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Regulating Relationship Needs Via Joint Consumption: An Attachment Perspective, Jana M. Rosewarne

Doctoral Dissertations

Attachment style functions to regulate affect in relationships. I hypothesized that consumer decisions serve a similar purpose, producing distinct patterns of product preferences depending on people’s attachment goals. In a series of studies, I found that attachment avoidance predicted reduced preference for products framed as meeting closeness relationship goals and greater preference for products framed as meeting autonomy goals. The link between attachment anxiety and product preference depended on consumers’ emotions (S2) and relationship commitment (S3). Attachment style also predicted differences in the extent to which consumers thought about their partners when choosing products and their perceptions of how consumption …