University of Groningen Faculty of Economics and Business
Imperfect friend versus imperfect subordinate.
The effect of personal relationships between consumers and products on the liking offlawed products.
1 Abstract
This paper aims to add to a significant gap in literature: Marketing of flawed products. It does by attempting to test whether anthropomorphism and more specifically, partner servant relationships, can be used and differ in regards to how such products are liked by costumers. A backpack was presented in an either flawed or not flawed manner to 269 respondents. Additionally, the products were either not anthropomorphized, partner anthropomorphic or servant anthropomorphic. Four different liking factors were tested for inter-group differences. The results were not significant, largely contradicting previous research’s indications. Furthermore, a median split robustness test showed the necessity for the consideration of more segmenting factors, in this case frequency of use, when assessing the effectiveness of anthropomorphism and different types of relationship in increasing the liking of flawed products.
2 Introduction
The topic of flaws in products has not received much attention in research until recently, due to such products often being disregarded and perceived as defective. Often, the sellers opt to redirect the customer’s attention to distract them from such products (Kotler & Mantrala, 1985) rather than to attempt to market them. According to the
European Commission, around 88 million tons of food are wasted annually in the European Union (FUSIONS, 2016). Those are foods that are perfectly good for consumption, but that are nonetheless discarded due to imperfections or damage. Moreover, flawed products can severely damage the company’s image (McIntyre, 2013). In order to find ways to avoid wasting functional products and harming the company’s reputation, this paper sets out to investigate the factors that influence the acceptance of flaws in products.
Especially, in the age of the Internet and numerous online stores, chances are, that everyone has encountered a flawed product delivered to their doorstep at least once and prompted the focus of research to assess this trend of digitalization(Punakivi & Saranen, 2001) and the supply chain of flawed products. It may be damaged packaging, mismatched detailing, or even scratches and dents on the surface of the products. Some people return the imperfect products straightaway (McMath, 2011), while others may perceive the flaw as a quirk or a specialty in the item they have gotten and accept it for what it is, flaws and all ). Additionally, companies may launch products before they are ready, or with certain
characteristics that may be perceived as flaws (Eccles, Newquist, & Schatz, 2007). Therefore, it would appear quite appropriate to research whether there are ways in which these
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consumer. As such, research has attempted to find ways to deal with flawed products (Kotler & Mantrala, 1985), also from a marketing perspective.
One of the ways that have gained traction in attempting to improve product perception, which could be considered to improve the liking of flawed product, is anthropomorphism, be it through mascots(Patterson, Khogeer & Hodgson, 2013) or the product itself (Lanier & Rader, 2013). An increasing number of companies nowadays market their products as having humanlike characteristics, something that is addressed in literature (Epley, Waytz, Akalis & Cacioppo, 2008). For instance, brands such as M&M’s and Mr. Clean use their mascots to create a character, and embody the products. While Mr. Clean is represented as a muscular man that helps people fight dirt, M&M’s are represented by the humorous humanized candies, and in either case embodying a brand with humanlike characteristics makes it much more memorable and relatable for the consumer. Something as small as having a product “talk” for itself is sometimes enough to make it appear human. Some do so quite literally, such as Siri in Apple devices and Amazon’s Alexa, going as far as imitating human interaction with the user, while others are simply embodied with a first-person description. In fact, giving human voice to the objects makes people perceive the product as more human (Takayama et.al, 2008). Either way, anthropomorphizing products seems to be a very popular marketing strategy that improves the product’s market
performance (Aggarwal and McGill 2007).
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relationship, the sets of expectations may also vary, for instance, the personality and
behavior standards for colleagues may be much higher than those for friends (Geiger, 2009), and close relatives may be more frequently accepted for who they are, with all the flaws and quirks, than friends (Geiger, 2009). And since anthropomorphic products can be regarded as human, the type of relationship with said product is extremely important for determining the expectations for the product, as well as tolerance for imperfections. Therefore, the relationships between people and products are also an important determinant of the overall satisfaction and liking of the products.
This paper therefore sets out to analyze whether the presence of a personal
relationship between the person and the anthropomorphized product affects the tolerance for flaws and, therefore, the liking of the product and whether the type of personal
relationship affects the liking of a flawed product.
