Supervisor: Dr. Jing Wan Co-assessor: Dr. Marijke Leliveld

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UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN

FACULTY OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS

‘Can anthropomorphism influence aspects of market transactions?’ A research on the relation between anthropomorphized products and bargaining in market

transactions, explained by the existence of moral outrage.

Master Thesis, MSc. Marketing 15th_{January 2018}

Louiza Chroni S3237648 Heinsiusstraat 127

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Abstract

This dissertation assesses the impact of product anthropomorphism on bargaining and price acceptance. It was hypothesized that if a product is anthropomorphized, the willingness to accept the asking price would increase and the willingness to bargain would decrease, compared to non-anthropomorphized product. Moreover, it was hypothesized that moral outrage would mediate these relationships in such a way that the more moral outrage people feel, the more willing they would be to pay the asking price and the less willing they would be to negotiate on the price of the product. The effect of product anthropomorphism on bargaining and price acceptance was

supported but moral outrage did not mediate these relationships. Possible explanations of the results were discussed, as well as implications, limitations and suggestions for future research.

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Introduction

Price negotiations were widely used for setting the prices of products and services throughout most of the history. At the end of the nineteenth century, the development of large scale retailing caused the emergence of fixed-price policies. Fixed-price means that there is one price for all the buyers. Today, that is the most common way for setting the prices in the marketplace (Kotler & Armstrong, 2010). However, some companies are using a new trend for setting the prices, which is called dynamic pricing. That includes constant adjustments of prices according to the characteristics and needs of the individual customer (Kotler & Armstrong, 2010). Furthermore, the type of market determines whether bargaining is permitted or not. As stated earlier, until now most of the traditional retailers do not permit negotiations over the price of their products, but in markets of stocks or fine art, bargaining is a common

phenomenon (Maes, Guttman & Moukas, 1999).

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There has been a lot of research on that domain. Research about general

background conditions and antecedent conditions that influence the outcome of price negotiations (Evans & Beltramini, 1987), research about the individual differences in negotiations (Elfenbein, 2015), research about conflict and fairness in negotiations (Molm, Collett & Schaefer, 2006) and many more.

An aspect that has not been investigated yet, as far as the influence that can have in price negotiations, is the phenomenon of anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is the tendency of people to imbue human characteristics in non-human entities and animals (Kiesler, 2006). It would be interesting to investigate this concept as today anthropomorphism is so commonly used in the market place. For instance, think about the Pillsbury Dough Boy and the Michelin Man. They are nonhuman brand endorsers that mimic the human form (Kiesler, 2006). Think about products whose design mimics the human form, such as the Koziol Pot Scrubber or the smiling face of the front of a Volkswagen Bug (Kiesler, 2006). Think about posts on selling pages on Facebook and how sellers present inanimate products as like they have soul, feelings and they would sell them only to people that would treat them accordingly.

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secular values are confronted with sacred ones, are called taboo trade-offs (Tetlock, 2003). A growing literature investigates how people are unwilling to engage in taboo trade-offs (Baron and Spranca 1997; Fiske and Tetlock 1997; McGraw, Tetlock, and Kristel 2003). These trade-offs produce negative outcomes like moral distress, moral contamination, moral outrage, decision avoidance, and decision refusal (Tetlock, et al. 2000; McGraw and Tetlock 2005).

Consequently, we can conclude that anthropomorphizing a product gives to it human form or attributes and it is perceived as something human. So, in a trade-off with an anthropomorphized product, wouldn’t it feel bad and immoral to negotiate over price? Wouldn’t it feel more right to simply accept the asking price or not, but not to think so much in monetary terms? As when we use secular values (money) for trading sacred ones (humans), we feel moral outraged. Thus, this study aims to

examine in what way product anthropomorphism can influence the bargaining process and how moral outrage can mediate this relationship.

Market transactions and Bargaining

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services is noteworthy, as in the cases of buying or selling houses and automobiles (Evans & Beltramini, 1987).Or for instance, in the cases of garage sales and flea markets and in a variety of other transactions that can be characterized by a give and take process between the two parties (Pennington 1968). Evans (1963) was the first who stated that ‘the ‘sale’ is a social situation involving two persons. The interactions of the two persons in turn depends upon the economic, social, physical, and

personality characteristics of each of them’ (p.76).

