Ann L. McGill

Is That Car Smiling at Me? Schema Congruity as a Basis for Evaluating Anthropomorphized Products

The present research proposes schema congruity as a theoretical basis for examining the effectiveness and consequences of product anthropomorphism. Results of two studies suggest that the ability of consumers to anthropomorphize a product and their consequent evaluation of that product depend on the extent to which that product is endowed with characteristics congruent with the proposed human schema. Furthermore, consumers’ perception of the product as human mediates the influence of feature type on product evaluation. Results of a third study, however, show that the affective tag attached to the specific human schema moderates the evaluation but not the successful anthropomorphizing of the product.

The Effect of Vivid Attributes on the Evaluation of Alternatives: The Role of Differential Attention and Cognitive Elaboration

The differential attention model and the cognitive elaboration model suggest vivid information has certain properties that exert greater influence on attitudinal judgments than does nonvivid information. To test these models, subjects evaluated alternatives described in terms of vivid and nonvivid attributes and elaborated on the material in high and low elaboration conditions. Our results demonstrate disproportionate influence for vivid versus nonvivid attributes included in the same description only in the high elaboration condition. Findings suggest that cognitive elaboration may be a necessary condition to produce an effect for vividness on attitudes.

When Brands Seem Human, Do Humans Act Like Brands? Automatic Behavioral Priming Effects of Brand Anthropomorphism

This research examines automatic behavioral effects of priming brands that are anthropomorphized. It posits that anthropomorphized brands trigger peoples goals for a successful social interaction, resulting in behavior that is assimilative or contrastive to the brands image. Three studies show that consumers are more likely to assimilate behavior associated with anthropomorphized partner brands that they like, consistent with the goal of drawing in the liked coproducer, and servant brands that they dislike, consistent with the goal of pushing the disliked would-be helper away by signaling self-sufficiency. Results also show a contrastive behavior when primed with disliked partner brands and liked servant brands. These effects are observed in contexts unrelated to the brand prime. For example, priming Kelloggs, a liked partner brand associated with healthfulness, led to greater willingness to take the stairs than the elevator in a purportedly unrelated study. No effects were observed of priming brands that were not anthropomorphized.

The Locus of Choice: Personal Causality and Satisfaction with Hedonic and Utilitarian Decisions

Consumers may consume the same products or services with different goals, for example, for their own pleasure--a hedonic goal--or to achieve some higher level purpose--a utilitarian goal. This article investigates whether this difference in goals influences satisfaction with an outcome that was either self-chosen or externally determined. In four experiments we manipulate consumption goals, controlling for the outcomes, the option valence, and whether the externally made choice was determined by an expert or at random. Results show that the outcome of a self-made choice is more satisfying than the outcome of an externally made choice when the goal is hedonic but not when it is utilitarian. We hypothesize that this effect results from the greater perceived personal causality associated with terminally motivated activities, such as hedonic choices, relative to instrumentally motivated activities, such as utilitarian choices, and provide evidence that supports this explanation over alternative accounts.

It's Got the Look: The Effect of Friendly and Aggressive “Facial” Expressions on Product Liking and Sales

When designing their products, companies try to employ shapes that are both emotionally appealing and compatible with the brands image. One way to accomplish these aims is to anthropomorphize a products appearance. The current research investigates how people decode emotional “facial” expressions from product shapes and how this affects liking of the design, using three studies in the domain of cars and one in the domain of cellular phones. In accordance with theories on the perception of human faces, the first study shows that perception of friendliness is limited to the grille (mouth), while aggressiveness can be communicated with both grille and headlights (eyes). The next study examines the best-liked combination of these two emotional expressions and finds that consumers prefer the combination of an upturned (friendly) grille with slanted (aggressive) headlights. The authors further explain this finding on a process level by showing that this combination triggers a positive affective state of both high pleasure and arousal. The third study validates the results with automobile sales data, and a fourth study extends the findings to another product category.