Flawed Products
For the purpose of this study, flawed products are identified as products with minor imperfections that do not impact the overall functionality of a product. More specifically, flaws are characteristics that may make the product appear superficially less attractive while remaining appropriate for its intended use, for example, a slight variation in color of parts of the item, minor production issues or minor scratches on the surface of the product may be regarded as flaws or imperfections.
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discusses the phenomena of “buyer’s remorse” or post-decision regret, which occurs when a person is dissatisfied with the choice they made. He says that “the only way to avoid regret is to make the best possible decision”( Schwartz, 2004, p.148) , or find the most perfect option possible, in which case, flawed products do not always qualify for the title of the best choice. Moreover, he explains people’s tendency to strive for perfection with status, or the competition against others. He says, “The only way to be the best is to have the best” (Schwartz, 2004, p.94), which is also a statement that does not exactly encompass the flawed products. However, of course, despite these reasons, there are ways to deal with flawed goods, and make them seem like the best option that the consumers strive for.
The use of flawed products may not necessarily be a marketing strategy in itself, but also be possible to circumvent as a liability through marketing. A good example of
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However, of course, there are numerous other strategies to make even imperfect products desirable. Flawed products may also be used to signal uniqueness and difference and cause feelings of empathy with the customer (Snyder, 1992). For instance, handmade products are seldom perfect, however, the minor imperfections in their case may be regarded as peculiarities and specialties of the product that make it unique. Moreover, these products receive a higher degree of liking due to the “love’’ they contain (Fuchs, Schreier,& van Osselaer, 2015) regardless of superficial imperfections, which illustrates that there flaw acceptance is a complicated process, dependent on numerous factors.
Therefore, the study of flawed product acceptance may provide managers with important tools that allow launching products even when they are flawed. Since products can be seen as an extension of self (Belk, 1988), people would naturally prefer perfect products as an extension of their self, however, it must be possible to achieve acceptance through means other than severe price reduction, as seen in the example of Cryptic Cosmetics.
According to Wen Wan, Peng Chen, & Jin, (2017), consumers attribute preference to the products with superior appearance under the condition of anthropomorphism. This can be explained by the fact that people judge anthropomorphized products the same way they would judge people, under the assumption that beauty implies goodness. However, this research does not take into consideration the influence of other factors, such as brand relationship, on the product perception under the anthropomorphized condition. It proves, however, that there is a relationship between superficial appearance and
7 Anthropomorphism
The principal topics of this paper thus are flaw-acceptance and its connection to anthropomorphism. The relevance of humanlike characteristics attributed to products for marketing purposes has been studied extensively in literature (Aaker, 1997). This is largely due to the relatively recent development of the understanding of marketing in combination with psychology (Bartels, 1988). However, how anthropomorphism affects flawed products has not been widely researched.
Anthropomorphism is defined as ‘the tendency to imbue the real or imagined behavior of non-human agents with humanlike characteristics, motivations, intentions, or emotions’ (Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007, p. 864), or simply, assigning human characteristics and traits to nonhuman objects or creatures. Hence, it is appropriate to analyze whether certain types of human characteristics are more appropriate than others for certain uses. One of the interesting issues with anthropomorphism is its resistance to cultures, religions and other backgrounds (Wan, and Aggarwal, 2015), showing that it is central to the human mind. It shows that the interpretation of humans is connected to the perception of personalities and traits. Feelings such as affection, empathy and relation are much more likely to arise when humans perceive relatable characteristics such as those of a human (Riek et.al., 2009).
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anthropomorphism on trust, people expressed higher level of trust towards the self-driving car which was given human characteristics such as voice, name and gender than towards a normal, non-anthropomorphized one, since they believed the anthropomorphized car was more competent.
Anthropomorphism in products and brands can manifest itself in numerous ways: in decoded “facial expressions” in products, that can have an influence on the impression and liking of the product (Landwehr et al., 2011); in humanized mascots or animals (Brown, 2010); in the usage of personal pronouns and imperative verbs on social media and
advertising (Kwon, & Sung, 2011), giving the product a human voice (Waytz et al., 2014) etc. These allow the brand or product to be perceived as acting on its own and making its own decisions, which also corresponds with perception of a human. That, in turn, makes it easier to relate to the brand or product and build meaningful relationships.
Therefore, the use of anthropomorphism has expanded among marketers (Brown, 2010; Lanier Jr., et.al., 2013) as it provides a useful tool for circumventing typical distance building processes between humans and products and therefore allows customers to focus on personal characteristics, rather than utility.
