Emerging research has shown that consumers differ in their interaction with the environment. Person-oriented individuals selectively examine the environment and direct their attention towards people and relationships. Thing-oriented individuals primarily focus on objects and their functionality. Three studies document that person thing orientation (person vs. thing) influences how consumers evaluate brand extensions and feedback effects on the parent brand. For person-oriented (vs. thing-oriented) individuals, who are more likely to take the parent brand’s perspective and closely relate the parent brand with its extension, extension fit impacts extension evaluations as well as parent brand assessments. Specifically, for person-oriented individuals, extension evaluations, feedback effects on evaluations and inherently salient brand personality impressions are more (vs. less) favorable when extension fit is high (vs. low). In contrast, thing-oriented individuals only evaluate the extension (vs. parent brand) such that high fit extension is viewed more favorably than low fit extension. We identify conditions that lead thing-oriented individuals to pay attention to parent brand assessments. The theoretical contributions to individual difference literature and brand extension research are highlighted along with implications for managers.

This research takes a novel perspective to identify conditions under which consumers have a relative preference for making charitable donations in the form of time versus money. Specifically, we propose that the combined effect of consumers’ person-thing- orientations and perceived resource-scarcity determines this relative preference. Study 1 shows that person-oriented individuals prefer donating in the form of time (versus money), while thing-oriented individuals prefer donating in the form of money (versus time). Person-oriented individuals’ thoughts about other people and thing-oriented individuals’ thoughts about resources form the basis for the observed relative donation preferences. Studies 2 and 3 reveal that when time and money resources are scarce, these preferences are reversed. Our research has important managerial and societal implications. Theoretically, we look at scarcity from an individual-difference perspective that has not been well understood. We also elaborate on an understudied personality variable, person-thing- orientation, that has significant relevance to marketing.

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