In their book Rubin and Brown (2013), define bargaining as the process in which two or more parties attempt to settle what each shall give and take in a transaction between them. Thereinafter, they describe some of the general characteristics of bargaining relationships, which can be summarized in the following:

1. Involvement of two parties at least is required. 2. The parties have a conflict of interest.

3. The parties are temporarily joined together in a voluntary relationship. 4. An exchange of one or more specific resources takes place.

5. During the exchange, the one party makes offers and the other party evaluates them and continues with concessions and counteroffers (Rubin & Brown, 2013).

The first offer that the seller will make is of great importance for the development and the outcome of the bargaining process. As Arnold (1999) mentions, in markets where prices are negotiable, the asking price is considered “the starting point for the market mechanism which establishes a transaction price.” The asking price attracts potential customers and is also considered as the first offer of the seller which initiates the negotiation process (Arnold, 1999).

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uncertainty distinguishes a purchase where people can bargain from a non-bargaining purchase. When a product has a fixed price, the buyer has access to information to proceed with the purchase and can choose also from other retailers. On the other hand, in the bargaining purchase the buyer has no information but the initial offer from the seller could be considered as information about the product, like in the non-

bargaining purchase (Brucks & Schurr, 1990). Concequently, the asking price or the first offer of the seller is something crucial for the evolution of the bargaining process. But what else can affect the bargaining process? In their paper, Evans and

Beltramini (1987), developed a theoretical model of consumer negotiating pricing. According to this model, there are quite a lot of conditions that can have an impact on the orientation of the price negotiation, which affects the outcome of the negotiation. In more detail, there are general background conditions like negotiation expertise, attitude between parties, psychological characteristics of the negotiator. There are antecedent conditions such as perceived outcome expectations, incentives to initiate negotiation and perceived power in relationship. Finally, there are concurrent conditions like the number of parties, third parties, stress, situational complexity. (Evans & Beltramini,1987). In this research we are going to test what will be the outcome of a bargaining process, when the product that takes part in the bargaining is anthropomorphized.

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism springs from the Greek words ánthrōpos (ἄνθρωπος, lit.

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phenomenon where people “imbue the imagined or real behavior of nonhuman agents with humanlike characteristics, motivations, intentions, and emotions.” (Epley, Waytz & Cacioppo, 2007:864).

Anthropomorphism was first came to light in the 6th Century B.C, (as cited in Lesher, 1992) when Xenophanes observed how gods had the tendency to look like their believers. Notably, he stated that Greek gods were light-skinned with blue eyes and African gods were dark-skinned and dark-eyed. What Xenophanes observed is the one way of anthropomorphizing which entails giving human characteristics to nonhuman entities. (Epley, Waytz & Cacioppo, 2007). The other way of anthropomorphizing; that is to imbue mind, to give intentions, feelings and emotions to inanimate entities, was reflected by the fables of the ancient Greek fabulist and storyteller, named Aesop. It is about stories with anthropomorphized animals as main characters, taken out of everyday life, with admirable simplicity and unattainable teaching. (Wan &

Aggarwal, 2015).

Today people are becoming more and more familiar with the concept of anthropomorphism as there is everywhere in their lives. Kids are exposed to anthropomorphism from an early age, as a great deal of animation series present anthropomorphized characters. (eg. Disneys characters; such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and Looney Tunes characters such as Bugs Bunny and Tweety) (Wan & Aggarwal, 2015).

Research on human perception of possessions (Wallendorf, Belk and Heisley 1988) indicates that humans easily attribute humanlike qualities and attributions to

nonhuman entities (Kiesler, 2006). Moreover, the resemblance of the

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according to Aggarwal and McGill (2007), product anthropomorphism has a strong outcome on the way this product is perceived in the consumer’s mind which can influence the product’s success. All these have led marketers and advertisers to imbue brands with human attributes, in order to activate the human schema in consumer’s mind, that will increase the possibility of anthropomorphizing the brand. For instance, think of the Pillsbury Dough Boy, the Michelin Man, Uncle Bens and other brand endorsers that marketers have imbued with human attributes. In addition, advertisers and brand consultants often mimic the human schema in their logos, like TiVo and the Mac startup icon (Kiesler, 2006). After activating the human form in consumer’s minds, they have the ability to form strong relationships with the brands (Wan & Aggarwal, 2015). There are many kinds of relationships that a consumer can form with a brand such as casual acquaintances, friendships, committed partnerships, flings, one-night stands (Fournier 1998). The kind of relationship has a strong effect on their feeling towards the brand and the way they will treat it (Wan & Aggarwal, 2015). For example. Kevin the carrot is going to be used again this year by Aldi, after the great success of their last’s year Christmas campaign. Kevin the carrot helped Aldi grow sales by 15.1% and won “the hearts and minds” of consumers (Roderick, 2017). In other cases, anthropomorphizing products can have negative influence in the

relationship that consumers will form with the product. For instance, that is what managers of Pittsburg Zoo assumed and until 2004, the Pittsburgh Zoo did not publicly name its animals, fearing the public would think of wild animals as pets or people (Kiesler, 2006).

