@article{6ab35794986548959b07e422cf9301ff,
title = "Filling an Empty Self: The Impact of Social Exclusion on Consumer Preference for Visual Density",
abstract = "This research examines the effect of social exclusion on consumers' preferences for visual density. Based on seven experimental studies, we reveal that consumers who perceive themselves as socially excluded evaluate products with dense visual patterns more positively than their nonexcluded peers. This effect occurs because social exclusion triggers a feeling of psychological emptiness and dense patterns can provide a sense of being {"}filled,{"} which helps to alleviate this feeling of emptiness. This effect is attenuated when consumers physically fill something or experience a feeling of {"}temporal density{"} (i.e., imagining a busy schedule with many tasks packed into a short time). These results shed light on consumers' socially grounded product aesthetic preferences and offer practical implications for marketers, designers, and policy makers.",
keywords = "a feeling of emptiness, social exclusion, visual density",
author = "Lei Su and Wan, {Echo Wen} and Yuwei Jiang",
note = "Funding Information: Lei Su (
[email protected]) is an assistant professor of marketing at Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong. Echo Wen Wan (
[email protected]) is a professor of marketing at the University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong. Yuwei Jiang (yuwei.jiang@polyu. edu.hk) is a professor of marketing at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong. This research was supported by research grants from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (HKBU 12522916) to the first author, a Hong Kong Research Grants Council grant (HKU17501415) and a China NSFC Grant (71832015) awarded to the second author, and financial support from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (PolyU 155032/18B) and the Asian Centre for Branding and Marketing (ACBM) to the third author. The three authors contributed equally to this article and all three serve as corresponding authors. Supplementary materials are included in the web appendix accompanying the online version of this article.",
year = "2019",
month = dec,
doi = "10.1093/jcr/ucz011",
language = "English",
volume = "46",
pages = "808--824",
journal = "Journal of Consumer Research",
issn = "0093-5301",
publisher = "Oxford University Press",
number = "4",
}