Is She My New Friend? The Effect of Social Exclusion on Consumer Preference for Anthropomorphized Products

Anthropomorphism, defined as the tendency of seeing human characteristics in non-human agents (Epley, Waytz, and Cacioppo 2007), is often used in marketing communications. For example, marketers might create a human representation for its brand (e.g., the Energizer Man), or use human terms to describe products’ features in advertising. Past research has suggested that one major motivation for people to anthropomorphize is the desire for social affiliation (Epley et al. 2007). For instance, Epley et al. (2008) found that participants who were primed to feel lonely, compared with those in fear or control conditions, were more likely to describe their pets using supportive anthropomorphic traits. However, it is not clear how experiencing social exclusion, the state of being cut off, ignored, or isolated by other individuals or social groups (Baumeister et al. 2005; Williams 2007), will influence consumers’ preference for products communicated in an anthropomorphic manner. The current research examines this question. Research in branding has suggested that people can form relationships with products in a similar way to how they form relationships with other people (Fournier 1998). Thus, when socially excluded consumers see human characteristics in the product, they may show more interest because connecting with the anthropomorphized product represents an opportunity for social affiliation. One’s interest in connecting with the product should be exhibited in their product attitudes. Therefore, we predict that socially excluded consumers, compared with socially included consumers, will exhibit greater preferences for anthropomorphized products, but not for non-anthropomorphized products.