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Taboo trade-offs and Moral outrage

Many theories of judgement and choice are based on the condition that people make judgements and decisions as instinctive economists whose ultimate goal in life is to maximize their expected utility (Gilovich, Griffin & Kahneman, 2002; Kagel & Roth, 1995). This is of course a very difficult and demanding task, where people will have to deal with uncertainty, trade-offs and opportunity costs, in order to make the decision that will maximize their utility in competitive markets (McGraw & Tetlock, 2005).

There is a fundamental contradiction of social life that people confront. On the one hand, economists state that in this world of scarce resources, everything has a price. On the other hand, sociological observers claim that people treat some values as sacred and they cannot even think of trading them with money (Tetlock, 2003). Consequently, some of the trade-offs that people face are more difficult to be dealt with than others.

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precludes comparisons, trade-offs, or indeed any other mingling with bounded or secular values” (Tetlock, Kristel, Elson, Green, & Lerner, 2000, p. 853). Trading these sacred values with secular ones, like money, is considered disgraceful and therefore taboo (Tetlock, 2003). For example, taboo trade-offs could be buying and selling human organs or buying and selling adoption rights for orphans (McGraw, Tetlock, 2005). According to previous research, people are trying to preserve sacred values from being contaminated by trade-offs with monetized values. In addition, they counteract with moral outrage when they are faced with such trade-offs. Remarkable is the fact that the taboo trade-off does not have necessarily to take place; even the mere thought of trading sacred values with secular ones will arouse negative emotions and moral outrage ( Tetlock, 2003)

According to Tetlock et al. 2000, “in many contexts, people are striving to achieve neither epistemic nor utilitarian goals, but rather, as prominent historical sociologists have argued ( Bell, 1976), are struggling to protect sacred values from secular encroachments by increasingly powerful societal trends toward market capitalism (and the attendant pressure to render everything fungible) and scientific naturalism (and the attendant pressure to pursue inquiry wherever it logically leads.”

According to Tetlock’s (et al. 2000) sacred value protection model (SVPM), “when sacred values come under secular assault, people struggle to protect their private selves and public identities from moral contamination by the impure thoughts and deeds implied in the taboo proposals” (Tetlock, 2003).

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enthusiastic support for norm and meta-norm enforcement” (which means punishing violators and those who hesitate to punish the violators) (Tetlock, 2003). Furthermore, solely contemplation of such a trade-off is considered as an insult and the more a person is thinking about the trade-off, the more increases the moral outrage of the society, even if at the end the person makes the right choice (Tetlock, 2003).

Conceptual model

This study aims to investigate the relationship between anthropomorphism and transactions in the marketplace. As already has been mentioned, there are markets where the price is not fixed and both the seller and buyer of the product can contribute to the shaping of the final price by bargaining or bidding. As mentioned earlier, people are intuitive economists who aim to maximize their utility; a defining characteristic of homo economicus is the ability to make trade-offs efficiently (McGraw & Tetlock, 2005). Consequently, it is expected that the buyer will negotiate for a lower price or will offer money that will maximize his/her utility, by keeping the costs as low as possible. But, according to literature there are also noneconomic motives for entering a price negotiation. People are part of the society and they can use bargaining to satisfy social needs or they act accordingly to social norms (Jones, Trocchia, & Mothersbaugh, 1997).

But what happens when the exchange that people are about to make is considered immoral and taboo trade-off? Taboo trade-offs exist when people attempt to

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(Baron and Spranca 1997; Fiske and Tetlock 1997; McGraw, Tetlock, and Kristel 2003) and at the same time, taboo trade-offs lead to decision avoidance, decision refusal and negative effects of moral distress and moral outrage (Tetlock, et al. 2000; McGraw and Tetlock 2005). This can lead us to the hypothesis that when people are faced with taboo trade –offs they are unwilling to procced to the exchanges and price negotiations.

At the same time, when products are anthropomorphized, as noted earlier, they are given not only human form but also intentions, emotions, motivations (Epley, Waytz & Cacioppo, 2007). Additionally, anthropomorphizing inanimate entities “grants nonhuman agents moral regard, conferring rights such as freedom and autonomy” (Waytz, Cacioppo & Epley, 2010). Subsequently, in the minds of people they could be treated as humans.

