underlying process in three ways: 1) through the finding that the effect for male and female consumers with low appearance self-esteem arises only when the mannequin is displaying an appearance-related product, 2) through mediation analysis demonstrating that the mannequin conveys society’s standard of beauty and that this negatively impacts product evaluations, and 3) through mitigation of the effect by removing the presence of threat via a self-affirmation task or decreasing the mannequin’s beauty (e.g., marking its face, removing its hair, or removing its head). Multiple avenues for future research are forwarded.

While the majority of consumer research that has studied social influences has focused on the impact of an interactive social presence, in this research we demonstrate that a noninteractive social presence (i.e., a mere presence) is also influential. We conduct two field experiments in a retail setting to show when and how a noninteractive social presence that differs in size and proximity impacts consumers’ emotions and self‐presentation behaviors. In doing so, we refine Social Impact Theory by identifying boundary conditions under which the theory does not hold.

Conventional wisdom suggests that more concrete and detailed information is helpful in evaluating new products. The current research, however, demonstrates that when consumers use visualization to evaluate new products, the value of concrete versus abstract visualization is dependent on the temporal perspective taken by the consumer. Specifically, concrete information is beneficial when product visualization is retrospective in nature (i.e., focused on the past), whereas abstract information is found to be more helpful when product visualization is anticipatory in nature (i.e., geared toward the future). This occurs because the match between visualization aids and consumers’ temporal construal facilitates the extent of imagery processing realized, which, in turn, enhances new product evaluation. When the new product is very difficult to visualize, this pattern of effects is attenuated. Further, the effect is reversed when the product is highly familiar (i.e., not a new product), as preexisting memories are shown to hinder imagery processing. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.