Introduction
1) Mike has been shopping in the grocery store, where he wanted to buy a pornographic magazine. The idea of buying the pornographic magazine made Mike already feel embarrassed. He decided to buy some extra non-pornographic magazines. 2) Stan is 16 years old and has a girlfriend. They want to take the next step and share the bed with each other. Stan is always taught to have safe sexual intercourse, which is why Stan wants to buy condoms. He decided to order them anonymous online. The product is going to be delivered in an enclosed package. Many consumers experience embarrassment when buying products or services (Blair & Roese, 2013). Especially products that trigger embarrassment (Lau-Gesk & Drolet, 2008) such as condoms (Dahl et al., 1998), Viagra (Hensley, 2013) and anti-diarrheal pills (Blair & Roese, 2013). In both the examples this introduction starts with people reported embarrassment. Embarrassment is defined as “a social emotion arising from a deficiency in one’s presented self to others (Klass, 1990; Modigliani, 2010)” (Krishna et al., 2015, p. 667) in unpleasant situations that result in an undesired public identity (Parrot & Smith, 1999, Blair & Roese, 2013).
The first example was in a public/social context. The man tried to shift the focus from the pornographic magazines to the other magazines he additionally bought to lower the experienced embarrassment (Brackett, 2004). Research from Blair and Roese (2013) found that additional purchases could reduce the embarrassed feeling.
The second example was in a private context where no one else was. Interestingly, because as stated before, embarrassment is arising from a deficiency in one’s presented self to others (Klass, 1990; Modigliani, 2010). But also Stan experienced similar embarrassment as Mike, while there was no audience. Krishna et al. (2015) found that an audience is not necessary, similar experienced embarrassment can occur in-public as in-private. It also does not matter whether others or the self appraises the embarrassing situation, Krishna et al. (2015) defines this as the private embarrassment.
Interestingly, the effect of purchasing additional products on feelings of embarrassment has only been tested in a public setting, not in a private one. This study will examine whether the social context (public vs private) influences the effect additional purchasing has on feeling embarrassed. This study can contribute in further elaboration within private embarrassment. This is necessary because of the lack of research in private embarrassment due to the recent findings of Krishna et al. in 2015. It can also contribute for companies that are selling embarrassing products online (through webshops). When additional purchases lower the experienced embarrassment, webshops could increase their sales by selling and focusing on the additional purchases.
Literature review
Public embarrassment
According to Krishna et al. (2015) embarrassment occurs in public for two reasons. Firstly, when others evaluate you negatively, this could cause embarrassment since people care what others think about them (Manstead & Semin, 1981, Miller, 1996). Secondly, loss of self-esteem from the negative evaluations causes embarrassment, where esteem in the eyes of others affects esteem in the eyes of self (Edelmann, 1987; Modigliani, 2010). These two reasons differ from each other in the individual lose of self-esteem, but both were appraised by others. Embarrassment could happen in many situations, but also in many consumer situations (Blair & Roese, 2013). In for example usage situation (when the credit card is denied in the restaurant), during disposition (when returning an adult video) or during purchase (when buying a STD test) (Dahl et al., 2001). Earlier research has shown that purchasing certain products (or services) like Viagra and condoms are sufficient to experiencing embarrassment (Dahl et al., 2001).
Avoiding embarrassment
People could take serious actions to avoid feeling embarrassed. Even anticipated embarrassment can prevent people from engaging in behaviour like purchasing particular products (Berger & Ward, 2010), asking for (professional) help (Brackett, 2004) and following up prescriptions (O’Donnell et al., 2005) even when these products are necessary, like medicines (Bell, 2009).
Many times people tend to avoid embarrassing situations. Often they cannot prevent these situations. In these situations people tend to ‘safe face’ by minimizing the embarrassment as much as possible or by arguing and reasoning the embarrassment away (Modigliani, 1971). This method is called ‘facework’, it tries to protect and restore the desired public identity (Blair & Roese, 2013; Keltner & Buswell, 1997). This current article focuses on protecting the public identity by minimizing the embarrassment as much as possible during purchases.
services there are many different facework strategies to avoid or reduce embarrassment. People could go to a store further away to lower the risk of seeing people they know (Arndt & Ekebas-Turedi, 2017). People tend to shop in stores that are less crowded and that way feeling less watched (Bracket, 2004). People will wait to purchase the product till there is no one else at the counter (Bracket, 2004). People prefer to purchase their product when a same gender is behind the counter (Arndt & Ekebas-Turedi, 2017). These are all examples of ways to reduce embarrassment to a minimum. Another well-known way to achieve reducing embarrassment to a minimum is to purchase additional products. This paper investigates the effectiveness of this particular strategy.