From all the above results the following syllogism: When we anthropomorphize a product, which is part of a price negotiation, is like exchanging secular values (money) with sacred (human). This is considered taboo trade –off. In such a case, people respond with feelings of moral outrage and it is expected to be unwilling to negotiate price. This reasoning could be supported by McGraw, Davis,Scott and Tetlock (2016), who found that when purchasing items symbolic of love (sacred value), respondents were less willing to negotiate the price.

So, the following hypotheses are formed:

H1a: If a product is anthropomorphized, the willingness to bargain will decrease compared to non-anthropomorphized product.

H1b: Consumers will be more willing to pay the asking price compared if a product is anthropomorphized versus non-anthropomorphized.

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is mediated by moral outrage, such that the more moral outrage people feel, the less consumers are willing to bargain.

H2b: The relationship between product anthropomorphism and willingness to pay the asking price is mediated by moral outrage, such that the more moral outrage people feel, the more consumers are willing to pay the asking price.

(see Figure 1. Below)

FIGURE 1. Conceptual Model

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Methodology

Participants and Design

A total of 160 residents of Groningen city (46.9 % male and 53.1% female, mean age =29.18) participated voluntarily in this research. Participants were found in University’s canteens, Libraries and in various central spots of the city, in an attempt to cover a wide range of age, culture and socioeconomic background.

The study required participants to look carefully through a print out of a Facebook post about selling a sofa and then answer some questions. The

questionnaires were the same for all participants, whereas the Facebook ad posting in a separate sheet was different for the anthropomorphism and non-anthropomorphism case. In a between-subjects design, participants were randomly assigned to either the anthropomorphized condition or the non-anthropomorphized condition, by giving the sheet with the corresponding Facebook post, in each case. When respondents were in close distance to one another, the sheet with the same Facebook post was distributed, in order to secure that they were not exposed to both conditions. In addition, it was made sure that respondents did not discuss with each other during the survey, as they should not influence the answers of each other. After collecting the questionnaires, the ones that were answered based on the anthropomorphized condition were marked with an ‘A’.

Anthropomorphism was manipulated with a framing method adopted from Aggarwal and McGill (2007). To be more specific, in the anthropomorphism

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embrace 2 to 3 people”) and introduced itself in a first-person language (e.g., “Hi! I am Willy the sofa! Let’s hang out”). On the other hand, in the non-

anthropomorphism condition, the product was described in third-person language mentioning its characteristics in a more technical way (e.g., “dimensions: 180x100 cm, model: SPK547”; see Appendix A). Furthermore, in the anthropomorphism condition, the sofa had an embedded face, as prior research has shown that putting a human-like face on nonhuman objects increases the tendency to anthropomorphize the objects (Puzakova et al. 2013).

Proceeding, the dependent variable was measured. In the add post it was

mentioned that the sofa had been bought for 300 € and the selling price (asking price) was 100€. The participants had to answer questions in a 7- point Likert scale

regarding their willingness to accept the asking price and their willingness to enter a negotiation about the price of the sofa they had previously seen. Moreover, they were asked to specify the amount of money that they would offer for the sofa in terms of the negotiation process, meaning to make an offer smaller than the asking price. Then, they had to answer a question about their willingness to keep on bidding if their first offer was refused (1 = not at all willing, 7 = very willing) and give a second offer if they wished.

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agree with the following statement... I would rather not purchase this sofa than to negotiate on the price”.

After that, moral outrage was measured. Outrage-related emotions were derived from research on the sacred value protection model (Tetlock, 2002; Tetlock et al., 2000), as a means to measure moral outrage. Specifically, participants had to indicate on a 7- point Likert scale to what extent they experienced specific emotions, while they were thinking whether or not they wanted to negotiate on the price of the sofa. Tetlock et al 2000, measured outrage with items such as angry, upset, insulted, negative, immoral, unfair, disgusted, saddened, outraged, or disappointed. Several of these emotions were adjusted to this survey and some positive feelings were added, in order to be more neutral (e.g., “upset, saddened, positive, negative, unfair,

enthusiastic, disappointed”; see Appendix A).

Finally, at the end of the survey participants had to answer some demographic questions about their age, gender and level of English fluency.

