Grewal and colleagues investigated responses to options thought to be unattractive. The team learned that, “Five experiments demonstrate that consumers devalue unattractive produce [fruits and vegetables] because of altered self-perceptions: merely imagining the consumption of unattractive produce negatively affects how consumers view themselves, lowering their willingness to pay for unattractive produce relative to equivalently safe but more attractive alternatives.”
Lauren Grewal, Jillian Hmurovic, Cait Lamberton, and Rebecca Reczek. 2019. “The Self-Perception Connections: Why Consumers Devalue Unattractive Produce.” Journal of Marketing, vol. 83 no. 1, pp. 89-107, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022242918816319
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.