... Publishing Limited Licensed re-use rights only Crowdedness Personal control Product types Channel selection Crowded environment is ubiquitous, such as shopping malls on weekends, gift shops before holiday seasons and subway stations during rush hours. Crowding affects consumers' emotions...

.... The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent consumers tend to defer their decisions should they suspect that sellers are overproviding services to them and they cannot prevent the sellers from doing so (they lack personal control); and how proper market signals can mitigate such suspicions, restore...

... and transition-specific characteristics. Design/methodology/approach Study 1 uses qualitative interviews with transitioning consumers, while Study 2 tests a survey-based conditional mediation model. Findings For liminal consumers, perceived personal control mediates the effect of material reliance...