Commons, and the Marketing Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Business at Chapman University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in

mit. edu). Christophe Van den Bulte served as associate editor for this article.

mit. edu). Christophe Van den Bulte served as associate editor for this article.

of Chicago is gratefully acknowledged. Tülin Erdem served as guest asso-ciate editor for this article. JEAN-PIERRE DUBÉ, GÜNTER J. HITSCH, and PETER E. ROSSI* The conventional wisdom in economic theory holds that switching costs make markets less competitive. This article challenges this claim

, evidence that neural measures could actually be useful for predicting the success of marketing actions remains limited. To be of added value, neural measures should significantly increase predictive power, beyond conventional measures. In the present study, the authors obtain both stated preference

-concept, subsequently licenses the choice of a more self-indulgent option. The authors propose that licensing can operate by committing to a virtuous act in a preceding choice, which reduces negative self-attributions associated with the purchase of relative luxuries. Five studies demonstrate the proposed licensing

and suggestions.

mous JMR reviewers; and seminar participants at Emory University, the

Mallapragada, and Sriram Venkataraman for help with the structural equa-tion models. They also thank Christine Anderson-Cook and Jennifer Chang Coupland for use of their students for in-class data collection. Portions of this work were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Con-

They also thank the Templeton Foundation, the University of Chicago