Additional purchasing strategy
per consumer. Interestingly is which products consumers tend to buy to reduce the threat of embarrassment. Based on previous literature, this study hypothesizes that:
H1: Purchasing an embarrassing product with unrelated additional purchases reduce the anticipated embarrassment relative to purchasing only the embarrassing product.
Private embarrassment
Buying additional products can lower the experienced embarrassment in a social context, but is this also the case in a private context? Because why would it be important to shift the attention away from products when you are alone and purchasing online. Which is interesting because recent research from Krishna et al. (2015) shows that embarrassments can also be a private emotion. Private embarrassment differs from public embarrassment in that an audience is not necessary, similar experienced embarrassment can occur in-public as in-private (Krishna et al., 2015). Furthermore it does not matter whether it is appraised by others or by the self (Krishna et al., 2015). Most literature assumes that the real presence of others is needed for embarrassment. Some researchers argue that embarrassment also occurs by the presence of imagined others (Dahl, Manchanda, & Argo, 2001; Edelmann, 1985). Thus, these authors state that embarrassment cannot occur without the presence of others or imagined others and appraisal by others is necessary. Babcock (1988) contradicts this, she argues that it could also appear from the appraisal by the self, whether others are present or not: “...individuals define themselves in terms of specific personae, and these personae serve as self-imposed constraints on action. Embarrassment is characterized as an unpleasant response to the recognition that one has acted in a way that is inconsistent with one’s persona, i.e., that one has violated one’s personal standards...not a fear that he has failed or fumbled in the eyes of another. Thus, even though embarrassment may seem as if it requires an audience, it is essentially a private matter...” (p. 460).
drug in the store or in private online, experience similar embarrassment.
Since little is known about private embarrassment, it is relevant and valuable to examine the relation between publicly and privately purchases of embarrassing products. Because of the similarity in experiencing embarrassment between the purchases publicly and privately, there will be no significant difference expected.
H2: There will be no significant difference in anticipated embarrassment while purchasing an embarrassing product in public or in private.
Secondly, the outcome of this study could also give marketing departments opportunities to invest in. For example, when the additional purchase effect also occurs in privately purchases, webshops could emphasize more on extra purchases when the consumers tends to buy a embarrassing product. In for example the ‘what others also looked at’ application, webshops could show unrelated products that could lower the anticipated embarrassment. It is not only important for the extra sales webshops could generate, it is also important that marketing departments realize that embarrassment occurs in private context purchases. Conceptual model Method section Participants
This online-based study was conducted in Qualtrics. In total 100 respondents participated in this study (55 male and 45 female). The age ranged from 18 to 66 (M = 27,6, SD = 8,85). They were recruited through social contacts and social medias like Facebook and were randomly assigned to on of the four treatments.
Additional
Purchases
Embarrassment
Experienced
Purchasing
context
Design
This research uses a 2x2 factorial design and a between participants design. With the experiencing embarrassment as DV and additional unrelated purchase and purchase context (private vs public) as IV’s. The purchase context will also contribute as a moderator on the main effect between additional purchases and experiencing embarrassment. The participants that are within treatment 1 or 2 (with additional unrelated purchases) have to purchase at least one or more additional products. The participants that are within treatment 3 or 4 (without additional unrelated purchases) can see the additional products but are forced to buy the embarrassing product without any additional products. Purchase context Public Private Additional unrelated
purchase With Treatment 1 Treatment 2
Without Treatment 3 Treatment 4
Procedure & Materials
not at all, 7 = Extremely). A factor analysis was conducted to reduce the six variables into a smaller set of uncorrelated factors. The factor analysis was performed using the Principal components extraction. Barlett’s test of sphericity was significant (X2 (15) =
179.42, p<0.001), which indicates that it is appropriate to use the factor analytic model
on this set of data. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy revealed a strong relationship among the variables (KMO = .69). The factor analysis revealed there were two factors, both with an eigenvalue greater than one. Together these factors had a 65,73% cumulative of variance. The first factor consists of shame, disgust and anger had an eigenvalue of 2,70 (a = 0,762). The second factor consists of fear and guild with an eigenvalue of 1,04 (a = 0,748), the variable contempt has been deleted to increase to Cronbach’s Alpha from 0,616 to 0,748.
