All rights reserved. 0093-5301/2008/3503-0012$10.00
Flying under the Radar: Perverse Package Size Effects on Consumption Self‐Regulation
Consumers believe that small package formats of hedonic, but not of utilitarian, products help to regulate consumption—especially when their self‐regulatory concerns are activated. These beliefs may backfire and increase consumption of hedonic products. Specifically, activating self‐regulatory concerns had no consumption effects when tempting products came in small package formats. Yet, when tempting products came in large package formats, consumers deliberated most before consumption, were least likely to consume, and consumed the least. This illustrates how small temptations can remain undetected (“flying under the radar”) and large package formats may reduce consumption as a result of the experienced self‐control conflict.
Electronically published June 19, 2008
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Rita Coelho do Vale is an assistant professor of marketing (ritavale@iseg.utl.pt) at Instituto Superior de Economica e Gestao (ISEG Economics and Business School), Technical University of Lisbon, Rua Miguel Lupi, 20, 1200‐078 Lisbon, Portugal. Rik Pieters is professor of marketing (f.g.m.pieters@uvt.nl), and Marcel Zeelenberg is professor of psychology (marcel@uvt.nl), both at Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, Netherlands. Correspondence: Rik Pieters. The research on which this article is based is part of the first author’s dissertation, defended at Tilburg University. It was supported by a grant from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. We thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting the “flying under the radar” metaphor.