Facing Dominance: Anthropomorphism and the Effect of Product Face Ratio on Consumer Preference

Abstract

A product’s front face (e.g., a watch face or car front) is typically the first point of contact and a key determinant of a consumer’s initial impression about the product. Drawing on evolutionary accounts of human face perception suggesting that the face width-to-height ratio (fWHR: bizygomatic width divided by upper-face height) can signal dominance and affect its overall evaluation, this research is based on the premise that product faces are perceived in much the same way as human faces. Five experiments tested this premise. Results suggest that like human faces, product faces with high (vs. low) fWHR are perceived as more dominant. However, while human faces with high fWHR are liked less, product faces with high fWHR are liked more as revealed by consumer preference and willingness-to-pay scores. The greater preference for the high fWHR product faces is motivated by the consumers’ desire to enhance and signal their own dominant status as evidenced by the moderating effects of type of goal and of usage context. Brand managers and product designers may be particularly interested in these findings since a simple design feature can have potentially significant marketplace impact, as was also confirmed by the field data obtained from secondary sources.

Brands as Rivals: Consumer Pursuit of Distinctiveness and the Role of Brand Anthropomorphism

“…However, simply imbuing products with humanlike traits does not always improve evaluations. The attributes of the consumer, the nature of the context, and brand features impact the valence of the anthropomorphism influence (Maeng and Aggarwal 2018;Puzakova and Kwak 2017).…”

The 3 C's of anthropomorphism: Connection, comprehension, and competition

“…Another human facial feature that translates into product perception is face width‐to‐height ratio, where higher ratios convey greater dominance (Maeng & Aggarwal, ). Online participants were willing to pay more to rent cars with higher face width‐to‐height ratios, an effect driven by how dominant they perceived the cars to be, but this effect was attenuated when an affiliation (vs. dominance) goal was activated.…”

“…These boundary conditions illustrate that product faces with high face height‐to‐width ratios are interpreted as more dominant and preferred only when the consumption context calls for displays of dominance. An analysis of car manufacturers doing business in the United States revealed that car models with higher face‐to‐width ratios were also priced higher, suggesting that car manufacturers priced their products to take advantage of consumers’ willingness to pay more for cars with dominant faces (Maeng & Aggarwal, ).…”

“…Moreover, cars and cellphones are publicly used, so consumers may see them as extensions of themselves and forms of self‐expression (Belk, ; Bodner & Prelec, ). Consumers’ attraction to these types of products is often driven by the product's ability to help its owner signal desirable traits to others, as when consumers prefer car faces that express dominance through high width‐to‐height ratios (Maeng & Aggarwal, ). This stands in contrast to the interpersonal considerations that usually govern preferences for other people (Goodwin, Piazza, & Rozin, ) and often lead to negative responses to dominant‐looking human faces (Carré, McCormick, & Mondloch, ; Stirrat & Perrett, ).…”

Trust in AI Agent: A Systematic Review of Facial Anthropomorphic Trustworthiness for Social Robot Design

“…The reason why people seem to be ready to perceive and process faces in objects lie in human evolutionary adaptation: the human face is a salient evolutionary and attention-catching stimuli that would be processed simultaneously [ 24 ]. When it comes to evaluating a robot, unlike simply intending to look for the resemblance to a human face, people could perceive concrete facial traits or expressions in robot by aligning particular robot features with human characteristics and making the analogy [ 10 , 11 , 25 ].…”