Jonathan Hasford, Stewart Bartley Family Faculty Fellow and Douglas and Brenda Horne Professor of Business, is all in for research. As a faculty member in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Haslam College of Business’ Department of Marketing, he has abundant opportunities to apply scholarly thought to the concepts that pique his curiosity. Hasford is particularly focused on the emotional side of marketing and has led several research projects that dig into how feelings shape consumer behavior, including a paper which recently appeared in one of the field’s top journals.

The Surprising Impact of Awe on Limited Edition Products

Co-authored by Aysu Senyuz of the University of Sussex and Ze Wang of the University of Central Florida, Hasford’s latest research paper, “How Awe in Marketing Communications Decreases Consumer Preferences for Limited Edition Products,” was published in the Journal of Marketing Research and examines the surprising, impactful effects of eliciting the powerful emotion.

Hasford and his co-researchers conducted a series of studies on advertisements for limited edition (LE) products — including analyzing television commercials, an A/B test of Facebook advertisements, controlled experiments and a Metaverse simulation — by large companies across industries, from Jeep and Coca-Cola to Evian and Xbox. The ads, ranging in duration from 15 to 140 seconds, each feature a vast landscape, with ads from Xbox and PS4 featuring fictional, animated worlds and an ad from Coca-Cola that includes an animated space scene. They found that, in general, feeling awe reduces consumer preferences toward LE products.

“Having consumers imagine vast, huge landscapes that illicit awe and show how expansive the world is actually hurts brands when they market LE products because consumers who purchase those products want exclusivity,” Hasford says. “The thought of being part of this huge, interconnected world is in contrast with that.”

However, this effect reverses when LE products are promoted using cause-related marketing messages that emphasize connection. For example, a company that highlights its support for people in need is evaluated more favorably when it uses awe-based messaging to market LE products. These findings have real impact for both brands and consumers.

“In practice, marketers should make sure to incorporate messages about connection- or cause-related marketing in promotional materials should they want to use awe,” says Hasford. “Otherwise, simply pairing awe-inspiring images with an LE product will backfire, as consumers will be less favorable towards these items.”

Wide-Reaching Interest

Beyond his most recent research, Hasford is also fascinated by emotional intelligence and how consumers use emotions to process information. This research track has a wide range of applications. He is currently exploring how consumers respond to stereotype-challenging messages and if they can shift perceptions.

For example, his research looks at how women react to advertisements for a male-owned nail salon. The central question is: What prompts people to set aside stereotypes they hold about certain groups? Findings from Hasford and his co-researchers suggest that messages emphasizing individual contributions in contexts where such contributions are not typically highlighted, combined with higher levels of emotional intelligence, can help consumers overcome biases and become more open to supporting businesses owned by individuals from perceived outgroups.

Hasford and co-researchers also are studying how consumers react to stacked discounts — for example, 25 percent off, plus an additional 10 percent off the discounted price — and how emotional intelligence influences their interpretation of such offers.

“What we find is that consumers have a surprised reaction to this type of pricing, since it’s not something they encounter every day,” Hasford explains. “Their level of emotional intelligence affects how they process that surprise and make sense of the math.”

Enjoying the Research Journey

According to Alex Zablah, marketing department head, Gerber/Taylor Distinguished Professor and Kinney Family Faculty Research Fellow, Hasford’s natural curiosity and deep understanding of marketing literature set him apart as a research leader.

“When Jonathan identifies a mismatch between his observations and current explanations for a phenomenon, he rigorously and quickly tests his ideas as a way of determining whether what he has discovered is truly novel,” Zablah says. “This rare combination of curiosity, depth of knowledge and methodological rigor has allowed Jonathan to emerge as one of the leading behavioral scholars in our field.”

Although his research has led to fascinating discoveries, Hasford’s favorite part remains the process itself.

“It’s fun to see it all unfold,” he says. “As researchers, we start with ideas about what we might uncover, but regardless of what I learn, the process of discovery is what I find the most interesting and engaging.”

CONTACT

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Leah McAmis, senior editor, leah@utk.edu