Moore School of Business
Marketing Department5
1705 College Street
Columbia SC, 29208.
Home: (803) 776-8324
Cell: (803) 629-1325
Email: [email protected]
Moore School of Business
Concentration: Consumer Behavior
Cognate: Judgment and DecisionMaking
Marketing
Sauder School of Business
Major: Marketing
Minor: Psychology
2004 AMA - Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium Fellow
2005 Society for Judgment and Decision Making Annual Conference, Toronto:
2nd Student Poster Award
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Behavioral decision theory, context effects, affect and cognition interplay, special consumer groups
RESEARCH
Dissertation
Smarandescu, Laura, "Two Peas in a Pod: Contrast and Assimilation Effects in Across-Category Brand Advertising Alliances."
Committee: Randall L. Rose (Chair), Terrence A. Shimp, Tim Silk, Douglas H. Wedell (Psychology).
Publications
Wedell, Douglas H., Susanne M. Karpick and Laura Smarandescu (in press.), "Contrasting models of assimilation and contrast," in D. Stapel and J. Suls (eds.), Assimilation and Contrast in Social Psychology, New York: Psychology Press.
Shimp, Terence A., Stacy Wood and Laura Smarandescu (2005), "Consumer Testimonials as Self-Generated Advertisements: Evaluative Reconstruction Following Product Usage," Marketing Science Institute Working Papers.
Papers under Review
Shimp, Terence A., Stacy L. Wood and Laura Smarandescu (2005),"Seducing Ourselves: Testimonial Promotions as a Form of Consumer-Generated Advertising," (under review at Journal of Marketing Research)
Smarandescu, Laura, Randall L. Rose and Douglas H. Wedell (2005), "Two Peas in a Pod: Contrast and Assimilation Effects in Across-Category Brand Advertising Alliances," (under review at Journal of Consumer Psychology)
Working Papers
Smarandescu, Laura and Douglas Wedell, "Preference Reversals in Consumer Weighting of Utilitarian and Hedonic Attributes in Judgment" (2 studies completed), targeted at Journal of Consumer Research.
Smarandescu, Laura, Randall L. Rose and Douglas H. Wedell, "Changing Brand Perceptions through a Brand Ally: The Role of Product Category Fit in Advertising Brand Alliances," targeted at Journal of Consumer Research.
Silk, Tim, Laura Smarandescu and Scott Swain, "When Form of Payment Affects Consumption: The Case of Store Gift Cards" (4 studies completed), targeted at Journal of Consumer Research.
Smarandescu, Laura, "Non-consequential Reasoning in Hedonic and Utilitarian Consumption Decisions" (3 studies completed), targeted at Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Conference Presentations
Academy of Marketing Science Conference, May 2004.
Laura Smarandescu (2003) "When Bad News Strikes: Understanding the Role of Commitment in Consumers' Reactions to Negative Information"
Society for Judgment and Decision Making Conference, November 2004.
Laura Smarandescu (2004) "Non-consequential Reasoning in Hedonic and Utilitarian Consumption Decisions"
Society for Consumer Psychology Winter Conference, February 2005.
Laura Smarandescu and Randall L. Rose (2004) "Changing Brand Perceptions through a Brand Ally: The Role of Fit in Across Category Brand Advertising Alliances"
European Association for Consumer Research Conference, June 2005.
Terence A. Shimp, Stacy Wood and Laura Smarandescu "Consumer Testimonials
as Post-experience, Self-generated Advertisements: Evaluative Reconstruction
Following Product Usage"
Association for Consumer Research Winter Conference, October 2005.
Laura Smarandescu, "Non-consequential Reasoning in Hedonic and Utilitarian Consumption Decisions"
Society for Judgment and Decision Making, Annual Conference, November 2005.
Laura Smarandescu, Randall L. Rose and Douglas H. Wedell (2005), "Two Peas in a Pod: Attribute Mutability in Across-Category Product Associations"
Behavioral Decision Research in Management Conference, June 2006.
Laura Smarandescu, "Preference Reversals in Consumer Weighting of Utilitarian and Hedonic Attributes in Judgment"
INVITED PRESENTATIONS
DePaul University, Department of Psychology, February 2006.
Laura Smarandescu, Randall L. Rose and Douglas H. Wedell (2005), "Two Peas in a Pod: Attribute Mutability in Across-Category Product Associations"
SERVICE
Reviewer for Decisions Sciences Institute Conference 2005
Reviewer for Association for Consumer Psychology Conference 2007
ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE
University of South Carolina, Department of Marketing
> Research Assistant in Psychology (2006-07), currently working with functional fMRI.
> Instructor for Consumer Behavior, spring 2006, Rating = 4.5/ 5/0.