Moreover, for the purpose of this study it is important to identify the key
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therefore, more understandable for people, who assume that the product may “act” the same way a person would in a particular situation, which prompts trust (Waytz, Heafner & Epley, 2014). Another crucial characteristic is the ability to have feelings (Panksepp, 2005). If the product is perceived as human, it should be relatively easy to attribute it with feelings based on social cues relevant to humans (e.g. facial expressions(Waytz, Heafner & Epley, 2014), if the product is adorned with the face, or the tone of voice in speech (Waytz,
Heafner & Epley, 2014)). It may also be rooted in species-culture, meaning that humans are more likely to empathize with those that have similar characteristics.
Relationships
Relationships between people and brands have been extensively studied, resulting in numerous frameworks attempting to classify the connection customers form with brands. For instance, Fournier (1998) developed a very extensive framework of brand relationships based on the six dimensions: voluntary/involuntary, positive/negative, intense/superficial, long-/short-term, formal/informal and symmetric/asymmetric. The resulting relationship types in the study span from Best Friendship to Enslavements, and are in their nature quite reminiscent of relationships between humans.
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relationships. Additionally, the type of brand relationship can have an influence on the overall perception of the product: its appearance, quality, etc.
The same principle can be applied to anthropomorphized products. According to Castelli et al. (2000), judging anthropomorphic products activates the same neural systems as judging humans. This implies that humans perceive anthropomorphic products as being truly human, and therefore, their judgment can, theoretically, depend on the type of relationship the person has with the product, similarly to the type of relationship with a human under judgment.
Since the study by Wan et al. (201) is limited to purchase intentions, which do not include emotional modifiers, it can be concluded that under certain conditions products that are not superficially perfect, may be chosen based on the type of relationship the consumer has with the product or brand, and an emotional affection (or liking) could take place under the condition of the favorable relationship type.
Aggarwal, & McGill (2012) define two distinct types of brand relationships: a Servant, and a Partner. A Servant product is a product that creates a benefit for the consumer, or works for him/her. A Partner co-creates the benefit with the consumer, or works together with him/her. Alternatively, these relationships can be compared to a relationship between friends (the Partner relationship) and a superior and a subordinate (the Servant
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to it being less sophisticated, however, more generalizable and relatable, which will most likely make the data more obtainable.
People are not perfect (Grant, 2008), but nonetheless, we learn to accept and tolerate the imperfections we face in others. It would seem logical that this tolerance for
imperfections can vary based on the type of relationship: it would be preferable for a colleague or subordinate to be as perfect as possible, and mistakes would hardly ever be tolerated; on the other hand, friends and family could be imperfect and would be easily accepted on this basis. According to Chandler and Schwarz (2010), thinking of objects as human leads people to be less willing to replace them, especially when the object (a car) was perceived as “warm”. This warmth lets people perceive the anthropomorphic product as a warm, or friendly human being, and therefore, people were less willing to replace their “friends”. On the other hand, according to Kim and Kramer (2015), materialistic people prefer Servant brands due to the wish for dominance in a relationship. Due to the nature of materialism, which stresses the importance of material possessions in achieving happiness (Richins and Dawson 1992), it would be reasonable to assume that the quality of the products in this relationship also plays a role. Therefore, we can assume that in this setting the Servant products with flaws would be much less tolerated. Moreover, Grayson (2007) found that the expectations for differ between the relationship types, and “True friends are expected to be unmotivated by benefits that can be used beyond the relationship (e.g., money, status), whereas business partners are, by definition, at least partly motivated by these more "instrumental" concerns ’(Grayson, 2007, p.121). This difference in expectations means, that just as for people, the expectations for the products attributed with
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Conceptual Framework
Therefore, the research question of this paper can be stated as whether the
acceptance of flawed products is dependent or not on the degree of anthropomorphism and type of relationship built between the customer and the product. This paper sets out to analyze the effects of the partner and server types of relationship on said acceptance. In terms of marketing, the effect of “liking” may be defined as the preference a customer has for a certain product and the strength of the affective emotional relationship built between the customer and the product.(Waytz, Heafner & Epley, 2014) This would indicate that the strength of such a bond is highly related to the relatable characteristics that are found in anthropomorphized products. Given that this effect would appear to occur when there is a personal relationship, rather than an object-relationship, one would assume that the former would lead to higher liking. It is notable that while a product is
anthropomorphized it may still have a non-specific relationship to the customer and remain an object that appears to be human but does not fill any specific role. Therefore, the first hypothesis is as follows:
H1: The level of liking will be higher for flawed products when they have a personal
relationship with the consumer, rather than an object relationship.