Results

Descriptive statistics

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English and to have accurate results, participants need to understand in depth the information given, the questions and the options that they must choose from for each question. Thus, I chose to exclude from the analysis these 3 people as they might have not a good understanding of the questions. Consequently, the final number of

participants consists of 157 people (N=157), of which 74 are male (47.1%) and 83 are female (52.9%), with a mean age of (M= 28.2, SD= 8.6059 and M= 29.9, SD= 9.1246 respectively).

Formal Analysis

In order to test the hypothesis 1a: “If a product is anthropomorphized, the

willingness to bargain will decrease compared to non-anthropomorphized product”, a one-way ANOVA was conducted. The analysis revealed significant evidence against the null hypothesis (H0: Manthr=Mnanthr). The analysis revealed that there is a significant main effect of anthropomorphism on the willingness to bargain (F(1,155)=18.89, t value= 26.604, p< 0.05). More specifically, the estimated

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FIGURE 3. Differences in means for bargaining (95% confidence interval)

Meaning that participants expressed lower willingness to bargain for the

anthropomorphized product compared with the non-anthropomorphized product. You can find the coefficients of the ANOVA and the Model Diagnostic in Appendix B, Table 1, Plot 1.

To test hypothesis 1b: “Consumers will be more willing to pay the asking price compared to if a product is anthropomorphized versus not anthropomorphized)”, we conducted another one-way ANOVA. The answers of the first question of the

questionnaire were used for testing this hypothesis, where participants indicated on a 7-point Likert scale how likely they would be to pay the asking price of the sofa (1=not at all likely, 7= extremely likely). The analysis revealed that there is a significant effect of anthropomorphism on the acceptance of the asking price

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condition (4.3975, SE=0.2550) (See figure 4 below).

FIGURE 4. Differences in the means for price acceptance

This means that people were more willing to accept the asking price of the sofa on the anthropomorphized condition compared to the non- anthropomorphized condition. You can find the coefficients of the ANOVA and the Model Diagnostic in Appendix B, Table 2, Plot 2.

Moving with our analysis, the Mokken model was used for exploratory reasons. This cumulative, non-parametric model that belongs to Item Response Theory (IRT) was used to check whether questions 6-10 can be measurement of the latent variable appropriateness of bargaining and 11-17 can be considered as a measure of the latent variable moral outrage. The Mokken scale analysis has been applied after we

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questions 6-10, so reverse coding was used. Questions 13 and 17 were the feelings: ‘positive’ and ‘enthusiastic’, that needed to be transformed as the rest feelings that indicate moral outrage were negative. The results showed for both groups of questions that the questions belong to one scale. The same hypothesis was tested formally with Principal Component Analysis. In PCA the number of components that have

eigenvalue bigger that 1 can be chosen. For questions 6-10 only one component has eigenvalue>1 and explains the 70% of the variance, which means that these questions can form one question. For questions 11-17 there are two components that have eigenvalue>1 but it will be used the one that explains the 50% of the variance, so these questions can also form one question (see Appendix B, Tables 3,4 and plots 3,4).

In order to check hypothesis 2a: “The relationship between product

anthropomorphism and willingness to bargain is mediated by moral outrage, such that the more moral outrage people feel, the less consumers are willing to bargain”, we conducted mediation analysis. This mediation model seeks to identify and explain the mechanism that underlies the observed relationship between product

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To test hypothesis 2b: “The relationship between product anthropomorphism and willingness to pay the asking price is mediated by moral outrage, such that the more moral outrage people feel, the more consumers are willing to pay the asking price”, another mediation analysis was conducted. The mediation model proposes that product anthropomorphism influences the level of moral outrage that people feel, which in turn influences the willingness to accept the asking price of the sofa (see also figure 1 below). The analysis showed that the mediation effect is not significant (ACME=0.01191, 95% CI [ -0.05532, 0.10], p = 0.708>0.05) (see Appendix C, Table 2). Meaning that the feelings of moral outrage that people experienced do not explain the relationship between anthropomorphism and willingness to accept the asking price of the sofa. Thus, hypothesis 2b is rejected.

An ANOVA revealed that there is no significant difference on the relationship of anthropomorphism and moral outrage (F (1,155) =1.665, p>0.05) This means that there was not significant difference on the moral outrage, between the people who were exposed to the anthropomorphized product and the non-anthropomorphized product (see Appendix C, Table 3).