Manipulation check
To check whether the manipulations have been effective, two questions were asked at the end of the survey. First to check whether the purchase context worked and participant felt like there was an audience during the purchase. The following question has been asked, “Did you had the feeling there were others present during your purchase?” (Yes or No). Secondly, for the additional unrelated purchases manipulation, the participants were asked, “Please select which product the (web)shop did not offer?” (1 = tooth paste, 2 = candy, 3 = glasses). When participants answered 1 or 2 they were incorrect and when they answered 3 they were correct.
Pre-test
A pre-test has been conducted with a separate group of participators. In total 10 respondents participated in this pre-test (5 male and 5 female). The age ranged from 20 to 55 (M = 33,8, SD = 12,83). This pre-test has been conducted to verify which product they see as the most embarrassing product (1 = not at all embarrassing, 7 = extremely embarrassed). The participants were asked about six different products, for example lice treatment shampoo, anti diarrheal medicines and pregnancy test. Adult diapers have been seen as the most embarrassing product (M = 4,2, SD = 1,39). This is why this current study will use adult diapers as the embarrassing product.
Data analysis plan
In order to check if the manipulations have worked this study ran two Chi-square tests. To check whether people felt the presence of others during the purchase and if all the participants looked carefully to all the products offered. For the main effects this study ran a 2 (additional purchase: with vs without) x 2 (context: public vs private) ANOVA test, using the anticipated embarrassment as the dependent variable and using the purchase context variable as moderating effect. To test the hypotheses a 95% confidence interval has been used to compare the variances. Finally, for the control variables gender, age and mood are used. To compare the differences between genders an independent t-test has been used. And in order to test whether age influences the anticipated embarrassment a simple linear regression has been used. Lastly, to test whether the mood of the participants had influences the anticipated embarrassment a Pearson correlation test has been conducted. Results Manipulation check In order to check whether the manipulation checks have worked a cross table with Chi-square tests have been performed. The results of this test are shown in Table 3. Presence of others Yes No Public 61,5% 38,5% Chi2(1) = 25,477, p < .001 Private 12,5% 87,5% Chi2(1) = 25,477, p < .001
Additional products Right Wrong
With 95,6% 4,4% Chi2(1) = 12,374, p < .001
Without 67,3% 32,7% Chi2(1) = 12,374, p < .001
Table 2 – Manipulation check
diapers, only 67,3% answered this question correctly. This study decided not to exclude anybody from the test. Even though the manipulations did not succeed for everyone, for the majority of the participants it did work. Main effects on anticipated embarrassment The means for all the measures are reported in Table 2. This study was looking for two main effects, whether additional unrelated purchases lower the anticipated embarrassment and whether there is a difference between purchasing an embarrassing product in public or in private.
Public context Private context Total
With
additional n = 23 M (embarrassment) = 3,174 n = 22 M (embarrassment) = 2,470 n = 45 M = 2,830 Without additional n = 29 M (embarrassment) = 3,494 n = 26 M (embarrassment) = 2,949 n = 55 M = 3,236 Total n = 52 M (embarrassment) = 3,353 n = 48 M (embarrassment) = 2,729 Table 3 – Means of the dependent variables per condition In order to analyse the two main effects a 2 (additional purchase: with vs without) x 2 (context: public vs private) ANOVA on anticipated embarrassment was performed. The first main effect was not statistically significant difference in the additional purchase variable. Purchases with additional products (M = 2,830, SD = 1,353) have not significantly lower anticipated embarrassment than purchases without additional products (M = 3,236, SD = 1,499), F(1,94)= 1,828, p= 0,180. The second main effect was statistically significant difference in the context variable. Publicly purchasing embarrassing products (M = 3,352, SD = 1,517) have significantly higher anticipated embarrassment than privately purchasing embarrassing products (M = 2,729, SD = 1,295), F(1,94)= 4,645, p= 0,034.
