The present research examines how ambient scents affect consumers' spatial perceptions in retail environments, which in turn influence customers' feelings of power and, thus, product preference and purchasing behavior. Specifically, the authors demonstrate that in a warm-(vs. cool-) scented and thus perceptually more (vs. less) socially dense environment, people experience a greater (vs. lesser) need for power, which manifests in increased preference for and purchase of premium products and brands. This research extends knowledge on store atmospherics and customer experience management through the effects of ambient scent on spatial perceptions and builds on recent research on power in choice contexts.
Across a series of three studies, we demonstrate that the number of product units displayed on a package biases consumers' perceptions of product quantity (i.e., the number of snack items the package contains) and actual consumption. Specifically, we demonstrate that consumers use an anchoring heuristic to infer that packages that display a greater number of product units (e.g., 15 pretzels vs. 3 pretzels) have a higher product quantity inside. Importantly, we demonstrate that actual consumption of the food product follows this anchor judgment. The studies demonstrate that these effects are moderated by level of visual processing and that they are robust even in the presence of verbal information.
This article provides a new perspective on collaborative art as a transformational force to strengthen community and enhance well-being. We outline a best practices-based framework to foster community-based, collaborative art such as cocreated community murals. Specifically, we identify a strategic and successive process for collaborative art initiatives by integrating the academic literature on art, aesthetics, community, and consumer research together with the practices of arts organizations working to transform communities through participatory, cocreated art. The article highlights the contributions of this work to academic research, public policy, and community organizing efforts and outlines questions to encourage more researchers and practitioners to investigate the dynamics of collaborative art to transform communities.People have an intuitive desire to have art around. (Golden 2015) E veryday aesthetic experiences have a profound impact on people's daily lives and their "identity and view of the world" (Duncum 1999, 295; Saito 2007). Unlike "high art" that is exhibited inside a museum or on the walls of an art gallery, everyday aesthetics-community-based murals and sculptures-form the streetscape of daily life in a locality. These public artworks, often displayed on the exterior of a school, community center, or neighborhood business, are accessible to everyone in a community and can be experienced without the barriers of cost and class. Such public art initiatives can be transformative for a community, particularly if that community collaborates in the creation of the art and the artwork represents core community values. For example, Mural Arts Philadelphia (MAP; see app. C; apps. A-V are available online) engages Philadelphia neighborhoods in community-based collaborative art initiatives to transform otherwise empty walls in largely underserved neighborhoods into murals that portray community heroes, neighborhood stories, and innovative designs (Golden, Rice, and Kinney 2002). Community-based, collaborative art initiatives
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