> Instructor for Marketing Research, summer 2003, Rating = 4.2/ 5.0.
> Research Assistant in Marketing (2002- 06)
TEACHING INTERESTS
Consumer Behavior
Judgment and Decision Making
Marketing Research
International Marketing
ACADEMIC ORGANIZATIONS
Association for Consumer Research
Society for Judgment and Decision Making
Society for Consumer Psychology
DOCTORAL RESEARCH TOOLS COURSES
Applied Statistics I and II, Experimental Research, Analytical Techniques, Advanced Statistics, Multivariate Methods, Structural Equation Modeling and HLM, Mathematical Models in Psychology.
Professor of Marketing
Department of Marketing
University of South Carolina
2705 College Street, Columbia SC, 29208
Phone: (803) 777-4915
Email: [email protected]
Terence A. Shimp
Professor of Marketing
Department of Marketing
Moore School of Business
University of South Carolina
Phone: (803) 777-4911
Email: [email protected]
Professor of Psychology
DeDepartment of Psychology
Barnwell College
University of South Carolina
Phone: (803) 777-4258
Email: [email protected]
Tim Silk
Assistant Professor in Marketing
Marketing Department
MSauder School of Business
University of British Columbia
Email: [email protected]
Smarandescu, Laura, "Two Peas in a Pod: Contrast and Assimilation Effects in Across-
Category Brand Advertising Alliances"
Extended Abstract
This work focuses on the inference making processes that occur when individuals are exposed to across-category advertising brand alliances (e.g., Starbucks allied with Hewlett Packard, or Nestle with L'Oreal). Evidence from three studies suggests that exposure to an across-category brand alliance can induce assimilation or contrast on perceptions of brand attributes. These effects are moderated by individual need for cognition (NFC), attribute alignability, and cognitive load.
Several studies have shown that the similarity between the target and contextual objects is a determinant of the type of context effects that occur in judgment. The feature-matching model (Herr, 1986) indicates that when the target and the referent share many features, they are judged as similar and assimilation results. Conversely, the model predicts that when the target and the referent share few features, they are judged as dissimilar and contrast occurs. This research examines the context effects that occur when objects from different product categories with low feature overlap are associated in a brand alliance, focusing on the moderating roles of individual need for cognition and attribute alignability.
Study 1 explores how exposure to an across-category brand alliance influences perceptions of individual brands in conditions of attribute certainty, that is, when individuals receive alignable information about the target attributes of both brands. Data from study 1 indicate that when information about brand attributes is perfectly alignable, low NFC individuals assimilate their perceptions of a target brand in the direction of the brand partner.
Study 2 examines the effects of the brand alliance on brand perceptions in different conditions of attribute uncertainty, that is, when individuals are presented with alignable and non-alignable attribute information. I find that individual processing style moderates the inference making processes in this context. Specifically, when the target attribute was non-alignable, the presence of a brand alliance swayed attribute perceptions in the direction of the brand partner for low NFC individuals, but in a direction opposite to the brand partner for high NFC individuals. These results are consistent with Martin (1986) and Martin et al. (1990) who show that low NFC individuals tend to assimilate their judgments in the direction of the prime, while high NFC individuals go through an extra step in which they correct their responses for the perceived influence of the prime.
Study 3 continues the investigation into processes underlying the assimilation and contrast effects observed in study 2 and tests the predictions of two correction models, Martin et al. (1990) and Wegener and Petty (1995). Study 3 provides support for Martin et al.'s (1990) view that suggests that contrast occurs as a result of a more effortful process than assimilation. In agreement with Martin et al. (1990), I found that assimilation was the default strategy for low NFC individuals; however, assimilation was not the default for high NFC individuals. These individuals made unbiased attribute judgments under conditions of high cognitive load; however, when they had sufficient cognitive resources available, they adjusted their judgments in a direction opposite to their brand partner. This may be explained as an attempt to partial out the perceived bias introduced by non-alignable attribute information, consistent with Wegener and Petty's flexible correction model (1995). Finally, study 3 provides evidence that when individuals are exposed to an across-category product association they update their memory representations of the participating brands at the encoding stage, and later on they retrieve these elaborated representations from memory.
Study 4 further examines how consumers make inferences about brand attributes when they are exposed to across-category brand alliances that present different degrees of product category fit. Data collection for this fourth study will take place in the fall 2006.
WORKING PAPERS
Smarandescu, Laura and Douglas Wedell, "Preference Reversals in Consumer Weighting
of Utilitarian and Hedonic Attributes in Judgment," (2 studies completed), targeted
at Journal of Consumer Research.
