Marketing Bites April 2022

Every month I compile?recent?insights in marketing. In the following you find my discoveries from?April 2022.

They may help you in crafting more effective marketing strategies. I hope you find them as interesting and useful as I do.

How the Fear of Missing Out affects social media marketing

The fear of missing out (FoMO) is a key characteristic of the digital age. It occurs when people feel that they are not able to experience what others are engaging in, particularly when others' experiences are believed to be better than one's own experiences. This is often the case when people consume social media content.

In the light of this, a group of researchers investigated the implications of FoMO on consumer behavior. They find that FoMO evokes a need to belong which, in turn, is likely to increase social media engagement. The researchers also find that such increased engagement is likely to result in information overload, a critical hurdle for advertising.

From this follow two important implications for more effective advertising in social media. First of all, marketers should display their advertisements at the beginning of people’s social media sessions, morning hours, or on weekend days when people presumably have more mental capacity to process new information. Secondly, marketers should present their advertisements directly following the times when consumers share content, because they may be more motivated to check new content, post reactions, and experience positive emotions.

Bui et al. (2022): Fear of missing out in the digital age: The role of social media satisfaction and advertising engagement, Psychology & Marketing.

How sampling high‐ and low‐quality products affects enjoyment?

Consumers can build expertise by sampling products that are differentiated vertically, in terms of varying quality, or horizontally, in terms of taste. While the effects of horizontal sampling are well understood, the effects of vertical sampling are understudied. As such, a group of researchers investigated the impacts of vertical sampling.

They find that vertical sampling strengthens the association between product quality and enjoyment. In other words, gaining experience across quality levels within a product category, increases enjoyment of high quality products.

As such, when selling high quality products, brands should provide consumers the opportunity to compare them with lower quality products, as this is likely to lead to higher enjoyment of consuming high quality products.

Stuppy & Van Den Bergh (2022): How sampling high‐ and low‐quality products affects enjoyment, Psychology & Marketing.

How to encourage upgrades with "Just Above Pricing"

Marketers often set prices just-below a round number (e.g., $39) - a strategy that lowers subjective price perceptions and increases sales. A group of researchers now showed that such an approach can be detrimental when trying to motivate consumers to make an upgrade and rent a more luxurious car or hotel room, for example.

In a series of studies they find that when a base option is priced at or just-above a threshold (e.g. $99 instead of $100), consumers are more likely to upgrade and spend more money because they perceive the upgrade option as less expensive, and they place less weight on the price.

This implies that increasing the price of a base option to be just-above a threshold can be beneficial when brands offer upgrades.

Kim et al. (2022): The Threshold-Crossing Effect: Just-Below Pricing Discourages Consumers to Upgrade, Journal of Consumer Research.

How visual order can shape product evaluation

Marketers often use images to promote their products. For example, ads for kitchen tools might display the tools alongside various ingredients, or ads for a bookstore might showcase pictures of the store’s interior.

One key visual characteristic of such images is the degree of order in their content.

In the light of this, researchers now found that visual disorder tends to shift people’s temporal focus toward the past and evokes more positive response to vintage products. By contrast, the researchers also found that visual order tends to shift peoples temporal focus toward the future and evokes more positive response to futuristic products.

These findings imply that when deciding on the visual content of advertisements, marketers should take into consideration the time-related associations of products.

Consumers are likely to evaluate past related products more favorably when combined with ?disorder" images in advertising (think for example of Gucci's 2018 campaign).

Consumers are likely to evaluate future related products more favorably when combined with ?order" images in advertising (think for example of product depiction of Apple).

Biliciler et al. (2022): Consumers as Naive Physicists: How Visual Entropy Cues Shift Temporal Focus and Influence Product Evaluations, Journal of Consumer Research.