ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802 Black & White, Or Only Shades of Gray? Exploring the Influence of Consumer Ambivalence on Female Contraceptive Choice and Usage Piyush Sharma, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China Cindy M. Y. Chung, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore M. Krishna Erramilli, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA Bharadhwaj Sivakumaran, Indian Institute of Technology, India Poor world-wide contraception prevalence rates are an important challenge for the efforts to improve female health and welfare. Consumer ambivalence towards pregnancy, low education and dissatisfaction with current contraceptive method are associated with inconsistent usage. In this paper, we investigate the impact of ambivalence towards different contraceptive methods on their usage. Our results show that female consumers have ambivalent attitudes towards different contraceptive methods. However, the influence of these ambivalent attitudes on the choice and usage of different contraceptive methods is moderated by the importance given to the opinion of different influencers such as doctors and male partners. Implications for the welfare of female consumers are discussed along with some limitations and directions for future research. [to cite]: Piyush Sharma, Cindy M. Y. Chung, M. Krishna Erramilli, and Bharadhwaj Sivakumaran (2009) ,"Black & White, Or Only Shades of Gray? Exploring the Influence of Consumer Ambivalence on Female Contraceptive Choice and Usage", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 36, eds. Ann L. McGill and Sharon Shavitt, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 848-849. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/14350/volumes/v36/NA-36 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/.