The Interactive Effects of Product Design and Environment Congruence on Consumers’ Cognitive and Affective Responses: An Abstract

Abstract

Product design plays a major role in drawing consumers’ attention to the product at the beginning of consumer-product interactions (Blijlevens et al. 2009; Crilly et al. 2004; Kreuzbauer and Malter 2005). Such interactions, however, do not occur in vacuum and external factor could also influence consumers’ perceptions of the product. While previous research suggests that environment congruence facilitates consumers’ positive evaluations of the product and thus the product’s environment must be aligned with the design elements embedded in the product (Berger and Fitzsimons 2008; Meyers-Levy and Tybout 1989; Wu et al. 2013), the generalizability of this idea is challenged in this study. More precisely, this work empirically investigates how product design cues, environment visual congruence, and their interaction may influence consumers’ aesthetic, affective, and behavioral responses. A lab experiments with a 2 (high-level design cues vs. low-level design cues) × 2 (congruent environment vs. non-congruent environment) between-subjects, full-factorial design was conducted to test the hypotheses using a digital camera as the stimulus. Ninety-one college students (56 males and 35 females) from a large public university in the United States were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions manipulating the independent variables. The three dependent variables (i.e., perceived aesthetic, affective response, and purchase intention) were then measured. The results overall support the notion that product design visual cues elicit more positive aesthetic and affective responses. Environment congruence, on the other hand, plays a moderating role; design cues elicit stronger consumer responses in a congruent environment, whereas no such effect was found in a non-congruent environment. In other words, for products with low-level design elements, the congruence of promotional environment may not be instrumental in eliciting more favorable consumer responses. From a theoretical standpoint, this study contributes to two distinct but related research streams: product design and environment congruence. From a practical standpoint, the findings have significant implications for product designers, retailers, and merchandising professionals. For instance, this investigation reveals under what conditions the degree of visual match between a product and its environment could help retailers to provide a more positive experience and increase their sales.