Differences in the relative influence of product attributes under alternative processing conditions: Attribute importance versus attribute ease of imagability

We present two experiments that test whether ease of imagability can shift the influence of a product attribute without affecting its assessed importance in the decision. Results of the experiments indicate that more easily imagined attributes may have a disproportionate influence when subjects use imagery in the evaluation, but not when they engage in more analytical processing. Experiments 1 and 2 differ in the manner in which method of evaluation (imagery based vs. nonimagery based) was manipulated. In Experiment 1, use of imagery was manipulated through explicit instructions to either engage in or refrain from using imagery, whereas use of imagery was manipulated in Experiment 2 by varying the overall value of the alternatives. Results of Experiment 2 indicate that subjects who were asked to evaluate alternatives that were described in generally positive terms used imagery in the evaluation, placing greater emphasis on the easily imagined attributes, whereas subjects who were asked to evaluate alternatives that were described in generally negative terms or mixed positive and negative terms did not use imagery, basing their evaluations on attribute importance. Our findings support the hypothesis that consumers may at times evaluate alternatives by using an imagery heuristic , which involves imagining the actual experience with an alternative and assessing the desirability of the alternative according to the affective response to this imagined experience.

The effect of imagery on information processing strategy in a multiattribute choice task

Two experiments were conducted to assess the effects of imagery instructions on information processing in a multiattribute choice task. Subjects were instructed to imagine owning and using alternatives or to avoid the use of imagery and to evaluate alternatives in a more analytical manner. Instructions to use imagery produced relatively more processing by alternative. In addition, imagery instructions appeared to encourage subjects to gather more information per alternative and to gather a constant amount of information per alternative. The data also support the claim that level of familiarity affects processing strategy.

Relative use of necessity and sufficiency information in causal judgments about natural categories

Participants in 4 studies placed less emphasis on necessity information (instances when the event occurred but the target factor was absent) than sufficiency information (instances when the target factor was present but the event did not occur) when the target factor corresponded to a natural kind category (e.g., race or species) in comparison with an artificial category (e.g., preferences or facial features) or an artifactual category (e.g., product type). Results were not due to differences in familiarity, prior causal beliefs, or ease of imagining the class of instances, but instead derived from less willingness to search for alternative explanations when the target explanation was based on a natural kind category in comparison with artificial or artifactual categories.

Counterfactual reasoning in causal judgments: Implications for marketing

This article describes recent research on counterfactual reasoning in causal judgment and details implications for future research on consumer and managerial decisions. Two types of counterfactual reasoning may be employed in causal judgment, one of which involves outcome contrasts, and is used to generate possible causal explanations, and the other of which involves antecedent contrasts and is used to test candidate explanations. Prior research on outcome contrasts indicates that people compare instances in which the event occurred to instances in which the event did not occur and base their causal explanations on distinctive features between these two types of occurrences. Explanations may therefore vary as a function of the instances chosen for comparison. Prior research findings suggest that consumers and managers may choose different comparison instances depending on their perspective, culture, and perceived norms. Prior research on antecedent contrasts indicates that people test possible explanations for an event by considering instances in which the candidate factor was absent and asking whether the event would have occurred anyway. Findings suggest, however, that consideration of antecedent contrasts may depend on the type of category on which the explanation is based, with less emphasis on antecedent contrasts for explanations based on categories of objects found in nature (natural kind categories) compared to categories of objects made by humans (artifactual categories). This article proposes the hypothesis that people may perceive some brands and product categories as more like natural

Promoting an Environment of Scientific Integrity: Individual and Community Responsibilities

Concerns about the integrity of scientific investigations have increased sharply in the wake of recent high profile reports of scientific misconduct in the social, physical, and clinical sciences; some of these concerns affect the Journal of Consumer Research directly. Many current discussions about scientific discovery have shifted from trying to understand how new findings might reshape conceptual understanding to questioning whether new findings are even to be believed. When the fundamental quality of research comes under scrutiny, individual scholars and the academy as a whole are challenged to examine how that research is carried out. In our first year as editors, we have frequently been asked to endorse, adopt, or comment on proposed solutions to the problem of ensuring scientific integrity and ethics. As editors considering possible routes forward, we have noted that the potential problems differ: for example, outright data fabrication is distinct from opportunistic data collection methods and from improper rounding of p -values. To grasp the scope of the problem it is critical to distinguish among these issues, to delineate methods for investigating and resolving them, and to understand their interplay. For example, solutions focusing primarily on data handling neglect other important priorities in the development of a literature. In this editorial, we advocate a course of action that speaks to the entirety of the research process. Our recommendations are consonant with our perceived and desired role as fostering a cohesive and productive community of consumer research scholars. We do recognize that ethical lapses occur, including but not limited to some recent high-profile incidents. Nevertheless, our hope for the coming years is to support a research climate that harnesses the integrity of the community and thereby promotes and sustains ethical practices. As described in our first editorial (McGill, Peracchio, and Luce 2011), we view this climate of …