FIGURE 2. The mediation model

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As it was stated earlier, questions from 6-10 can be regarded as one question which show beliefs about the appropriateness of bargaining and the appropriateness of bargaining. A mediation analysis was conducted in order to check whether this

variable could explain the relationship between anthropomorphism and bargaining. The results showed that these beliefs about the appropriateness of bargaining significantly mediate the relationship between product anthropomorphism and willingness to bargain (ACME=-0.980, 95% CI [-1.391, -0.59 ], p<0.05). Moreover, the appropriateness of bargaining mediates the 80% of the total effect that

anthropomorphism has on the willingness to bargain (Prop. Mediated=0.806) (see Appendix C, Table 4)

A second mediation was conducted to test whether appropriateness of bargaining mediates also the relationship between anthropomorphism and price acceptance. The mediation model revealed that appropriateness of bargaining significantly mediates the relationship between anthropomorphism and willingness to accept the asking price (ACME= 0.354, 95% CI [0.135, 0.63], p<0.05). The appropriateness of bargaining mediates the 40% of the total effect that anthropomorphism has on the willingness to accept the asking price (Prop. Mediated= 0.467) (see Appendix C, Table 5)

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anthropomorphized, where the appropriateness of bargaining is bigger.

Finally, there were some questions in the questionnaire that were not included in the analysis as it seemed that were very confusing. These were questions 3,4 and 5 and their aim was to check the amount of money that people would offer for the sofa in the terms of the bargaining process and whether participants would keep on bidding even if their first offer was rejected. Apparently, the questions were not formed

clearly as many respondents did not understand that this bidding process should have taken place under the umbrella of bargaining and gave offers bigger than the asking price. For example, the asking price was 100€ and participant 62 filled in 200€ as a first offer, participant 64 offered 175€ etc. Moreover, since participants were

answering the questions under the presence of the researcher, it was noticed that most of them had a hard time answering those questions. For that reasons, these questions were excluded from the analysis.

Summary of the results

Our first hypothesis, H1a, was confirmed. The main finding of the thesis is that product anthropomorphism has an effect on the bargaining process. Namely, when a product is anthropomorphized people were less willing to negotiate on the price of the product compared to when the product was not anthropomorphized.

The second hypothesis, H1b, did get supported. When a product is

anthropomorphized people were more willing to accept the asking price, compared with when the product was not anthropomorphized.

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not mediate the effect of anthropomorphism neither on the willingness to bargain nor on the willingness to accept the asking price.

Finally, the appropriateness of bargaining was considered as a possible mediator. It was found that the appropriateness of bargaining mediates the relationship between product anthropomorphism and willingness to bargain. When a product is

anthropomorphized the appropriateness of bargaining is less which leads people to be less willing to bargain, compared to when the product is not anthropomorphized. Furthermore, the appropriateness of bargaining also mediates the relationship between product anthropomorphism and willingness to accept the asking price. When a

product is anthropomorphized the appropriateness of bargaining is less which leads people to be more willing to accept the asking price, compared to when the product is not-anthropomorphized.

General Discussion

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case of the non-anthropomorphized sofa. This finding confirms hypothesis 1b which is partly connected with hypothesis 1a, as accepting the asking price of the sofa basically means that there is no room for bargaining. In addition, this relationship is also not explained by the feelings of moral outrage and hypothesis 2b is rejected. Consequently, moral outrage is not a mediator neither for the case of price negotiation nor for the case of price acceptance. One explanation could be that moral outrage is a very subtle feeling and the participants did not really experience that. It might be very well the case that when the product was anthropomorphized, people perceived the relationship as taboo trade-off but did not experience this extreme feeling of moral outrage.

In fact, moral outrage might have not explained the relationship between product anthropomorphism and bargaining, acceptance of the asking price but another

variable did. The appropriateness of bargaining, which was measured by questions 6-10 was the mediator of our model. The mediation analysis revealed that when a product is anthropomorphized, people find bargaining less appropriate compared to when the product is not anthropomorphized. This can explain what was mentioned earlier. That people might perceive the trade-off as taboo, as something not right to do but simply, not to feel moral outraged. In turn, this leads them to be more willing to accept the asking price and less willing to bargain compared to the

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Limitations and Implications

In this research, like in any other research, there are some limitations that may be valuable to future researchers. The mediation effect of moral outrage did not take place. The scales of moral outrage were adapted from previous literature (Tetlock et al., 2000). It might be the case that these scales were not adapted in the right way. Maybe the selected feelings were not suitable for a bargaining process.

