Aligning Anthropomorphic Product Visuals and Text Descriptions when Advertising to Control-Oriented Consumers

This research investigates how the congruence between anthropomorphic visuals and textual descriptions in advertising affects the decisions of consumers who have high need for control (NFC) for their purchases. Using Schema Congruity Theory, we manipulate congruence by matching anthropomorphic, or human-like, product imagery with either a first-person (congruent) or a third-person (incongruent) textual description. An eye-tracking study shows that presenting a humanized brand described in the first person makes participants fixate more frequently and longer on the human-looking features of the focal brand (e.g., the "eyes" of the brand) compared to describing the brand in the third person. Further studies demonstrate that this congruence significantly influences brand evaluations of consumers with higher NFC as they evaluate human-like brands more positively when described in the first person rather than the third person. Process evidence indicates that the visual/description congruence gives higher NFC consumers the order and structure that they seek in their purchases, and the latter leads to higher purchase intentions. These findings suggest that advertisers can optimize consumer attention and engagement and improve ad effectiveness by strategically aligning anthropomorphic visuals with first-person descriptions for target segments with a high need for control.