Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Management
First Advisor
Reich, Taly
Abstract
Primarily, my dissertation challenges the longstanding and intuitive preference for intentionality and effort. I explore ways in which consumers, employees, and organizations can actually derive benefit from chance and unintentional outcomes over and above otherwise identical intentional outcomes. Past research has illuminated that perceiving an actor’s intentionality leads to heightened perceptions of effort, and work in both marketing and social psychology has documented that perceptions of effort frequently heighten quality perceptions of and preference for outcomes. Complementing this work, my dissertation highlights contexts which illuminate benefits that can arise from chance and unintentional outcomes.The three essays that make up my dissertation each investigate how non-traditional marketplace practices can be used to benefit different stakeholders. The first essay demonstrates that hedonic products that a company selects for promotion by chance are actually preferred by consumers to otherwise identical products selected for promotion intentionally. The second essay illuminates that people value creations whose inception was unintentional more than otherwise identical creations whose inception was intentional. Investigating the influences of unintentionality on marketing outcomes beyond consumer preference, the third essay shows that prompting employees or consumers to focus on a history of their own unintended outcomes promotes subsequent ideation relative to focusing on intended outcomes.
Recommended Citation
Fulmer, Alexander Goldklank, "Questioning the Intuitive Preference for Intentionality" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1028.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1028
