"Eww, It Has a Face!" Anthropomorphizing Food Products Deteriorates Consumption Experience

• Published in: Advances in consumer research Vol. 46; pp. 779 - 780
• Main Author: Schroll, Roland
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Urbana Association for Consumer Research 01.01.2018
• Subjects: Anthropomorphism; Brands; Cereals; Consumers; Eating behavior; Epley, Nicholas; Food products; Gaming machines; Marketing; Morality
• ISSN: 0098-9258

Anthropomorphism - the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman objects - is a popular marketing strategy used for various products (Aggarwal and McGill 2007; Epley, Waytz, and Cacioppo 2008). This research focuses on the anthropomorphization of food products - a fairly neglected area of research. To promote food products, companies frequently rely on anthropomorphized brand characters such as Mr. Peanut, Tony the Tiger, or the M&M mascots and endow products with humanlike characteristics. For example, Nestlé promotes its cinnamon toast crunch cereals by making the cereals appear alive and Dunkin' Donuts recently introduced a smiley face donut. In addition, governmental institutions such as the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) anthropomorphize fruits and vegetables to promote healthy eating to children. What are the consequences of anthropomorphizing food products? While extant anthropomorphism research has focused predominantly on consumer responses before purchase (e.g., liking, purchase; e.g., Wen Wan et al. 2017), the current research takes a new perspective and investigates how anthropomorphizing food products impacts consumption-related outcomes. Drawing from mind perception theory, the central proposition of this research is that anthropomorphizing leads to the perception of Experience - that is, capacity to feel pain, pleasure and emotions (Gray, Gray, and Wegner 2007). Experience transforms an entity into a moral patient. A suffering moral patient triggers feelings of care and concern (Gray et al. 2007; Waytz et al. 2010b), which should negatively influence consumption-related responses. Two studies provide evidence for the deteriorating effect of anthropomorphism on consumption experience. Study 1 (n = 46), a field study, was presented as a new product evaluation task. Participants were instructed to choose one of two cookies (control vs. anthropomorphized), eat it, and, then, indicate how much they enjoyed it and how they felt after eating it. The results show that consumers enjoyed eating the anthropomorphized cookie significantly less and felt significantly worse after eating the anthropomorphized cookie compared to the non- anthropomorphized version (all p's < .05). Next, study 2 shed light on the underlying mechanisms. Study 2 (n = 116; MTurk sample) used a single-factor (control vs. anthropomorphized) between-subjects design. As stimulus, we used a recent Chips Ahoy! cookie advertisements. For the anthropomorphized condition, we used the original ad which featured a cookie with human face features. For the control condition, we removed the human face features from the cookie. The results showed that while anthropomorphizing enhances consumption experience due to greater whimsical cuteness, it simultaneously, and even more so, deteriorates consumption experience because of feelings of inflicted harm. Consumers feel as if they would hurt the anthropomorphized food product by eating it, which negatively influences consumption-related responses. In doing so, the current research contributes to anthropomorphism literature in several ways. First, while existing anthropomorphism research focused predominantly on consumer responses before consumption (e.g., liking, evaluation), the current research outlines important downstream consequences of anthropomorphism. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research to systematically document deteriorating effects of anthropomorphism on postpurchase consumer responses. This adds a novel chapter to an evolving stream of research investigating consumers differential pre- and post-purchase responses (Lee and Tsai 2014; Wu et al. 2017). Second, while extant anthropomorphism research has mainly focused on the consequences of moral agency (i.e., the capacity to perform intentional actions), the current research is among the few exceptions that examine the consequences of experience - the second dimension of mind perception (Gray et al. 2007; Waytz et al. 2010b). This is relevant because many anthropomorphized entities do not act themselves but are acted upon (especially in a consumption context). Third, the current research has implications for prior research on consumption-related consequences of anthropomorphism. Research has demonstrated that anthropomorphizing a tempting consumption object increased consumption amount because anthropomorphizing reduced experienced conflict among consumers with a strong dieting goal (Hur et al. 2015). Our work extends this line of research by uncovering an additional mechanism that impacts consumers' consumption-related responses. We find that anthropomorphizing a food product inhibits consumption and leads to more negative emotional outcomes because consumers feel as if they would harm the anthropomorphized product by eating it. We believe that findings of Hur et al. (2015) do not contradict our results, but rather suggest an additional boundary condition. That is, for consumer with a strong dieting goal, the negative effect of anthropomorphism on consumption enjoyment should be attenuated because feelings of reduced conflict counteract perceptions of inflicted harm. Lastly, the current research offers implications for marketers and public policy makers. For example, a negative consumption experience might lead to lower re-purchase likelihood and frequency, which is why marketers need to be aware of post-purchase consequences of an anthropomorphism strategy.