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based on the type of relationship. That, in turn, can result in different expectations of perfection and quality, and as a result, a varied level of acceptance towards product flaws.
The Partner relationship type is expected to have a positive effect on acceptance and liking of a flawed product, based on the premise that the respondents would perceive the product as their friend, and, therefore, would be less judgmental of its superficial
appearance. The Servant relationship type, on the other hand, is expected to have a lower effect on the liking based on the premise that the respondents would perceive the product as their subordinate or an inferior, and therefore, their level of judgement towards the product would be more harsh. This is based on the assumption that anthropomorphized products under the condition of specific relationship are treated similarly as people would be in the same relationship type. Therefore, the second hypothesis is:
H2: The level of liking will be higher for the flawed anthropomorphized products
presented in a “Partner” setting, compared to those presented in “Servant” setting.
For this hypothesis the independent variable is to be nominal and differs between Partner and Server setting, while the dependent variable is to be, equally to the first hypothesis, the strength of the affective relationship between the customer and the product. In combination with the first hypothesis, however, it is expected that the type of relationship will have a moderating effect on the relationship between the independent and the dependent variable.
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The degree of liking, or the positive attitude towards the product (the dependent variable) is to be measured using purchasing intention and perception variables. While it would appear appropriate to measure it using purchase intention (Chavanat, Martinent, & Ferrand, 2009), the aim of this paper is to also assess the relationship built between a customer and a product. However, a positive attitude can manifest itself in a variety of ways, apart from the conventional mindset metric of liking. Perceived quality and purchase intentions, for example, can also be strong indicators of a positive attitude towards the product. Therefore, the most appropriate measuring type is to test the affection of customers towards certain products, the perceived quality and the purchase intentions together. Moreover, the extent to which a person enjoys the product is another way to measure liking (Snell, Gibbs and Vary, 1995), since it does not only encompass the liking itself, but also other positive feelings towards the product.
Procedure
This experiment was conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk). Two hundred and sixty-nine participants, predominantly US American ( 91.1%) with majority aged 25-34 years old (47.2%) and predominantly male (53.5%) participated in the survey (Appendix 4). The participants were randomly assigned to one of the 4 conditions, namely
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of the zipper on one of the pockets of the backpack (the zipper is graphically altered to look grey instead of black), and only participants randomly allocated into flaw conditions saw it. Additionally, in the flaw conditions there is a note specifically attracting the participants’ attention to the flaw: “Please note, on the pocket on the right side of the backpack the color of the zipper is slightly different from others: it is grey instead of black”. In the no-flaw condition, all zippers were uniformly black.
Furthermore, the graphically represented product was framed with descriptions in the first person for the Partner and Servant conditions (“My name is BeBe and I am a
backpack”), making the product appear to speak for itself, and third person for the No Anthropomorphism condition (“This is a BeBe backpack”), as a regular product description. . The Partner positioned itself as a co-producer of the benefit (“Together, we will carry all of your things around. Moreover, I have a built-in power bank, so we can stay in touch with friends or play games for longer! I will be a loyal companion to you on your journey!”), while the Servant promised to create benefit for the person reading (“I will hold all of the things for you and carry them around! Moreover, I have a built-in power bank, so I can charge all of your devices for you! I will work very hard for you and will not disappoint!”). The
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Furthermore, in order to check whether the respondents truly perceived the product to be humanized, the 7 point scale questions on a scale from “Not at all” to “Very much” for the manipulation check were added, namely, whether the respondents felt that the product has free will and whether they thought the product had feelings. Additionally, the survey includes two statements regarding flaw tolerance in friends (I accept my friend’s
imperfections) and subordinates (Subordinates should have little to no flaws) with seven-scale bipolar seven-scales with extremes at “Strongly disagree” and “Strongly agree”, to which the respondents are asked to indicate the extent to which they agree with the statement.
