Influencing Consumer Responses to Highly Aesthetic Products: The Role of Mindsets

Companies often use aesthetics or salient visual attributes to differentiate their products from those of their competitors and to appeal to customers. However, consumers may make unfavorable inferences about highly aesthetic products due to concerns about the products’ functionality. To address the issue of how retailers can most effectively engage in the deployment and promotion of product aesthetics, the present research proposes that consumers will respond more favorably (i.e., enhanced choice of product, enhanced product and advertisement evaluations, and a heightened willingness to pay) to a highly aesthetic product when they are in an abstract, rather than a concrete, mindset. Five studies using multiple product categories and applying various mindset manipulations provide convergent evidence to support the proposed hypothesis. The findings hold true for utilitarian, but not hedonic, products, and the focus of attention on product functionality accounts for the results. With the insight that the mindset consumers are in is critical in determining their response to highly aesthetics products, retailers can capitalize on selected situations in which to promote product aesthetics.     

心智模式及其与创造力相关概念关系研究评述

考虑到支撑创造性成就的首要特质源于心智模式，分析心智模式与创造力相关概念的关系，不仅为内隐人格理论研究的进一步开展奠定基础，而且是对创造力研究范畴的深化和拓展。在回顾心智模式内涵及理论基础、相关测量和实验启动范式的基础上，整合心智模式在创造领域的最新研究进展，提出未来研究展望，为创新研究发展和科学决策提供理论参考。     

How scolding can encourage consumer engagement with plastic waste issue? The moderating role of consumers’ mindset

Extant literature has reported mixed findings on the effectiveness of praising versus scolding in social marketing messages, such as how to encourage consumer engagement with plastic waste issue. Against this backdrop, this research investigates the moderating role of consumers' mindset in this regard. This research reports two experimental studies and demonstrates that consumers with a growth (vs. fixed) mindset will experience higher levels of outcome efficacy when evaluating a scolding (vs. praising) message. In addition, this research employs different methods of eliciting consumers' mindset and examines different dependent variables (product choice in Study 1 and donation allocations in Study 2). The results of this research thus offer a fresh theoretical perspective on the effectiveness of scolding (vs. praising) in enhancing consumer engagement with plastic waste issue by examining the moderating role of consumers’ mindset and establishing the underlying mechanism.     

Advertising’s sequence of effects on consumer mindset and sales: A comparison across brands and product categories

Advertising has the power to influence how consumers experience, think, and feel about brands, but the sequence of these mindset effects may differ by brand and category. This paper analyzes how the mindset factors of cognition, affect, and experience mediate advertising effects on sales, using data from 178 fast-moving consumer good brands in 18 categories over seven years. The authors compare the models proposed in the literature and conclude that the concept of sequentiality in advertising effects holds up well. Importantly, the sequence varies across brands, with the affect → cognition → experience (ACE) sequence being the most common. Brand differentiation and the hedonic versus utilitarian nature of the product category moderate the incidence of the ACE sequence: this sequence is even more likely for utilitarian products and less differentiated brands. For managers, the results show that the last mindset factor in the sequence is the most important in driving sales, with cognition being most responsive to advertising among the mindset factors. Moreover, in utilitarian categories, highly differentiated brands can expect about seven times higher advertising responsiveness of affect than less differentiated brands.