Motivational antecedents and behavioral consequences of cuteness in marketing

Cuteness is an under-investigated marketing element in consumer research. This thesis investigates the motivational antecedents of consumers’ perceptions of cuteness, and explores consumers’ reactions to cute stimuli. I propose that individual differences in approach motivation (Behavioral Approach System, BAS) are predictive of their reactions to cuteness, and consequently moderate their reactions to cuteness via two different mechanisms: inference-making (essay 1) and aroused emotion (essay 2). In particular, the first essay demonstrates that consumers with strong BAS perceive cute stimuli as cuter and like cute entities more. High-BAS consumers also infer cute products as being more vulnerable, which in turn affects their reactions to cute (vs. non-cute) malfunctioned products in an unfavorable direction. With lab experiments and field study, essay 2 demonstrates that cute stimuli motivate consumers to engage in prosocial behaviors, such as charitable donations and recycling, driven by the tenderness emotion elicited by cuteness. Across lab experiments and one large-scale field study, I found support for the proposed positive effect of cuteness in enhancing people’s prosocial behavior and the underlying mechanism. This thesis adds to research on cuteness, contributes to the growing research on the mediating effect of inference making on consumer behavior, and also adds to the emotion literature by revealing the influence of tenderness on consumers’ behavior. Collectively, this investigation leads to a better understanding of the antecedents and downstream consequences of cuteness on consumer behavior.