I’ll Keep the Cuddly One: Effects of Cuteness versus Elegance on Product Retention

Despite the existence of several successful cute-looking products in the marketplace, such as the Volkswagen Beetle or the numerous Hello Kitty accessories, it seems that marketers still prefer striving to create elegant-looking product designs built on aesthetic principles (e.g., symmetry and harmony, Kumar and Garg 2010), and are reluctant to incorporate cuteness into the designs of their products. Such reluctance may reflect an implicit assumption that cute-looking product designs do not have any particular advantage over elegant-looking designs in driving product purchases. In this research, we argue that the advantage of cute-looking designs emerges when the focus of investigation is shifted from product acquisition to retention. We posit that just as infants’ cuteness is conducive to sustaining their parents’ caretaking behaviors for a long time (Glocker et al. 2009; Morreall 1991), the advantage of cuteness in product design should be manifested in sustaining a close relationship between a cute-looking product and its owner for a long period. We propose that, even when a cute-looking and an elegant-looking product design are perceived as equally attractive, the cute-looking one will induce a higher intent to retain the product.