A fundamental assumption in the theory of choice is that of procedure invariance which suggests that individuals have well-articulated preferences and beliefs that remain constant regardless the method of elicitation. However, studies of decision and judgment show that people do not have well-defined values and beliefs and often construct these during the elicitation process (Fischoff, Slovic & Lichtenstein, 1980; Shafer & Tversky, 1985; Tversky, Sattah and Slovic, 1988; Schkade and Johnson, 1989). Thus, different elicitation procedures highlight different aspects of options and may result in inconsistent responses.
This research examines how consumers weight hedonic and utilitarian information in preference judgments across three preference elicitation methods: choice, pricing and attractiveness ratings and explores the moderating role of trade-off size. When the size of the attribute trade-off was large, individuals placed more weight on utilitarian attributes in choice than in pricing and attractiveness judgments. However, when the size of the trade-off was small individuals placed greater weights on utilitarian attributes in attractiveness judgments than in choice or pricing. Hence, smaller trade-offs resulted in increased weighting of hedonic attributes in choice and pricing decisions. Study 2 explores the impact of framing as a net gain vs. a net loss on consumers' weighting of utilitarian and hedonic attributes across the same preference elicitation methods and compares acquisition with forfeiture consumption situations.
Smarandescu, Laura, Randall L. Rose and Douglas H. Wedell, "Changing Brand
Perceptions through a Brand Ally: The Role of Product Category Fit in
Advertising Brand Alliances" targeted at Journal of Consumer Research.
This research focuses on the inferences individuals form about brand attributes when they are exposed to across-category brand alliances. Study 1 tests the effect of such alliances in conditions when brand attributes are correlated vs. uncorrelated. Study 2 further investigates the consumer inference making processes when they are exposed to brand alliances between goal-congruent vs. goal-incongruent product categories.
Silk, Tim, Laura Smarandescu and Scott Swain, "When Form of Payment Affects
Consumption: The Case of Store Gift Cards" (4 studies completed) targeted at
Journal of Consumer Research.
A key finding of the mental accounting literature is that consumers spend more readily from some accounts than from others. For example, consumers are more likely to consume monetary gains that they categorize as unexpected or "windfall" than they do monetary gains that they categorize as current income (Arkes et al. 1994). In addition, the categorization process is shown to affect the nature of consumer purchases (McGraw, Tetlock, and Kristel 2003; O'Curry 1997; Thaler 1999). For example, consumers prefer to match frivolous monetary gains with frivolous purchases (e.g., poker winnings and new golf clubs) and serious money with serious purchases (e.g., income from work and bills).
Gift cards can be classified as windfall gains (Arkes et al. 1994) and thus are more readily placed into consumers' current assets. Accordingly, gift cards should also be more readily spent than assets placed in other accounts such as savings. However, no prior research has examined whether the format of windfall gains (e.g., gift card versus cash) moderates this effect. Thus, a further goal of our research is to investigate this potential moderating effect and to conceptualize the underlying mechanisms. To do so, we build on the mental accounting literature (Brendl, Markman, and Higgins 1998; Shefrin and Thaler 1988; Thaler 1980; 1985; 1999) and the mental budgeting literature (Heath 1995; Heath and Soll 1996). This research consists of one exploratory field experiment involving real purchases with real money/ gift cards at the university bookstore. In addition, we conducted three other laboratory studies that provide more controlled tests of our account of consumer gift card behavior.
Smarandescu, Laura, "Non-consequential Reasoning in Hedonic and Utilitarian
Consumption Decisions," (3 studies completed), targeted at
Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Under uncertainty, individuals tend to make decisions in a consequential manner by assessing the perceived likelihood of each alternative outcome, and its potential implications for the individuals' desires and actions (Shafir and Tversky 1992). Although choices based on a consequential evaluation of anticipated outcomes are expected to satisfy Savage's "sure thing principle", which states that if we prefer A to B given any possible state of the world then we should prefer A to B even when the exact state of the world is unknown, people do not always make choices in a consequential manner and the "sure thing principle" is sometimes violated. Bastardi and Shafir (1998) showed that people who expressed an intention to take an action unconditioned by whether an event occurred or not, chose to postpone their action when the outcome was unknown.
This work investigates the effects of pursuing non-instrumental information on non-consequential reasoning in the context of hedonic vs. utilitarian product purchases. Although no differences have been found in individuals' willingness to pursue non-instrumental information in the two purchase contexts, individuals were more likely to rely on non-instrumental information when they contemplated a hedonic rather than a utilitarian purchase. This series of studies suggest that individuals feel more accountable for hedonic than for utilitarian purchases and are more likely to weight non-instrumental information into their decision in order to avoid feelings of guilt and ambivalence.