Getting Rid of Possessions to Get Back at People: Rejection and Consumer Disposal Choices

How do consumers react when they have acquired identity-linked products in order to associate with a specific group, only to later be rejected from this group? The present research seeks to answer this question by studying the impact of social rejection on product disposal behavior. The present research builds on research that demonstrates that consumers will engage in strategic (Mead et al. 2011) and even conspicuous (Lee and Shrum 2012) consumption decisions following rejection, by focusing on circumstances under which rejection may cause the opposite reaction—product disposal. As such, the present investigation examines rejection as it pertains to disposing identity-linked possessions, and explores when and why consumers will dispose of and aggress against these possessions. Social rejection is a threat to an individual’s fundamental need to belong (Baumeister and Leary 1995) and a volume of literature has examined responses to being rejected, ranging from aggression (e.g., DeWall et al. 2009) to more strategic coping mechanisms (e.g. Lee and Shrum 2012; Mead et al. 2011). For example, Mead et al. (2011) found that participants who are given the opportunity to reintegrate with other individuals seek to acquire products that facilitate reintegration, thus demonstrating a degree of social strategy. On the other hand, research has also found that rejection can cause a person to behave in aggressive (DeWall et al. 2009), and anti-social (see: Catanese and Tice 2005) ways, against both the original rejecters (Warburton, Williams, and Cairns 2006) and against innocent third parties (Twenge 2005; Catanese and Tice 2005). Interestingly, aggression only occurs against innocent third parties who can be connected to the rejecters in some way (i.e. all of them are “students”; Twenge and Campbell 2003).