My Pet Rock and Me: an Experimental Exploration of the Self Extension Concept
ABSTRACT - We examine Belk’s (1988) construct of self extension experimentally. Participants were given a small rock and randomly assigned to design the rock for themselves or to sell. The participants who designed the rock for themselves were more likely than sellers to say the rock symbolized themselves. Participants whose rock symbolized themselves rated its personality more similarly to their ratings of themselves than did other participants, and were less agreeable to making their rock into a product line of pet rocks. We explore process explanations for our results.
Citation:
Tina Kiesler and Sara Kiesler (2005) ,"My Pet Rock and Me: an Experimental Exploration of the Self Extension Concept", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 32, eds. Geeta Menon and Akshay R. Rao, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 365-370.
Authors
Tina Kiesler, California State University, Northridge
Sara Kiesler, Carnegie Mellon University
Volume
NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 32 | 2005
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