Lindsay McShane,
A “Slap in the Face”: The ‘Taking-it-Personally’ Bias in Consumer-Firm Interactions

A “Slap in the Face”: The ‘Taking-it-Personally’ Bias in Consumer-Firm Interactions

Principal Investigator: Lindsay McShane, Marketing
Funder: SSHRC Insight Development

This research addresses a significant and meaningful gap. Dominant theoretical frameworks currently used to examine consumers’ reactions to pricing actions, including both theories of fairness and satisfaction, do not predict such personal reactions to price changes. Yet, we see across a variety of extant research findings and anecdotal stories that what we refer to as a ‘taking-­it-­personally’ bias – the tendency for consumers to interpret firm actions in an overly personalistic way despite no evidence to suggest as much – is prevalent in consumer-firm engagements. This gap in existing frameworks is such that we lack a clear understanding of whether, and if so, when and why consumers take firm pricing actions personally. We also lack an understanding for how these more personal interpretations may have significant downstream consequences for the consumer-firm relationship. The proposed research will address these critical questions and, in doing so, develop a guiding framework for understanding this phenomenon.