The Impact of Anthropomorphized Cute Brands on Consumer Preferences for Distinctive and Majority-Endorsed Products

Marketers strategically use anthropomorphism (i.e., imbuing nonhuman objects with humanlike characteristics, motivations, intentions or behaviors; Puzakova, Kwak and Rocereto 2013) as a brand positioning strategy. Prior work identifies downstream consequences of using this strategy including positive brand evaluations and emotional reactions towards the brand (Aggarwal and McGill 2007; Delbaere, McQuarrie and Phillips 2011). However, previous research has not looked at how anthropomorphizing a brand can systematically affect consumer preferences for a different brand in a consumption sequence. An understanding of this phenomenon is both theoretically and managerially important because consumers frequently shop for products in predictable patterns (e.g., looking for coffee creamers after selecting a pack of coffee). Importantly, marketers carefully place products in particular sequences in retail stores and effectively utilize cross-selling tactics to increase the purchase of a full product line (Knott, Hayes and Neslin 2002). In this paper we examine a specific brand positioning strategy— cute brand anthropomorphism (imbuing a humanized brand with specific configuration of infantile features; Wang and Mukhopadhyay 2015)—and demonstrate that consumer exposure to or interaction with a cute anthropomorphized (vs. nonanthropomorphized) brand has significant downstream consequences for preferences for products or brands positioned to be either distinctive or majority endorsed (popular). We further establish that these unique effects of cute brand anthropomorphism hold only for male consumers. Specifically, we demonstrate that men’s exposure to anthropomorphized cute products prior to exposure to a distinctive brand in a different product category can have a negative effect on the preferences for the distinctive brand. In contrast, exposure to anthropomorphized cute products enhances male consumers’ preferences for majority endorsed brands. The theoretical rationale is that anthropomorphized cute products threaten men’s gender identity and activate self-protection responses. This activation of a self-protection response further facilitates an evolutionary response of “going with the group is safe” because standing out from the crowd limits one’s chances of survival (Griskevicius et al. 2009). Thus, our work demonstrates that cute anthropomorphized products increase conformity in men; these products reduce attraction to distinctively-positioned brands and increase attraction to brands positioned as majority-endorsed.