Product visuals and consumers’ selective exposure: The role of thought generation and cognitive motivation

ABSTRACT

We tend to look for, interpret, and remember information consistent with our beliefs and attitudes. This tendency toward biased information processing has been extensively studied in relation to long-standing, deeply held beliefs and attitudes about a given substantive issue. However, what about thoughts and attitudes that are induced by visual cues? Do people still process information in a biased manner based on their initial responses to newly encountered information? The purpose of this research is to investigate how varying product visuals affect consumers’ selective exposure, and to what extent cognitive responses to the visual appearance of a product and attitudes toward a newly encountered brand can mediate such visual biasing effects. We demonstrate how consumers generate visual-based thoughts and choose to read reviews that support their newly formed beliefs and attitudes. In addition, we also investigate whether individual differences in the need for cognition moderate the influence of brand attitudes on selective exposure. The results confirm that product visual appeals influence the relative amount of positive thoughts consumers generate and people in higher need for cognition tend to show greater selective exposure to reviews consistent with their attitudes.

KEYWORDS:

• Package design
• image quality
• thought positivity
• need for cognition
• brand attitudes
• selective exposure

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Two-way ANOVA results confirm that the interactions between package design and image quality on all constructs were not significant (all Fs < 1.21, ps > 0.05).

2. Only three conditions appear in Figure 2 because three dummy-coded variables were used to represent the total number of visual conditions (i.e., d – 1 dummy-coded variables should be used in the group code procedure in SEM, where d is the number of conditions in the experiment; Russell et al. 1998). C4_plainlow is the reference group in the following analysis that each of the three conditions in Figure 2 is presented in comparison to C4_plainlow, the worst visual condition.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sann Ryu

Sann Ryu is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Hanyang University, South Korea. She received her Master’s Degree in Advertising and Doctoral Degree in Communications and Media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Ryu’s major research area focuses on visual effects and consumers’ biased information processing.

Patrick Vargas

Patrick Vargas is a Professor of Advertising at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Master’s Degree and Doctoral Degree in Psychology at The Ohio State University. His research focuses on attitude measurement, stereotyping and prejudice, and information processing aspects of persuasion. He is particularly interested in attitudes that exist outside of conscious awareness.