Leaving Something for the Imagination: The Effect of Visual Concealment on Preferences

Abstract

When advertising products to consumers, firms sometimes conceal key aspects in an effort to arouse consumer curiosity. This research investigates when and how visual concealment tactics may benefit or hurt aesthetic product evaluations. The authors propose that when consumers are only able to view a portion of an aesthetic product, assessments of its appeal will be influenced by two interrelated mechanisms: curiosity to see the item completed and inferences about the item’s fully disclosed appearance. The authors show that heightened curiosity triggers feelings of positive affect that are transferred to the product itself, a process that may inflate preferences and choice likelihoods for products beyond what would occur if the full image were known. This transference effect, however, has an important boundary: it works only when initial consumer inferences about the appeal of the product are positive or emotionally congruent with the positive affect triggered by curiosity. The key implication is that, ironically, the products likely to benefit most from concealment tactics are those that have the least to hide. The authors provide evidence for these effects and the underlying mechanism using six experiments that manipulate concealment in a variety of task settings.