市场营销学系学术讲座（6月6日）

Diversification Seeking Under Competitive Disadvantage

Speaker: Ying Zeng（曾莹）

Assistant Professor of Marketing

University of Colorado Boulder

Time: 10:00-11:30, Jun.6^th (Friday), 2025

Venue：Siyuan Building, Room 624

MC: Prof. Yunlu Yin

Abstract:

How do consumers navigate the ubiquitous competition? Prior research has focused on strategies that improve qualification factors that vertically differentiate consumers and determine competition outcomes (e.g., performance or exam scores). Our work uncovers another prevalent yet understudied strategy: diversification on alignment factors (e.g., constellation or token color), which horizontally differentiates consumers without affecting their relative rank. Eight preregistered experiments and a large-scale analysis on gifting decisions in TikTok Live consistently revealed diversification seeking in competitions: consumers prefer to diversify from their competitors, even when explicitly informed that alignment factors do not influence outcomes, when diversification is priced with a premium, and when diversification further disadvantages those already behind. Process evidence supports a motivated reasoning account of belief in obfuscation: when facing competitive disadvantage, consumers are motivated to believe that diversification reduces direct comparisons and obfuscates their disadvantages, thereby improving chances of winning. Consistently, diversification seeking attenuates when (1) competitive motives are weakened, (2) there are few or no competitive disadvantages to obscure, and (3) decisions are made for others (vs. oneself). This research contributes to the literature on consumer competition, motivated reasoning, and differentiation, while also making practical implications for practitioners and individual consumers in competitive contexts.

Bio:

曾莹是美国科罗拉多大学博尔德分校（University of Colorado Boulder）Leeds商学院的营销学助理教授。她拥有多伦多大学的管理学博士学位（营销学方向），芝加哥大学的社会科学硕士学位（行为科学方向），和北京大学的理学（心理学方向）及经济学双学士。

曾莹的研究重点关注消费者的判断与决策，特别是消费者决策中跨情景的不一致性。她的研究发表在顶级管理学和心理学期刊上，例如《Management Science》《Journal of Personality and Social Psychology》以及《Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied》等。