MSc Marketing Management

MSc Marketing Management

Master Thesis Defense Session

The impact of nature’s scale invariance on

consumer behavior: A new marketing trick?

Table of Contents

› Fractal Geometry

› Problem Statement

› Conceptual Model

› Hypotheses

› Research Design

› Results

› General Conclusion

› Practical Implications

Problem Statement

› ‘The current research tries to examine whether

fractal-like

properties

in visual advertisements will lead to more positive

consumer behavior in regards to

intention to purchase

and

Hypotheses

› H1: The more extreme the spatial frequencies in an advertisement, the lower the

intention to purchase and the willingness to recommend;

› H2: The effect of different levels of spatial frequencies in an advertisement on

intention to purchase and willingness to recommend, is mediated by aesthetic liking;

› H3: The more extreme (high or low) the spatial frequencies, the less the

aesthetic liking of the advertisement;

› H3b: Observing the advertisement from a hedonic perspective, will create

higher aesthetic liking compared to the utilitarian perspective;

› H4: The higher the aesthetic liking, the higher the intention to purchase and

willingness to recommend;

› H4b: The effect of aesthetic liking on intention to purchase and willingness to

recommend will be greater if the advertisement is observed from a hedonic perspective;

› H5: The effect of aesthetic liking on the intention to purchase and willingness to

Research Design

› 3 (level of

spatial frequency

motivation

› Online questionnaire:

231

o Behavioral Identification Form, designed to test the respondents’ construal level;

o Next, specific scenario pushed respondents to be hedonic or utilitarian motivated;

Results

› Controlled for figure-ground contrast › H1: Rejected

› ANOVA test: no statistically significant main effect of the level of spatial frequency on the ITP and WTR.

› WTR: interesting pairwise comparisons

Results

› Hayes mediation analysis showed no significant mediation effect of

aesthetic liking on the relationship between level of spatial frequency and the ITP and WTR.

› Exploratory perspective: type of motivation & interaction › H3: Rejected

› The two-way ANOVA revealed no statistically significant main effect of the level of spatial frequency on aesthetic liking (p = .781 > .05).

› H3b: Rejected

Results

› A correlation analysis showed that the level of aesthetic liking has a positive influence on the ITP and WTR.

› H4b: Rejected

Results

› Interesting; reversed significant result on the ITP!

› The respondents’ construal level enhances the relationship between aesthetic liking and the ITP. The higher the construal level (i.e., the more abstract people think), the stronger this relationship.

› Possible explanations

General Conclusion

› Expectations not really confirmed, although some interesting findings. › At the end, it can be concluded that the use of different levels of spatial

Practical Implications

› Impact of low-level visual properties (e.g., fractal-like properties) for marketing purposes

Limitations & Future Research

› Studies in ‘real-life’ scenario (comparing consumer behavior over different types of motivation)

› Manipulation in background › Within-subjects design