Who Has Mixed Feelings About Consumption? Self-Monitoring and the Antecedents of Attitude Ambivalence

Ambivalent attitudes tend to lead to less predictable consumer judgments and behaviors than non-ambivalent attitudes. It is therefore important that we gain a better understanding of how consumers form ambivalent attitudes toward consumption objects. Our research contributes to the recent introduction of individual differences in the investigation of consumer ambivalence. We show that some antecedents of ambivalence are felt more by consumers with a high (vs. low) level of self-monitoring. Specifically, the discrepancy between personal and other’s attitudes causes more ambivalence toward consumption objects for high self-monitors than low self-monitors. Our findings open up interesting directions for research on the formation of attitudinal ambivalence toward products, services and brands.

Citation:

Elizabeth Cowley, Sandor Czellar, and Gilles Laurent (2008) ,"Who Has Mixed Feelings About Consumption? Self-Monitoring and the Antecedents of Attitude Ambivalence", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 35, eds. Angela Y. Lee and Dilip Soman, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 860-861.