Scholarly Insights: AMA's digest of the latest findings from marketing's top researchers
Cost-conscious consumers tend to make
purchases based on necessity and practicality, choosing more utilitarian (functional)
options of both goods and services. But it turns out, with the right delivery,
advertisers can sway consumer preferences toward more hedonic (fun) choices and
even increase the amount consumers are willing to pay for them.
In a new study from the Journal of Marketing, authors Anne
Roggeveen and colleagues offer some powerful new findings showing that video (dynamic)
presentation formats consistently outperform still (static) images for products
and services marketed for fun, leisure, and entertainment.
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Like a free sample or trial, videos
can provide the consumer with an experiential interaction with products and
services. Videos, however, have the added benefit of allowing the marketer to
maximize the appeal of their marketed service or product through lighting,
make-up, music, and so forth. While some of these things still apply with
static representations, the dynamic quality of a video and its ability to more
closely simulate and frame an actual experience is much more immersive.
“The emergence of options
such as YouTube, Vine, and Instagram gives marketers a variety of tools for
displaying dynamic presentation formats. Recent social media measurements have
indicated that videos tend to be liked and shared more than text-based
updates,… and even brick-and-mortar retailers increasingly use display
technologies to expose shoppers to dynamic rather than static displays.”
There are certainly no shortage of options for the inventive marketer, and the
online medium provides a nearly endless palette on which to enact some of these
dynamic marketing strategies.
As the
chart shows, both utilitarian and hedonic products and services experience an
increase in consumer valuation when they are presented in a more dynamic format.
Ultimately, however, marketers are likely to reap the greatest benefits when
they combine video with products or services that emphasize recreation and fun.
Even if your business traditionally serves more practical ends, video can work
for you too: just try to put a little more fun
in the functional.