The Beauty of Boundaries: When and Why We Seek Structure in ...

31importance of implicit boundaries in a retail setting and are thus more willing to spend money inan organized store than an unorganized store.Together, these experiments introduce the idea that consumers often seek structure inconsumption (or, ‗structured consumption‘), particularly when coping with threats to personalcontrol. I focus on the preference for boundaries as one example of structured consumption. Idemonstrate that psychological needs can essentially empower the subtle meanings of elementsembedded in our environments and affect our consumption choices. In doing so, this work notonly contributes to the growing literature on personal control by introducing a novel means bywhich individuals seek order and structure as a response to personal control threats, but moregenerally supports the growing body of research in consumer behavior that demonstrates thatconsumers respond to threats in their lives through their consumption choices (e.g., Ferraro,Shiv, and Bettman 2005; Gao, Wheeler, and Shiv 2008; Rucker and Galinsky 2008). Moreover,given the nature of the boundaries demonstrated across the experiments, this research alsosuggests that the areas of product aesthetics and retail atmospherics may be fruitful domains forexploring the underlying relationships between consumers‘ psychological needs and theirproduct choices. Moreover, because boundaries in these two distinct areas have similarimplications for consumers‘ preferences when personal control is threatened, theoretical gainsmay emerge from investigating the synergies of aesthetic design and atmospherics in more detail.Theoretical Implications beyond Visible BoundariesImportantly, ‗structured consumption‘ as a means of coping can apply beyond the realmof boundaries in one‘s physical environment. Researchers have demonstrated that the