Let them eat cake … just not with your face on it

It's seems you can personalize just about anything with a photo these days. From magnets to T-shirts to napkins to cellphone cases — we can’t get enough images of ourselves and our loved ones.

Photo integration on products is a billion-dollar enterprise and is transforming the retail industry, becoming heavily used in personalized consumer gifts and company promotional materials. 

It indulges customers who want to see themselves or others on display. But is there a form of flaunting that gives consumers a tummy full of moral discomfort?

Two Arizona State University researchers believe so and have published a scholarly article on what consumers deem tasty or tasteless when it comes to these types of products.

Adriana Samper, an associate professor of marketing in the W. P. Carey School of Business, and Andrea Morales, professor and the Dr. Lonnie L. Ostrom Chair in the W. P. Carey School of Business, recently co-authoredFreeman Wu, a former ASU PhD student and assistant professor of marketing at Vanderbilt University, is also a listed contributor, as is Gavan J. Fitzsimmons, a professor of marketing and psychology at Duke University. “When Do Photos On Products Hurt or Help Consumption? How Magical Thinking Shapes Consumer Reactions to Photo-Integrated Products.”

ASU News spoke to Samper and Morales about their article, which was published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology. Here’s what they had to say about integrating products with lifelike images.

Question: This is certainly an interesting premise for a research article. What motivated you to explore this subject?

Morales: There is a lot of research in marketing that shows personalization and product customization — like adding a personal photo to a magnet or birthday cake — is highly appealing to customers and increases the likelihood that they will make a purchase. This phenomenon is called “photo integration,” where the image becomes a part of the product. These products are growing in popularity, with many being marketed to consumers at premium price points — cookies, chocolates, cakes, magnets or mugs.

However, what happens when customers get these products home and have to consume them? For example, if you add a family photo to a magnet, it probably makes you more likely to put it on your refrigerator. However, if you add a photo of your grandmother to her 80th birthday cake, what happens when you have to cut into the cake? Are you less likely to consume the cake with the photograph than a regular birthday cake with sprinkles and decorative frosting? 

We thought it was fascinating to think about how the features that initially attract consumers to buy products — like personalized photographs — might make them less likely to consume them.

Q: What were some of your key findings?

Samper: Across a series of studies, we found that consumers are indeed less likely to consume products that are integrated with lifelike photographs in cases where consumption inherently damages or compromises the product — e.g., food, disposable napkins. In other words, if the product is harmed when you consume it — like eating a birthday cake — people are actually hesitant to consume products with photographs on them. 

For instance, we found that participants ate fewer M&Ms on average when they had a business school dean’s face, rather than the dean’s name, on them. Similarly, participants were less likely to use a disposable napkin when eating crackers if it was integrated with a photo compared to a plain white napkin. Additionally, these same effects apply not only to products with photographs of people on them but also to products with photos of animals or other entities imbued with morality, such as the Bible.

Importantly, when these lifelike images are placed on non-disposable, durable goods (e.g., magnets, tins) we don’t see a negative effect of photo integration on consumption.

Q: Anything take you by surprise?

Morales: One of our most surprising insights is that these effects can be weakened if products are integrated with images that are recognizable, but less realistic, like a cartoon drawing. Specifically, the less realistic the image, the more willing people are to destroy the image through consumption. 

Going back to the birthday cake example, while people are hesitant to slice into a photograph of their grandmother on a cake, if it is instead a cartoon representation of their grandmother, they do not experience the same feelings of moral discomfort that arise from cutting into the image. 

Put simply, when the image doesn’t look real, people are comfortable consuming it — whether that means slicing into a personalized cake or wiping their hands with a customized napkin. The lack of realism in the image frees them from feeling bad about harming it in some way.

Q: What causes this behavior?

Samper: Even though people know they are not harming the entity depicted in the photograph when they use these photo-integrated products, there is a part of them that feels bad about it. In the paper, we refer to these negative feelings as “moral discomfort.” People feel uncomfortable when they have to destroy these lifelike images through consumption, and that makes them less likely to eat the M&Ms, use the photo napkins or even eat a cookie party favor with a lifelike image on it.

Importantly, when we eliminate these feelings of moral discomfort, the reduction in consumption goes away. This means that if you have a photo on the packaging of a chocolate or a cookie, once you remove the packaging, you are not biting into an image, so the discomfort goes away. As a result, lifelike stickers on packaging do not reduce consumption, since you are no longer harming the image by consuming it.

Relatedly, if you change the type of image from one that is highly associated with morality to something much more neutral, people no longer feel as bad about consumption. For example, we found that people were much more likely to eat chocolates with the image of a dictionary on them compared to an image of the Bible.

Q: How will your findings impact the choices that marketers will make when selling future products?

Morales: Our work provides new and important insights about photo-product integration for marketers. Since we find even the mere thought of consuming these products triggers moral discomfort, this could negatively impact interpurchase time, repeat purchase and brand attitudes toward this kind of product. In fact, in one of our studies, we found that consumers are less inclined to spread positive word of mouth about photo-integrated products and even less likely to purchase them. Clearly, this is not what marketers would want. 

However, since we only find our effects for disposable photo-integrated items destroyed through consumption, marketers may want to offer photo integration exclusively on more durable, lasting products that are not damaged by consumption — thereby avoiding the downsides we identified in our research. Another option would be to offer personalization through cartoon drawings, rather than lifelike photographs, as we found that consumers do not experience moral discomfort from destroying products with cartoon images instead of photos. This seems like an especially promising option, given the numerous apps currently available that transform photos into cartoons and avatars in their product interfaces.

Q: What are the remaining questions that need to be examined?

Samper: Although this research has established the discomfort associated with consuming photo-integrated products, we have looked less at the motivation for buying these products. For example, do people buy photo-integrated products — even perishable ones like cookies or chocolates — expecting that they will never consume them? This has implications for food waste and consumer welfare. 

We also have yet to explore whether it makes a difference on consumption whether the person depicted is known directly or is a public figure, for instance. We have also not looked at people’s responses to their own images on products, since one is less likely to see consumption as immoral.