An aspect that was not taken into consideration and would worth investigation by future researchers is the aspect of culture. As literature suggests, culture plays a very important role in the bargaining process. For some cultures, bargaining is a tradition and way of living (Sood, 2017). It would be very interesting to test in that case which effect would drive people’s behavior; beliefs about the appropriateness of the

negotiation or their tradition on negotiating on the price of the products? Would the effect of anthropomorphism be stronger that the effect of their tendency to bargain? Finally, this study revealed noteworthy findings that can be used in the market transaction field. The finding that anthropomorphism can lead people to accept the asking price of a product that is being sold or to decrease their willingness to

negotiate on its price, is of great importance for the sellers. In second-hand markets, in online auction pages and in any other type of market where price negotiations are permitted, sellers can use anthropomorphism as a technique to avoid bargaining. This finding can also be used by marketers, as anthropomorphized products lead to

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Conclusion

Even though some hypotheses were not significant, the outcomes of this study are worth mentioning. It was found that product anthropomorphism increases the

willingness to accept the asking price and decreases the willingness to bargain, compared to non- anthropomorphism. Moral outrage might not have mediated this relationship as it was hypothesized, but the appropriateness of bargaining worked as a mediator.I hope that the results of this study, as well as its limitations and suggestions for further research may pave the way for future research.

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Appendix A

The Facebook post that was distributed in the non- anthropomorphism case (left) and in the anthropomorphism case (right):

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36 Questionnaire

Dear participant,

I would like to thank you in advance for participating in this survey for my Master’s thesis.

The questionnaire will take 5 minutes of your time.

Try to reply without hesitation, there are no right or wrong answers.

This research is anonymous, but if you like to receive the results of the study,

you can leave your email address at the end of the survey.

Thank you for your contribution in this research.

Kind Regards,

Louiza Chroni

Email: l.chroni@student.rug.nl

Imagine that you are interested in buying a second-hand sofa. As you are searching on a

Facebook selling page, you come across this post:

You can find the ad posting in the sheet I just gave you.

Please, look carefully through the ad and answer the following questions by marking the box

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o

Extremely unlikely (1)

o

Moderately unlikely (2)

o

Slightly unlikely (3)

o

Neither likely nor unlikely (4)

o

Slightly likely (5)

o

Moderately likely (6)

o

Extremely likely (7)

2. How likely are you to negotiate for the price of the sofa? (i.e. give a lower offer than the asking price)

o

Slightly likely (5)

o

3. How much money would you offer for the sofa? Please write your answer in the space below. (Indicate in €)

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4. If your first offer was rejected by the seller...How likely are you to give a second offer?

o

Slightly likely (5)

o

5. If yes, how much would you offer now? If no, you can leave this space blank.

6. To what extent do you think it’s appropriate to negotiate on the price of this sofa?

7. Does it feel right to negotiate on the price of this sofa?

o

Extremely inappropriate (1)

o

Moderately inappropriate (2)

o

Slightly inappropriate (3)

o

Neither appropriate nor inappropriate (4)

o

Slightly appropriate (5)

o

Moderately appropriate (6)

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o

Definitely not (1)

o

Not (2)

o

Probably not (3)

o

Might or might not (4)

o

Probably yes (5)

o

Yes (6)

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8. To what extent do you agree with the following statement... “I would rather NOT purchase this sofa than to negotiate on the price.”

o

Strongly disagree (1)

o

Disagree (2)

o

Somewhat disagree (3)

o

Neither agree nor disagree (4)

o

Somewhat agree (5)

o

Agree (6)

o

Strongly agree (7)

9. To what extent do you think it’s appropriate to offer a price lower than the asking price for this sofa?

o

Extremely inappropriate (1)

o

Moderately inappropriate (2)

o

Slightly inappropriate (3)

o

Neither appropriate nor inappropriate (4)

o

Slightly appropriate (5)

o

Moderately appropriate (6)

o

Extremely appropriate (7)

10. Would it feel right to give a low-ball offer for this sofa? (e.g. an amount significantly below the asking price)

o

Definitely not (1)

o

Not (2)

o

Probably not (3)

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o

Probably yes (5)

o

Yes (6)

o

Definitely yes (7)

Please indicate to what extent you experienced these emotions while you considered whether or not you wanted to negotiate on the price of the sofa.

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Finally, we would like you to answer these questions about yourself:

What is your age?