It is important to note that these relationships may not be impervious to external influences. Firstly, it is important to control for the general preference of the respondents for the types of product that are intended to be used in research. Otherwise, in the event that the participant’s taste influences their decision on the overall attitude towards the product, it could result in biased data. If a person generally does not fancy backpacks, their opinion of the product in question in the survey may be influenced by the taste aspect, and therefore, their judgement of the product may be biased and they may indicate lesser liking simply based on that, irrespective of how appealing the product is. Therefore, the
respondents are also asked how often they generally use backpacks on a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 is “No, never” and 7 is “Yes, constantly”. Secondly, the gender of the respondent may also have an effect on the results of the study, due to the premise that females tend to be more empathetic than males (Mestre et al.,2009), and therefore, may exhibit more sympathy towards the flawed product, while males, on the other hand, may be more critical of and judgmental towards the flawed product. Therefore, these measures were also
17 Results
Manipulation Check. Before proceeding with the analysis, it is important to show whether or not the variables as measured actually have the effect they represent. For example, when testing the effects of relationship types, anthropomorphism, etc. it would seem appropriate to make sure that the respondents actually perceived anthropomorphic products as such. In order to do so, a manipulation check was performed were a dummy variable for anthropomorphism was computed, where 0 meant no anthropomorphism and 1 meant that the product was anthropomorphic.
A One-Way ANOVA was performed. The results showed a significant difference between anthropomorphic(M = 2.926, SD = 2.129) and non-anthropomorphic (M = 1.948, SD = 1.749) conditions (F1,267 = 16.945, p < 0.001) at the 1%. Therefore, there is a significant
positive relationship between the degree of anthropomorphism and the feelings attributed to the product, which indicates that the anthropomorphism manipulation was successful. Additionally, providing further addition to previous literature, this paper aims to test whether there is a higher acceptance of flaws of partners than of subordinates. This is related to the question of whether the effects of types of relationships transfer to products. Therefore, this paper tests whether people generally tend to think that it is more acceptable for friendly figures to be imperfect, than for subordinate figures. In order to do so
respondents were asked whether they accept friends’ imperfections and whether
subordinates should have little to no flaws. The latter variable was then recomputed so that the direction of the data is coherent. A paired samples t-test was conducted in order to test the assumption where the variables friend flaw acceptance and subordinate flaw
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confidence level (t = 7,320, p = ,000), and therefore we can conclude that the assumption is true, and that people are more tolerant of friends’ imperfections (M = 6,093, SD = ,861) than subordinates’ (M = 5,535, SD = 1,317). This, therefore, proves that there indeed is a
differentiation in expectations based on the type of relationship (Appendix 6).
Hypothesis Tests
Given that this paper aims to test a number of relationships, a nominal variable with 4 values is computed. Given that not all conditions are crossed, a moderating test is not performable. This lies in the nature of the questions, such as that certainly, non-anthropomorphized products cannot show a partner or servant relationship
In order to test the hypotheses it is important to determine the most appropriate method of analysis. This is largely driven by the type of data. First, the dependent variables are the different forms of liking. Additionally, a Cronbach’s Alpha Test was performed to analyze whether the variables could be summed together. The results of that test showed that the reliability of the variables allowed them to be summed (Cronbach’s Alpha = ,869) into a new variable called SumLiking, which consists of the variables liking, purchase intention, enjoyment and perceived quality. However, given that these variables test different types of liking, they are also going to be tested on a separate basis as they
measure different types of liking. Therefore, it may be interesting to see whether perceived quality is significantly altered, while purchase intention is not. This results in five dependent variables where the fifth is the average of the former four.
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test the main hypothesis of this paper, namely, whether having a relationship with the product influences the total liking of the flawed products, such a test is performed. The object relationship, therefore, stands for the No Anthropomorphism condition for the flawed product, while the Personal relationship stands for Partner and Servant conditions for the flawed product. The results show that the presence of a relationship between the product and the respondent (M = 4,9093, SD = 1,136) does not influence total liking of the product (t = ,604, p = 0,546) compared to the absence of relationship (M = 5,015, SD = 1,164) at the 1%, 5%, or 10% levels. This also applies for each individual variable (Appendix 7).
Therefore, the first hypothesis is not confirmed, showing that having a personal relationship with the product does not have an effect on the liking of that product. This is somewhat counterintuitive and the explanations will be discussed further in the discussion section but it does provide an indication of whether anthropomorphism does correspond to what people are looking for in a product or not and whether having a relationship with it matters.
