ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH
Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802
Humanized Products in Tv Ads: How Anthropomorphism Can Elicit Emotions, Enhance Attitudes, and Affect Purchase
Likelihood
Andrea Groeppel-Klein, Saarland University
Jennifer Helfgen, Saarland University
Katja Pfeifer, Saarland University
The propensity to attribute human characteristics to the non-human is known as “anthropomorphism” (Guthrie 1993, 62). The findings
of our study show that a product presentation causing anthropomorphism can be a very effective advertising strategy due to the
elicitation of positive emotions. Anthropomorphism can also influence purchase behavior.
[to cite]:
Andrea Groeppel-Klein, Jennifer Helfgen, and Katja Pfeifer (2013) ,"Humanized Products in Tv Ads: How Anthropomorphism
Can Elicit Emotions, Enhance Attitudes, and Affect Purchase Likelihood", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research
Volume 10, eds. Gert Cornelissen, Elena Reutskaja, and Ana Valenzuela, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research,
Pages: 265-266.
[url]:
http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/1014048/volumes/v10e/E-10
[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/.
Humanized products in TV ads: How anthropomorphism can elicit emotions,
enhance attitudes, and affect purchase likelihood
Katja Pfeifer, Saarland University*
Andrea Groeppel-Klein, Saarland University
Jennifer Helfgen, Saarland University
Hypothesis 2: Initiated anthropomorphism leads to positive
emotions that are accompanied by positive attitudes toward the ad and the brand () and which
affect purchase likelihood.
EXTENDED ABSTRACT
“Look at me, touch me, caress me …” says Giulietta. Giulietta’s
desire is not unusual in a human relationship. But Giulietta is not a
woman: She is an Alfa Romeo car, and this is a TV commercial – a
typical example of a growing trend in advertising to humanize objects in order to evoke positive attitudes. But do consumers really
perceive objects as human beings? And does this advertising strategy
really lead to more effective advertising?
The propensity to attribute human characteristics to the non-human is known as “anthropomorphism” (Guthrie 1993, 62). In some
research, the term is used to describe the visual appearance of objects
(e.g. Brown 2011; Nowak and Rauh 2008). In order to differentiate
between product presentation and the evaluative tendencies of viewers, in this paper we follow Delbaere et al. (2011) in distinguishing
between humanizing as an advertising technique and the process of
anthropomorphism that it triggers.
Some researchers concentrate on attitudinal effects (Aggarwal
and McGill 2007), others focus on the crucial role of emotions elicited by the human-like appearance of diverse objects, including robots (Riek et al. 2009; Zhang et al. 2010), computer-interface agents
(Wang et al. 2007) and cars (Landwehr et al. 2011). As far as we are
aware, Delbaere et al. (2011) are the only researchers to date who
have looked at the relevance of humanized products in advertising.
Their investigation, which focuses solely on print advertising, shows
that such personification leads to stronger affective responses and
attributions of brand personality. In our study, by contrast, we investigate TV commercials, whose moving images make them more
“vivid” than “static” print ads. This, we argue, allows them to perfect
the technique of humanizing products and evoke more intense emotions. Moreover, Delbaere et al. (2011) look exclusively at the role of
loneliness as a factor influencing anthropomorphism. By contrast, we
make am additional contribution by controlling for the other psychological determinants of anthropomorphism proposed by Epley et al.
(2007), namely the need for cognition, the need for closure, the desire for control, social disconnection, and the desire for attachment.
Our first hypothesis is as follows:
Hypothesis 1:
A human-like product presentation will lead to a
positive attitude toward the ad () if it is mediated
by positive emotions.
Miesler et al. (2010) demonstrate that the front view of a car
elicits more positive emotions and a greater willingness to pay than
the side view, but only when controlling for the personal tendency to
anthropomorphize. Furthermore, Chandler and Schwarz (2010) find
that consumers who anthropomorphize their vehicles are less willing
to replace them. Caporael (1986) assumes that the judgment “this
object is like me” induces high affect, accompanied by anthropomorphic behavior. We therefore hypothesize that the effect assumed in
H1 is evoked by an inner process of anthropomorphism, triggered by
product presentation:
We also analyze whether this is true for all subjects or only for
those with specific psychological factors.
METHOD
We tested our two hypotheses in an online survey (n = 131).
Subjects watched one of two TV commercials and then evaluated
them. Via a pretest, we confirmed that the two commercials differed
significantly from each other (p < .001) with regard to the humanlikeness of the product. In the experimental condition, the commercial showed a series of everyday objects with implied faces expressing different emotions. The final object was the front view of an Audi
A4, likely to be seen as a face due to the activation of a human faceschema by the preceding objects. In the control condition, only side
views were shown, as they evoke less anthropomorphism (Miesler
et al. 2010).
RESULTS
To test H1, we conducted a mediation analysis following the
bootstrapping approach of Preacher and Hayes (2004) using the
PROCESS tool (Hayes 2012). We investigated the supposed role of
emotions mediating the effect of human-like product presentation on
. The analysis revealed a significant relationship between the humanlikeness, computed as a dummy variable, and (b = .5401, p < .05),
showing a more favorable attitude toward the “humanized” commercial. This effect was mediated by positive emotions (b = .5023,
LLCI = .1383, ULCI = .8974), indicated by the absence of zero in
the confidence interval. As the direct effect was not significant when
controlling for emotions (b = .0378, p > .10), an indirect-only mediation by emotions was confirmed (Zhao et al. 2010).
Only the experimental commercial triggered anthropomorphism; we therefore investigated H2 with this group only (n = 63).
Structural equation modeling using SMARTPLS 2.0 (Ringle et al.
2005) revealed that anthropomorphism leads to positive emotions (β
= .2261, p < .05), which positively influence (β = .7727, p < .01).
This in turn causes a positive (β = .5674, p < .01), which results in a
higher purchase likelihood (β = .6322, p < .01, = .3997). The Fornell
Larcker criterion confirms discriminant validity. We also controlled
for the above-mentioned psychological determinants (NFC, etc.), but
found no effect on the propensity to anthropomorphize.
DISCUSSION
The experiment provides support for our hypotheses. A product
presentation causing anthropomorphism can be very effective due to
the elicitation of positive emotions and its impact on purchase behavior. The psychological factors proposed by Epley et al. (2007)
appear to be of little relevance, so this advertising strategy can be
used to reach a broad audience. We chose a commercial featuring
indirect product humanizing, as this is less likely to be considered ridiculous by viewers than more obvious personifications – a speaking
razor, say. Further research could look at situations in which a prod-
265
European Advances in Consumer Research
Volume 10, © 2013
266 / Humanized products in TV ads: How anthropomorphism can elicit emotions, enhance attitudes, and affect purchase likelihood
uct personification is exaggerated and becomes absurd. We tested
the role of anthropomorphism with respect to a technical product, as
we wished to extend previous research. However, it would also be
worth investigating this advertising technique with respect to food
products, as here emotional bonding could have both negative (e.g.
obesity) and positive consequences (e.g. healthier nutrition).
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