Interaction effect
are almost parallel and do not cross each other. Thus the purchase context does not serve as a moderator on the additional purchasing effect. FIgure 2 – Interaction effect between additional purchases and the purchase context Control variables
Discussion
Many customers experience embarrassment when buying products or services (Blair & Roese, 2013). This has certain advantages and disadvantages for companies selling embarrassing products. People could decide to postpone the purchase or even decide not to buy the product at all (Berger & Ward, 2010). But it also brings advantages for companies. People tend to use coping strategies to protect their desired public identity (Blair & Roese, 2013; Keltner & Buswell, 1997). One of the most common coping strategy is the additional purchasing strategy where consumers purchase extra products to shift away the attention from the embarrassing products to others products (Bracket, 2004). These findings were based on the desired public identity that needed an audience to feel embarrassed. Where recent research from Krishna et al. (2015) has shown that embarrassment can also be a private emotion where no audience is needed. The interesting question is whether the additional purchasing effect is also applicable for in a private context (i.e. purchasing a embarrassing product online). This study is based on two findings from Blair & Roese (2013) and Krishna et al. (2015). Because these two studies are quiet recent this study also examined the main effects of these studies. Firstly this study focuses on the main effect whether unrelated additional purchases lowered the anticipated embarrassment. There was no evidence found that the anticipated embarrassment was significantly lower when the purchases were with additional products. Although there was no significant evidence, there were noticeable differences between the conditions. The manipulation check revealed that the manipulation did not occur for every condition. When people did not had to purchase an extra product they paid less attention to the additional products. This could have been the reason why there were insignificant results.
(2015). In their study they found no effect between publicly purchases and privately purchases of embarrassing products. The third hypothesis this study examined is whether the additional purchasing effect is reduced in a private context. This has been expected due to the lack of an audience and no need to shift the attention away. No evidence was found for that the purchase context influences the additional purchasing effect. Additionally to these three hypotheses this study investigated in three control variables, gender, age and mood. No effect has been found between gender and age with anticipated embarrassment. With the variable mood a relationship have been found, meaning that there is a relationship between feeling bad and anticipated embarrassment. This study’s main focus was to contribute in the research towards embarrassment as a private emotion and secondly to contribute towards the additional buying coping strategy. Besides that this study is aiming to shed light on the effect private context has on the additional buying coping strategy. This study has shown, especially in the purchase context (publicly or privately), more research could be done. Since the recent discovery about private embarrassment from Krishna et al. (2015) this study was aiming to confirm their hypothesis and findings. But this research has not found any close evidence that the same level of embarrassment occurs in a private context. According to these findings consumers experience less embarrassment while purchasing embarrassing products online. This has potential practical implications, as retailers could lower the boundaries for consumers by offering embarrassing product anomalously online. This way the retailers could increase their sales by selling to people who would normally avoid purchasing embarrassing products (Berger & Ward, 2010). And focus on coping strategies such as additional purchases to gain sales in-store. This way stores could increase the sales per person.
that they normally had the opportunity to purchase more products. Future research should force participants first to look carefully to the products and then informing them what to purchase. In this way participants will not only look for the one specific embarrassing product. Secondly, the participants in this current study were recruited from one social network. There could be a chance of similarities in characteristics within the group. Thirdly, this study showed the participants a photo from the embarrassing product (adult diapers) and the other available products. Holding the actual embarrassing product would certainly provide more emotions and depth for the participants.
For future research, the private emotion and private embarrassment is still a very interesting topic. Firstly, there are still many topics to research and discover. For this current research unrelated products were chosen to use as additional purchases. Interesting could be to research which additional products do mitigate or exacerbate embarrassment purchasing online. Secondly, this current study found a relation between the mood and anticipated embarrassment. Future research could elaborate more on different emotions in a private context purchasing embarrassing products. Thirdly, this study had no manipulation check whether the participants felt embarrassed appraised by their self or by others. For future research this could be interesting to investigate by using an extra manipulation or they could even use a more experimental design to guarantee more external validity.
Understanding the actions and reactions of consumers with embarrassing products has a lot of potential for companies. Even though there is still a lot to research about this topic, this study contributes with a better understanding. It shows that even though very recent studies show similarities between private and public embarrassment, there is still enough reason to be sceptical about it. This study found that people in a private context experienced less anticipated embarrassment than the people in a public context. Finally, this study shows that privately purchasing does not reduces or increase the effect that unrelated additional purchasing has on anticipated embarrassment relative to purchasing in public.
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