To test the second hypothesis of this paper, namely, whether the Partner relationship between the person and the product has a stronger positive effect on liking than the Servant relationship, a One-Way ANOVA with contrasts is also used. In this test the dependent variables are the liking variables and the independent variable is a dummy variable where 0 stands for servant and 1 stands for partner. The results show no significant relationship between the partner (MP = 5,015, SDP = 1,051) or servant (MS = 4,805, SDS =
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Consequently, the second hypothesis is rejected. This is a rather interesting finding as it suggests that the higher acceptance for flaws in friends than subordinates do not transfer to products. Further explanations for why this may be the case are provided in the
discussion section of this paper. However, both hypotheses show that anthropomorphism and how to use it is somewhat more complex than transferring characteristics from people to products. Additionally, the results show that there may be a requirement for further analysis of whether people are actually interested in the type of relationship that they have with a product.
Moreover, this paper uses a number of control variables to test whether they may have an effect on the liking of the product. These are age, gender, friend flaw acceptance, subordinate flaw acceptance and use. The explanations of why these variables are used, while outlined in the methodology section may be put in context with the aforementioned findings. Given that they may point towards a lack of interest in personal characteristics in products, the age of the respondents may have an effect, given that for some people, especially younger ones, backpacks may be companions through school rather than only a product for transportation. While this is an assumption, such as the effect of gender and acceptance for friends’ flaws and subordinates’ flaws, it may provide interesting insights into the transferring of personal characteristics. For example, if a younger person would show a generally higher liking for backpacks among anthropomorphic products, one could assume that the environment in which that backpack is used may have an effect on the way anthropomorphism has an effect on the liking of the product. While this would be a
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interesting to analyze. The results of the analysis, which was performed as a univariate analysis with the aforementioned covariates are shown in Table 3.
The results show that there is a significant positive relationship between friend flaw acceptance and liking and use and liking. This may suggest, on the one hand, that people that tolerate friends’ flaws in the sample generally happened to have a higher liking for backpacks, however, given that the subordinate flaw acceptance does not appear to have a significant effect on liking, there does not appear to be a relationship between flaw
22 Robustness test
To test the study’s robustness, the samples are split into high and low use individuals, meaning that two subsamples are built using median splits. In order to do so, the median split for variable “Use” is performed (MedianUse = 4.0000) to split the sample into “High use”
and “Low use”. Afterwards, the hypotheses are tested on each subsample using One-Way ANOVA with contrasts. The findings of the robustness test are mostly consistent with the findings of the aforementioned tests (Appendices 9 and 10). However, for high-use individuals, there appears to be a significant difference between partner and servant relationships in regards to liking at the 10% level (p = 0.064). This points towards a need for a deeper understanding of what type of people may respond to anthropomorphism.
In order to test whether the flaw was perceived as such, the total liking of the “perfect product” (No anthropomorphism, No flaw)(M = 4.739, SD = 1.210) is compared to the Non-anthropomorphic flawed product (M = 5.015, SD = 1.164) by the means of an Independent samples t-test. The results show no significant difference in liking of the flawed product versus non-flawed product (F1,132 = 0.061, p = 0.181) at 1%, 5%, or 10% confidence levels.
The other liking variables can be seen in Table 4. However, when looking at the means alone (Figure 1), there is a clear trend of the flawed product being liked more than the
23 Figure 1: Comparison of means
Discussion
This paper mainly focuses on the effects of different types of relationship rather than only anthropomorphism. Namely, whether a personal relationship leads to more liking of flawed products or not and whether a friend-relationship leads to more liking of a flawed product than a subordinate relationship. These findings show difficulties when transferring assumptions about humans to anthropomorphized products. Additionally, the findings suggest that there is a larger lack of understanding of anthropomorphized products in general and how they are perceived by people, since the results of the robustness check
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
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showcased, that people did not perceive the variation in the zipper color as a flaw, and in fact, liked the flawed backpack slightly more, which contradicts the assumption that flawed products are generally liked less than the non-flawed ones.
The first hypothesis aims to analyze whether a personal relationship leads to a
stronger liking of the product than an object relationship. This is due to the assumption that people look for appearance and functionality in products, but are more aware and accepting of people’s flaws. Anthropomorphism attempts to give products human qualities and
therefore it would be assumed that these characteristics are found among the
anthropomorphic products. Therefore, one may expect that a personal relationship leads to higher liking of flawed products due to them having those humanlike qualities.
