How product designs and presentations influence consumers’ post-acquisition decisions

After consumers have acquired a product, they often need to make further post-acquisition decisions, including (1) whether to retain or discard the already-owned product and (2) what complementary goods to choose for the already-owned product. These post-acquisition decisions are important to brand profitability, consumer welfare, and sustainable consumption, yet systematic research on these decisions is scant. As marketing variables over which managers have direct control, both product designs and product presentations in advertising can strongly influence consumers' perceptions of an already-owned product and, as a consequence, have a potential impact on their decisions about the focal product. Drawing on both social and evolutionary psychological theories, my dissertation examines how product designs and product presentations shape consumers' post-acquisition decisions. ❧ In the first chapter, I focus on product retention decisions and investigate how cuteness (vs. elegance) as a visual theme of product design impacts consumers' decision about whether to retain or discard an already-owned product. Drawing on an evolutionary perspective, I demonstrate that, just as the cuteness of human and animal babies is conducive to bonding and relationship maintenance, a cute-looking product design results in consumers' higher willingness to retain the product than an elegant-looking product design does due to the stronger desire for nurturance triggered by cuteness versus elegance. Importantly, the advantage of cuteness over elegance in strengthening product retention is different from a general favorable response toward cuteness, given that the cuteness advantage over elegance does not necessarily extend to product acquisition decisions. This research identifies when cuteness-elicited nurturance desire matters in a consumption context and contributes to the burgeoning literatures on product retention and product aesthetics. ❧ My second chapter examines consumers' brand choice of complementary accessories for an already-owned product, which represents another type of post-acquisition decision. The famous ""razor-and-blade model"" has been employed across many industries, in which a firm mainly generates its profit from the sales of accessories (e.g., blades) for a base product (e.g., the razor). My second chapter shows that anthropomorphic presentations of a base product (e.g., making a Canon printer move its ""lips"" when ""talking"" in a video advertisement) increase consumers' choice share of complementary accessories provided by the same brand that offers the focal base product (e.g., Canon ink cartridges) over accessories from a different brand (e.g., Staples ink cartridges). This is because anthropomorphic presentations of a base product trigger a bodily consideration, in which consumers perceive accessories as ""body substances"" of the anthropomorphized base product. Consumers are naturally averse to foreign body-related substances, and they also project such an aversion onto complementary accessories from a competing brand, which represent ""foreign body substances"" to the focal base product. This research uncovers a novel mechanism through which product anthropomorphism affects consumer decision-making and addresses a very important managerial question.