The Effect of Advertising a Product with Its Reflection on Product Aesthetics: An Abstract

Abstract

While advertising products with their reflections is quite common, marketing research studying their effects on product aesthetics is lacking. A unique visual property of reflections is that they are endowed with an inherent shine since they are formed by the interaction of light with an object and a reflecting medium like water (Cavanagh et al., 2008; Corballis, 2000; Fleming et al., 2003). We draw upon this property along with established literature from multiple domains including evolutionary psychology, visual art, and consumer psychology that documents an innate human attraction towards glossy visuals (Danko-McGhee, 2006; Han & Pandelaere, 2021; Henshilwood et al., 2001; Meert et al., 2014; Silvia et al., 2018) to predict their positive effect on product aesthetics. Further building on evolutionary psychology literature as well as the unique visual properties of reflections, we predict that the positive effect of reflection on product aesthetics is mediated by perceptions about the product being considered more pristine in the presence of its reflection (Burmil et al., 1999; Cavanagh et al., 2008; Meert et al., 2014; Patrick et al., 2017). To test these predictions empirically, multiple experimentally designed studies using different product categories were conducted. Findings from these studies reveal that the presence of a product’s reflection in the ad indeed enhance product attractiveness perceptions. Furthermore, in line with the proposed underlying mechanism, beliefs about the product being pristine were found to mediate the effect of product reflection on product aesthetics. In addition to its theoretical contribution towards the aesthetics literature in marketing, the managerial implications of the current work span both traditional as well as digital marketing channels. Our findings can particularly benefit digital marketers struggling to capture consumer attention through product aesthetics where it is easy to incorporate product reflection using available design tools like Photoshop without changing any aspect of the actual product design. An important contribution of our work lies in offering managers a better understanding as to why consumers consider products advertised with their reflections to be more visually attractive. Our insight on pristine product appearance as the underlying explanation for the aesthetic effects of product reflections can be used by advertisers strategically, especially for product categories where pristine attributes are important and make a good source of competitive differentiation.