BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:icalendar-ruby CALSCALE:GREGORIAN BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/Dublin BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20261025T010000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10 TZNAME:GMT END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20260329T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=3 TZNAME:IST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260614T064848Z UID:NrGW0w DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Dublin:20260616T150000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/Dublin:20260616T170000 CLASS:PUBLIC CREATED:20260610T131010 DESCRIPTION: Invitation: Joint Research Session with Kurt A. Carlson and Yi min Cheng \n\n Dear colleagues\, \n\n We are pleased to invite you to a jo int consumer research session with Professor Kurt A. Carlson from William &\; Mary and Associate Professor Yimin Cheng from Monash University. Th e session will bring together conversations on consumer psychology\, judgm ent and decision making\, and behavioral research. \n\n - Date: Tuesday\, 16 June 2026 \n\n - Time: 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM \n\n - Optional coffee chat: 4:30 PM – 5:00 PM \n\n - Venue: Room 4.36\, Trinity Business School \n\ n - Online Teams Link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/318896514131554?p= BivArrSrUMbb3R9mI4 \n\n ※ Please note that the venue may change dependin g on the number of registered attendees. If there is any change\, we will notify registered participants by email. \n\n The session will include pre sentations followed by discussion and Q&\;A. To help us plan the room a nd follow-up details\, please complete this RSVP to let us know whether yo u would like to attend and whether you would prefer to join in person or o nline. \n\n This session is co-hosted by Radu Dimitriu and Ilyung Cheong. If you have any questions\, please feel free to contact Radu Dimitriu at r adu.dimitriu@tcd.ie or Ilyung Cheong at cheongi@tcd.ie. \n\n All are very welcome to join. \n\n Best wishes\,\nRadu and Ilyung \n\n \n \n \nYimin C heng is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Monash University in Melbou rne\, Australia. His primary research interests include consumer decision making and marketing communication. Prof. Cheng has published in leading j ournals such as the Journal of Consumer Research\, Journal of Marketing Re search\, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science\, Journal of Business Ethics\, Journal of Retailing\, among others. Prof. Cheng currently serve s as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Business Research and a regula r grant reviewer for the Hong Kong Research Grants Council. He has receive d the Monash Business School Dean’s Award for Research Excellence by an Early Career Researcher in 2024 and Monash University “Purple Letter” for Outstanding Teaching Performance for seven consecutive years (2019–2 025). Previously\, he has held visiting positions at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology\, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore\ , Renmin University of China\, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. \n\n Title:\nUnpacking Ritual: How and Why Gift Givers and Recipients Respond Differently to Minimal Packaging \n\n Abstract:\nMinima l packaging—a sustainable packaging style that uses fewer materials—ha s emerged as a prominent trend in product packaging. However\, consumer re sponses to this innovation in gift-giving contexts remain underexplored. A cross five studies\, we find that gift givers respond to minimally package d (vs. regularly packaged) gifts less favorably\, whereas recipients’ re sponses remain largely unaffected. This discrepancy arises because minimal packaging diminishes the opportunity for an unpacking ritual\, to which g ivers are more sensitive than receivers. The discrepancy is reduced when a lternative consumption rituals are introduced to compensate for the lack o f unpacking ritual\, or when the gifting occasion is special. These findin gs highlight the important yet overlooked role of unpacking rituals in gif t giving and offer practical insights for overcoming barriers to the adopt ion of environmentally friendly\, minimally packaged gifts. \n\n Kurt A. C arlson is the Fields Professor of Marketing at William &\; Mary and an Associate Editor at the Journal of Consumer Research. His research focuses on consumer decision-making\, including judgment biases\, information dis tortion\, goal-setting\, preference formation\, persuasion\, and budget co ntraction effects. His work has appeared in leading journals such as the J ournal of Consumer Research\, Journal of Marketing\, Journal of Marketing Research\, Psychological Science\, Management Science\, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. \n\n Title: Coping with Less: How Purchasing Power Shapes Consumer Preferences \n\n Talk Abstract: This rese arch investigates how changes in purchasing power (PP) affect consumer pre ferences\, with particular attention to whether the effects of PP declines are symmetric with PP increases and whether the mechanism of the decline matters for how consumers respond. Evidence is drawn from three papers.