The findings, however, show that this does not appear to be the case. The
explanations for that may be varied. First, it may be that despite anthropomorphism, people still look for appearance and functionality in products. Therefore, it may be that people have difficulties separating products from their functions, even if they appear to perceive them as more human. This certainly would suggest that there are at least certain limitations to the association of human-like characteristics and products.
Another explanation may be that there are limitations to the transferring of human like characteristics to products. While previous literature has shown that
anthropomorphism allows for the transferring of some human characteristics to a product and this paper shows that people do perceive anthropomorphized products as more human, as illustrated by the manipulation check, the type of characteristics that are transferable may be limited. Additionally, it may be suggested that this paper failed to successfully make the products truly anthropomorphic. This argument, however, was disproven when
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anthropomorphized products more than in non-anthropomorphized products by the respondents.
The implications of these specific findings could be significant upon further research. The indications, however, are clear. First, the findings suggest that anthropomorphized products are somewhat more complicated than merely transferring human characteristics to a product and having people recognize them in the product. Additionally, given that there is no specific relationship between a personal relationship and the liking of the product, it may be assumed that people do not pay as much attention to the personal characteristics of the product as to its functionality.
The results of the second hypothesis show that there is no significant difference between partner and servant relationships regarding the liking of a product. This indicates , similarly to the previous hypothesis, that personal characteristics do not appear to transfer from humans to anthropomorphized products or at least some of them do not. This means that despite the paper finding a significant difference between flaw acceptance of friends and of subordinates, this difference does not appear among the liking of products.
This further shows the conclusion of the first hypothesis, namely that some
characteristics of humans do not transfer to anthropomorphized products. It may therefore be required to explicitly mention these characteristics and observe whether they transfer. It may be that people associate general human characteristics, such as feelings, with
anthropomorphized products but not with more specific characteristics, such as the ability to be flawed.
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flaw acceptance of servants, it would be expected that the flaw acceptance would be lower for the servant product if it was genuinely identified as one by the respondents. However, given that this is not the case, there appear to be two main reasons for that. One is that the recognition of roles of products did not occur, and people did not perceive the presented products as Partner or Servant. A second reason could be that the characteristics of those roles did not successfully transfer to the product, and the product did not seem to be Partner or Servant in the first place due to survey design mishaps.
The effects of these findings on managers intending to make anthropomorphic products are fairly large. They suggest that anthropomorphizing products and associating roles with them is much more complicated than only pointing towards an activity or characteristic of that role. In fact, the role association may not work at all.
As a result, it would appear appropriate to identify which roles are transferrable to which products. For example, one could assume that partner relationships work when the products are initially intended to work together with the consumer to produce the benefit as partners (e.g. a pen), and those designed to work for the consumer would be easily associated with servant relationships when anthropomorphized (e.g. a heater). Additionally, managers are to consider the limitations to the type of characteristics that are transferrable and those that are not. This paper finds that there are suggestions pointing towards the transference of general human characteristics but not of more specific ones and of roles.
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First, it may be that people perceive positive associations, such as partners, stronger than those of servants. As a result, it may be that the characteristics that people with a higher flaw acceptance among friends have a general higher liking of products and that they may have difficulties between identifying partner and servant roles. This shows that despite telling people that a product is a servant, they may perceive an anthropomorphic product as a partner automatically. This would limit the types of relationships that one can transfer to products. Additionally, the relationship between use and the liking of products may suggest that despite making products anthropomorphic, people continue to look for appearance and functionality in products, rather than for personality and character.
The effects of these findings suggest that anthropomorphism either does not work as well for servants as it does for partners, or people have difficulties looking past the
appearance and functionality of a product. Therefore, despite recognizing personal characteristics, the use of the products continues to be more significant than the type of relationship.
Finally, the robustness tests have shown that the effect of partner versus servant relationship is significant for high-use individuals, namely that partner products are liked more than servant products. This is an important consideration, while it is beyond the scope of this paper, may provide indications that to further understand the effects of
anthropomorphism on flaws, different people may be affected by it to different degrees. It therefore would be interesting to identify factors that would indeed cause
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perceived as such. It therefore would be helpful to further investigate when flaws are perceived as such.
Limitations
This research has a number of limitations that may be useful to note for future
researchers. Firstly, the manipulation of the relationship type and the flaw did not seem to have successfully come across to the respondents. This can be due to the differences in personal interpretations of the text added to the product in the survey, as well as different views on the categorization of flaw. Alternatively, the respondents could be primed, asking them to think of this product in a particular role or relationship prior to answering the questions. This would have certainly benefitted this research and provided it with a more powerful tool to explore the effect of the relationships on flaw acceptance, as it would ensure that the relationships types came across properly.
Secondly, including no flaw conditions for Partner and Servant relationships could have provided valuable insight into the nature of the relationships between the person and the product, and would be a valuable comparison point of the flawed conditions for the same relationships, since it would not only allow to test for the general tendencies in liking of Partners and Servants, but would also allow for testing the moderating effect of the relationship type on liking.
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liking of the product in the survey. Therefore, future researchers on this topic are advised to choose another, more taste-neutral product type.
Recommendations for future research
Firstly, it appears that different relationship types could be used in further research in order to explore whether there is any type of relationship at all that would impact the acceptance of flaws in products, and that would be easier to transfer to the product. Since there are multiple frameworks referring to the relationship between the brand and a person, it would be appropriate to look into them.
Secondly, since the predominant majority of respondents in this study are US Americans, it would be reasonable to assume that including other cultures into the study would have provided the researcher with a broader picture. Culture plays an important role in interpersonal relationships (Gudykunst, & Matsumoto, 1996) as well as general
preference for certain product types (Zhang, 1996).
Conclusion
Concluding, this paper set out to analyze whether there are differences in the ways that anthropomorphism can be used to increase the liking of flawed product. The research was based on previous research suggesting that the liking of flawed product can be
30
Statistics from official organizations show the importance of waste reduction, especially when the waste is not functional.
In doing so, a questionnaire was built where respondents were presented with either a flawed product or one without flaws and either anthropomorphized or not
anthropomorphized products. Thereafter, the liking was tested on four different levels, namely liking, purchase intention, enjoyment and quality perception. The tests compared anthropomorphic and flawed products to not anthropomorphic and flawed products and found no significant difference. Furthermore, it tested whether there is a significant effect of the type of relationship, namely partner versus servant. All tests were insignificant largely contradicting previous research. However, during the robustness tests, it become clear that it is important to consider factors, in this case frequency of use, when assessing the
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Oxford Dictionary
38 Appendices
Appendix 1: Cryptic Cosmetics Junkyard Sale
Source: https://crypticcosmetics.com/collections/junkyard-sale
Appendix 2: Questionnaire (example for the No Anthropomorphism – No Flaw condition)
39 How much do you like this backpack?
Not at all Very much
How likely are you to purchase this backpack if you saw it in a store?
Not at all Very much
How much would you enjoy wearing this backpack?
Not at all Very much
To what extent do you think this backpack is of high quality?
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Did you imagine this product to have feelings upon first reading the description?
Not at all Very much
Do you think this product has free will/agency?
Not at all Very much
Please indicate to what extent you agree with the following statements. Strongly disagre e Disagre e Somewha t disagree Neither agree nor disagre e Somewha t agree Agre e Strongl y agree I accept my friends’ imperfections . Subordinates should have little to no flaws.
Do you normally use backpacks?
No, never Yes, frequently
What is your gender? Male
Female Other
What is your nationality?
Appendix 3: Graphic representations of the product
1 Flaw condition
Appendix 4: Descriptions of the product No Anthropomorphism – No
Flaw
This is a BeBe backpack. It has a substantial storage capacity and a built-in power bank for charging various devices.
No Anthropomorphism - Flaw This is a BeBe backpack. It has a substantial storage capacity and a built-in power bank for charging various devices. Please note, on the pocket on the right side of the backpack, the color of the zipper is slightly different from others: It is grey instead of black (see rightmost photo).
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companion to you on your journey! Please note, on the right side of the backpack the color of the zipper is slightly different from others: it is grey instead of black.
Servant - Flaw Hi, my name is BeBe. I am a backpack. I will hold all of the things for you and carry them around! Moreover, I have a built-in power bank, so I can charge all of your devices for you! I will work very hard for you and will not disappoint! Please note, on the right side of the backpack the color of the zipper is slightly different from others: it is grey instead of black.
Appendix 5 – Demographics: Age, Gender, Nationality
3 Appendix 7 Hypothesis 1 and 2 Contrasts
5 Appendix 10 Robustness check – Low Use