________________________________________________________________

What is your gender?

o

Male (1)

o

Female (2)

o

Other (3)

In your opinion, what is the level of your English fluency?

o

Not at all fluent (1)

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Appendix B

Formal Analysis

Coefficients

Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)

(Intercept) 4.3671 0.1962 22.258 < 2e-16

face_factno 1.2098 0.2784 4.346 2.5e-05

Residual standard error: 1.744 on 155 degrees of freedom

Multiple R-squared: 0.1086

Adjusted R-squared: 0.1029

F-statistic: 18.89 on 1 and 155 DF

p-value: 2.496e-05

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PLOT 1. Diagnostic plots for the ANOVA of bargaining

Coefficients

(Intercept) 5.1646 0.1797 28.735 < 2e-16

face_factno -0.7671 0.2550 -3.008 0.00307

Residual standard error: 1.597 on 155 degrees of freedom

F-statistic: 9.051 on 1 and 155 DF

p-value: 0.003065

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PLOT 2. Diagnostic plots for the ANOVA of price acceptance

Importance of components: PC1 PC2 PC3 PC4 PC5 Standard deviation 1.8620 0.8068 0.6804 0.49972 0.41141 Proportion of Variance 0.6934 0.1302 0.0926 0.04994 0.03385 Cumulative Proportion 0.6934 0.8236 0.9162 0.96615 1.00000

eigenvalue variance.percent cumulative.variance.percent Dim.1 3.4671491 69.342982 69.34298

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46 Importance of components: PC1 PC2 PC3 PC4 PC5 PC6 PC7 Standard deviation 1.9201 1.1327 0.81963 0.64743 0.62073 0.57821 0.46865 Proportion of Variance 0.5267 0.1833 0.09597 0.05988 0.05504 0.04776 0.03138 Cumulative Proportion 0.5267 0.7100 0.80594 0.86582 0.92086 0.96862 1.00000

eigenvalue variance.percent cumulative.variance.percent

Dim.1 3.6867121 52.667316 52.66732 Dim.2 1.2830711 18.329587 70.99690 Dim.3 0.6717869 9.596956 80.59386 Dim.4 0.4191632 5.988046 86.58191 Dim.5 0.3853032 5.504332 92.08624 Dim.6 0.3343287 4.776124 96.86236 Dim.7 0.2196347 3.137639 100.00000

TABLE 4. PCA for questions 11-17

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Appendix C

Mediation Analysis

Causal Mediation Analysis

Quasi-Bayesian Confidence Intervals

Estimate 95% CI Lower 95% CI Upper p-value

ACME -0.1103 -0.3114 0.07 0.25

ADE -1.0973 -1.6115 -0.52 <2e-16

Total Effect -1.2076 -1.7491 -0.60 <2e-16

Prop. Mediated

0.0878 -0.0732 0.28 0.25

TABLE 1. Significance of mediation effect of moral outrage on bargaining

ACME 0.01191 -0.05532 0.10 0.708 ADE 0.75340 0.26055 1.23 0.002 Total Effect 0.76531 0.28745 1.24 0.002 Prop. Mediated 0.00841 -0.08494 0.16 0.706

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Coefficients:

(Intercept) -0.1986 0.2169 -0.915 0.361

face_fact_treattreatment 0.3947 0.3058 1.290 0.199

Residual standard error: 1.916 on 155 degrees of

freedom

F-statistic : 1.665 on 1 and 155 DF

p-value: 0.1988

TABLE 3. ANOVA between anthropomorphism and moral outrage

ACME -0.980 -1.391 -0.59 <2e-16

ADE -0.235 -0.680 0.20 0.28

Total Effect -1.216 -1.766 -0.65 <2e-16

Prop. Mediated

0.806 0.540 1.23 <2e-16

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ACME 0.354 0.135 0.63 <2e-16 ADE 0.406 -0.118 0.98 0.136 Total Effect 0.760 0.276 1.25 0.004 Prop. Mediated 0.467 0.143 1.36 0.004

TABLE 5. Significance of mediation effect of appropriateness of bargaining on price acceptance

Coefficients:

Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|) (Intercept) -0.6984 0.1962 -3.560 0.000493 *** face_fact_treattreatment 1.3879 0.2766 5.019 1.41e-06 *** ---

Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Residual standard error: 1.733 on 155 degrees of freedom Multiple R-squared: 0.1398, Adjusted R-squared: 0.1342 F-statistic: 25.19 on 1 and 155 DF, p-value: 1.412e-06

Supervisor: Dr. Jing Wan Co-assessor: Dr. Marijke Leliveld

Contents

Abstract

Introduction

Market transactions and Bargaining

Anthropomorphism

Taboo trade-offs and Moral outrage

Conceptual model

Methodology

Results

General Discussion

Limitations and Implications

Conclusion

References

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Appendix C