\n \n\n The first paper (Carlson\, Wolfe\, Blanchard\, Huber\, &\; Ariely \, 2015) used between-participant experiments to manipulate budgets across time\, money\, and various allocation domains. Participants facing budget decreases displayed less variety in their allocations than those facing i ncreases\, even when high-budget allocations were held constant across gro ups. This asymmetry was attributed to a loss-minimization coping strategy in which consumers concentrate cuts into fewer categories rather than dist ributing reductions broadly\, shedding categories to protect what remains. The second paper (Ross\, Meloy\, &\; Carlson\, 2020) examined whether this preference narrowing reflects genuine preference change or a transien t process artifact. Within-participant experiments showed that reduced all ocation variety persisted even after budgets were fully restored\, indicat ing that the narrowing represents a durable refinement of preferences rath er than a temporary accommodation. This pattern held across time\, money\, and space\, in both hypothetical and real scenarios. \n\n The third paper (Ross\, Carlson\, &\; Meloy\, 2026\, working paper) reconceptualizes t he manipulations in the first two papers as purchasing power (PP) manipula tions\, and this reframing opens a new path for investigation: if what mat ters is purchasing power rather than budget per se\, then PP can be moved not only by changing the budget but by changing overall price levels (i.e. \, raising prices reduces PP and lower prices raises PP). This reconceptua lization motivates a new set of studies that manipulate PP through price c hanges rather than budget changes. Results confirm that price-driven PP de clines produce preference narrowing comparable to that observed in the fir st two papers\, and that this narrowing persists when prices return to ori ginal levels\, establishing category shedding as a general response to red uced PP regardless of how that reduction is produced. \n\n The paper then turns to a broader question about coping. Category shedding is one way for consumers to respond to reduced PP\, but it is not the only way\, and the form coping takes depends on what alternatives are available. Consumers d o not prefer to cut a little from many categories: when cuts must be made\ , concentrating them is the dominant strategy. But concentrating cuts into fewer categories is itself just one path. When quality substitution is av ailable\, consumers can maintain category breadth by trading down within c ategories rather than exiting them\, preserving more of their consumption set at lower quality. And when consumers face price-driven PP declines\, a third response emerges: if saving is possible\, some consumers set money aside rather than reallocating it within the choice set\, effectively remo ving categories not in favor of other categories but in favor of outside o ptions entirely. Together these findings suggest that the preference refin ement observed in the first two papers reflects a specific coping response that dominates under specific conditions\, rather than a universal featur e of how consumers always respond to reduced PP. \n\n Taken together\, the se findings challenge standard constrained optimization models\, which pre dict symmetric and reversible responses to budget and price changes and tr eat the form of adjustment as determined solely by the structure of prices and preferences rather than by the coping options available. The results suggest instead that PP declines trigger adaptive responses whose form is contingent on circumstances: consumers shed categories when that is the av ailable path\, trade down in quality when that path is open\, and save for outside options when that option exists. Critically\, the effects of thes e adjustments can outlast the conditions that produced them\, with prefere nce narrowing persisting even after PP is restored. This asymmetry between decline and recovery\, and the finding that the same decline in PP can pr oduce meaningfully different preference structures depending on how consum ers cope\, sheds light on how preferences are not simply revealed under co nstraint but actively shaped by it\, with implications for how we understa nd consumer value functions and the conditions under which they change. \n LAST-MODIFIED:20260611T162153 LOCATION: ORGANIZER:mailto:cheongi@tcd.ie SUMMARY:Consumer Psychology\, Judgment and Decision Making with Kurt A. Car lson and Yimin Cheng URL;VALUE=URI:https://ti.to/ilyungcheong/consumer-psychology-judgment-and-d ecision-making-with-kurt-a-carlson-and-yimin-cheng URL;VALUE=URI:https://ti.to/ilyungcheong/consumer-psychology-judgment-and-d ecision-making-with-kurt-a-carlson-and-yimin-cheng END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR