‘Consumption Sacrifice’: How Relationships Impact Consumer Behavior

(upbeat music) - Howdy, welcome to Created at Maze, where we delve into the innovative world of business education and research. I'm Dr. Cassandra LeClaire, a clinical associate professor at Maze. Join me as we explore cutting edge insights, revolutionary ideas, and the brilliant minds shaping the future of business right here at Maze Business School. Whether you're a student, an entrepreneur, business executive, or just curious about the world of business, tune in as we uncover the secrets of success in today's ever-evolving marketplace. Let's get started. (upbeat music) Marketing often focuses on what individuals need or want and how consumers satisfy these needs and wants themselves. But what if we inferred this idea and focused on the times when consumers willingly give up their money, time, or personal preferences to help others address their needs and wants? In a new paper published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Maze Business School, Jimena Garcia-Rata studies an intriguing aspect of consumer behavior, the sacrifices we make for others. Dr. Garcia-Rata, could you please elaborate a little bit more on the research itself and some insights that you gathered from doing this study? In this new paper, my co-authors and I, we introduced this idea of consumption sacrifice. Much of marketing research focuses on understanding how consumers get what they want from the marketplace for themselves. However, we introduced the idea of consumption sacrifice, which is that consumers often forego something that's valuable to them to help loved ones address their needs and wants. Specifically, we proposed that consumers will sacrifice their money, their time, or their preferences with the expectation that that will benefit a relationship partner. And finally, we introduced the idea that these sacrifices can occur during different stages of the customer journey. So for example, consumers can sacrifice time, their money, or preferences when searching for products for loved ones and putting together a consideration set. They can also sacrifice those resources when making the actual purchases, such as sacrificing time to place an order or sacrifice money to pay for something for a loved one. And finally, these sacrifices can also occur during the post-purchase stage, most commonly during the consumption phase. - It's so interesting to think about all these different variables and how they come together. What are some of the underlying motives that you found drive these acts of sacrifice? - Yes, so we proposed in the paper that consumers will make these sacrifices with the expectation that our loved one will benefit. However, the specific motives depend and we argue that sacrifices are often multiply determined. Specifically, we propose that sacrifices can be often driven by partner focus motives. So for example, to make that relationship partner happy, sacrifices can also be relationship focus. That is the sacrificing consumer wants to foster their relationship with that recipient. And finally, we also propose that these sacrifices can also be driven by self-focused motives, such as people also make these sacrifices to feel good about themselves or to signal something to the recipient, observers or to themselves. - So I'd love for you to tell me a little bit more about how you feel this research could impact different business practices. - Yeah, so we argue in the paper that this idea of consumption sacrifice is important for businesses or marketers in a few different ways. So on the one hand, firms, what they usually observe is the resources that consumers are spending during a search process or a purchase. So they can observe how much time a person spends on a website. They can observe how much money someone paid for a product. And they use these observations to make inferences about consumer preferences. However, it's harder for firms to know whether these are sacrifices. They just observe how the resource was spent, which resource was spent and at what point of the customer journey. But it's less clear for firms who was the sacrifice being made for, whether it's a purchase for the self or a purchase for the loved one. So we argue that it's important for firms to first be aware that often these purchases are not for the self, but they are actually sacrifices that consumers are making for loved ones. The second idea from this paper is that sacrifices are often invisible as they are underappreciated and under recognized by recipients. So we argue that firms can serve as intermediaries and they can actually help consumers make their sacrifices more visible to recipients. - But so often too, unless we understand our own reasoning for having that consumption sacrifice, as you say, it could lead to resentment over time if you don't understand that you are making that consumption sacrifice or the why behind it. What are some other important takeaways from this study? - Yes, I think for me one really important takeaway is this work has implications for consumer wellbeing. As you clearly point out, consumers willingly sacrifice something that's valuable to them like their money, their time or their preferences. But this idea that these sacrifices are often invisible, they're not recognized or appreciated by their recipient can lead to resentment. And we know that gratitude, it's really important to foster relationship wellbeing between two individuals. So we believe that just being aware both from the perspective of the actor or the perspective of the recipient can help consumers and relationships in the marketplace. This also can kind of prevent somebody from really thinking about their own identity. So we've been thinking too about a lot of times there's those shifts not only in our consumer behaviors because of those life stages, but we need some ideas I guess from other people sometimes of, oh, what does this look like for me now in this next stage? - Yes, that's super important. And you mentioned the word identity where we've been having conversations with my co-authors about how often consumers can adopt this identity of sacrifices of a specific resource at a specific stage. So you could imagine a family planning a dinner for let's say an important celebration or a birthday and people who have certain roles where someone might be responsible for spending a lot of time looking for options, making the reservation. And then another person might be responsible for actually sacrificing money and paying for the meal. And you could imagine that people have these roles that they often adopt and given some group dynamics. And sometimes the sacrifice that might be more visible is the person who actually pays for the meal that happens in the presence of everyone who attended the consumption episode, the celebration. But maybe the person who invested more resources was a person who spent days searching online for the perfect option, trying to accommodate everyone's preferences, calling to make the reservation and checking that the restaurant had everything perfect. So yeah, definitely we've been thinking about how just consumers adopt identities of sacrifices of a specific resources and during specific stages of the customer journey. - Absolutely, I can see where this is probably just the beginning of all of the different places you might want to take this research. Well, thank you again for being here today and for explaining some of these things to us. You know, it's one of those things where we talk about consumerism or we talk about marketing, but I really love the focus that you have here on thinking about what are the ways that we make sacrifices and why do we do those things. And it can also help us take back a little bit of our own control over our understanding of our consumption as well. You know, recognizing well, maybe there are sacrifices you make, but here's why or here's how you go about doing that. So thank you again for sharing your research today. - Thank you for having me. (upbeat music) - Thank you for tuning into this episode of "Created at Maze" brought to you by Maze Business School. We hope you've gained valuable insights into the exciting world of business research. If you're inspired by today's conversation and want to learn more, visit our website at maze.tamu.edu. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and share with others passionate about innovation and growth. "Created at Maze" is a production of Texas A&M University and is produced by University FM. Until next time, keep thinking big and stay curious. Gig 'em. (upbeat music)