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The scarcity of beauty: how and why product aesthetics mobilize consumer acquisition effort

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Abstract

While physical beauty has been argued to represent a scarce commodity due to genetic differences in physical attractiveness, we contend that the same notion of scarcity can apply to product aesthetics. In the current research, we investigate how the scarcity inherent in product aesthetics mobilizes the exertion of effort to acquire beautiful products. In other words, to what lengths are consumers willing to go to obtain beautiful products and, more importantly, why? Our work identifies two affective mechanisms that drive the relationship between aesthetics and acquisition effort. Specifically, consumers expend more effort to acquire beautiful products because of the pride they expect to experience from owning something beautiful, along with the instantaneous desire for beauty that compels them to possess the object. We provide convergent support for our conceptualization across a series of eight studies, using a multimethod investigation that incorporates archival, field, and lab data.

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Notes

  1. We thank one of the reviewers for suggesting this idea.

  2. A central assumption of the present work is that beauty is equal to aesthetics. We contend that consumers respond to beauty and aesthetics in a similar manner given the same areas of the brain that process physical attractiveness are also implicated in the perception of beautiful products (Aharon et al., 2001; Kampe et al., 2001; Lacey et al., 2011; Reimann et al., 2010), suggesting they are conceptually equivalent.

  3. To further establish the robustness of the Neural Image Assessment ratings, we conducted a between-subjects post-test where we randomly assigned 301 CloudResearch participants to evaluate the aesthetic appeal of either the five most appealing or five least appealing paintings according to Neutral Image Assessment. Ratings across the five paintings were then combined to form an aesthetic appeal index (α = .94). Results confirmed that the five most appealing paintings were more aesthetically appealing than the five least appealing paintings (Mtop 5 = 4.75, SD = 1.21 vs. Mbottom 5 = 4.20, SD = 1.36; t(299) = 3.74, p = .0002), further attesting to the reliability of the machine learning ratings. See Web Appendix C for more details.

  4. Given that willingness to pay was measured on a different scale, we rescaled this item to have the same upper and lower limits as the other items, which were measured on 1-7 scales. The same transformation was performed across all remaining studies.

  5. The pattern and significance of the results remain the same when we retained the 112 participants who failed the attention check measure.

  6. Given the nature of the product, we adjusted the anchors for the willingness-to-pay measure to $0–$100 in studies 4, 5A, and 5B, which we subsequently rescaled into a 1-7 scale.

  7. Although we propose that our mediators work in parallel, for comprehensiveness we also examined serial mediation to see if one was driving the other. We found that serial mediation was significant both when pride was included first (b = .40; 95% CI: [.1962, .6003]) and when desire was included first (b = .13; 95% CI: [.0557, .2274]), suggesting that they do in fact operate as parallel drivers of our phenomenon.

  8. Given the within-subjects nature of the design, we only asked a subset of the overall acquisition effort index to prevent fatigue; we decided to use these two items since they most closely resemble traditional approaches toward assessing acquisition effort.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the editors and three reviewers as well as Irving Biederman, Lisa Cavanaugh, Kristin Diehl, Valerie Folkes, Kelly Haws, Ann McGill, Debbie MacInnis, Oliver Schilke, and Piotr Winkielman for invaluable feedback on earlier versions of this research. Freeman Wu and Martin Reimann contributed equally and jointly assume the role of first author. This article is based on a portion of the third author's dissertation. Correspondence: Freeman Wu. The details reported in this article represent a summary of study materials and data analyses, which the authors prepared to the best of their knowledge and conscience; for the full set of study materials, data, and results of our main studies, please refer to the publicly available information on the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/4y3pg/?view_only=2ca7f467e97b4df2a4cd9ef927d71a1b.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, 401 21st Ave S, Nashville, TN, 37203, USA

    Freeman Wu

  2. Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 1130 E Helen St, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Martin Reimann

  3. Hyperthesis LLC, 418 Bamboo Ln, Ste A, Los Angeles, CA, 90012, USA

    Gratiana Pol

  4. Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, 3670 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA

    C. Whan Park

Authors
  1. Freeman Wu
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  2. Martin Reimann
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  3. Gratiana Pol
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  4. C. Whan Park
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Correspondence to Freeman Wu.

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Wu, F., Reimann, M., Pol, G. et al. The scarcity of beauty: how and why product aesthetics mobilize consumer acquisition effort. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 51, 1245–1265 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-021-00831-w

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