Roose and colleagues studied how the position of horizons in images influence thought processes. They report that “when consumers adopt an abstract processing style (broad perspective), they attach more weight to the advantages of a remote situation . . . and they exhibit increased moral behavior . . . and willingness to pay. . . .
Trujillo and Howley looked at relationships between climate and crime levels; their findings indicate the importance of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) in Torrid Zones and of tailoring CPTED features to an area. The research team “investigates the relationship between weather and crime in Barranquilla, Colombia, a city in the Torrid Zone, which in contrast to more commonly studied temperate zones is hot and humid year-round.
Botner, Mishra, and Mishra link various types of sounds, when used in names, to perception of risk. The team found that “For decisions involving greater risk and reward for the consumer, marketing decision- makers may benefit from using more volatile names. That is, a risky financial portfolio targeting adventurous investors that seek high risk and reward could use a volatile name.
Stancato and Keltner have identified additional implications of feeling awed. They share that “Guided by prior work documenting that awe promotes humility, increases perceptions of uncertainty, and diminishes personal concerns . . . we tested the hypothesis that awe results in reduced conviction about one’s ideological attitudes. . . . participants induced to experience awe, relative to those feeling amusement or in a neutral control condition, expressed less conviction regarding their attitudes toward capital punishment. . . .
Park and Hadi evaluated links between cool temperatures and perceptions of luxury. They determined that “physical cold can indeed increase consumers’ perceptions of a product's status signaling and luxuriousness.
Arnal and teammates probed what sorts of sounds alarm humans. They found that “One strategy, exploited by alarm signals, consists in emitting fast but perceptible amplitude modulations in the roughness range (30–150 Hz). . . . Rough sounds synchronise activity throughout superior temporal regions, subcortical and cortical limbic areas, and the frontal cortex, a network classically involved in aversion processing.” Rough sounds from 40-80 Hz are especially unpleasant for us to hear. The 40-80 Hz range is where the frequencies of babies crying, human screams, and many alarms are found.
Tezer and Bodur evaluated the effects of environmentally responsible situations on how people feel. They determined that their “research explores how using a green product (e.g., a pair of headphones made from recycled materials) influences the enjoyment of the accompanying consumption experience (e.g., listening to music), even if consumers have not deliberately chosen or purchased the product. Five experiments in actual consumption settings revealed that using a green (vs.
De Bellis and colleagues investigated product customization. They report that “Mass customization interfaces typically guide consumers through the configuration process in a sequential manner, focusing on one product attribute after the other. . . . A series of large-scale field and experimental studies, conducted with Western and Eastern consumers, shows that matching the interface to consumers’ culture-specific processing style enhances the effectiveness of mass customization.
Pelowski and colleagues studied how gallery lighting influences appraisals and emotional experience of visual art. They report that when “Participants viewed a selection of original representational and abstract art under three different CCT [temperature] conditions. . . . The selected lighting temperatures were chosen based on an initial investigation of existing art museums within the Vienna area. . . . We also allowed the same participants to set the light temperature themselves in order to test hypotheses regarding what might be an ‘ideal’ lighting condition for art.
King and Auschaitrakul evaluated how patterns in the first letters of words in statements influence conclusions drawn; their findings are relevant when brand claims are presented, for example. The researchers determined that “consumers are able to unconsciously perceive the mere sequence of symbols contained in a brand claim, and . . . this sequence information influences judgments of truth.
