Individual Psychological Ownership: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications for Research in Marketing

Psychological ownership has emerged as an important predictor of workplace motivations, attitudes, and behaviors. While components of psychological ownership theory have been recently adapted to marketing contexts as well, much remains to be done. With a more comprehensive application and use of psychological ownership theory in marketing, additional understanding and explanation could be provided for many of the key phenomena, such as customer satisfaction, loyalty, word-of-mouth, and willingness to pay. In this article, we focus on individual psychological ownership–associated concepts and evidence with implications for research in marketing. Our work offers multiple avenues for future research focused on, but not limited to, marketing contexts.