Biliciler, Raghunathan, and Ward evaluated how disorder influences product assessments. They report that “an advertisement for kitchen tools might display the tools alongside various ingredients, or an advertisement for a bookstore might showcase pictures of the store’s interior. One underlying visual characteristic of such images is the degree of ‘entropy’—or disorder—in their content. . . . we find that while high-entropy images shift consumers’ temporal focus to the past, low-entropy images shift their temporal focus to the future. These entropy-induced shifts in temporal focus influence consumers’ decisions. . . . consumers evaluate past-related (e.g., vintage) products more favorably when they are accompanied by high-entropy images and future-related (e.g., futuristic) products more favorably when they are accompanied by low-entropy images.”
Gunes Biliciler, Rajagopal Raghunathan, and Adrian Ward. 2022. “Consumers as Naïve Physicists: How Visual Entropy Cues Shift Temporal Focus and Influence Product Evaluations.” Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 48, no. 6, pp. 1010-1031, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucab042