Recently, brand managers have widely adopted brand anthropomorphism as positioning strategies to differentiate from other competitors. Aggarwal and McGill (2012) anthropomorphized brand as two specific roles. Brand-as-partner refers its role as “the co-producer of benefits”, a relationship in which the brand and consumers work together to co-create the benefits as equals. However, brand-as-servant represents its role as “the outsourced provider of benefits”, a hierarchical relationship in which the brand works for consumers to create benefits. Our research extends prior literature by investigating how a brand can improve consumers’ responses with the anthropomorphization of being either a collaborative partner or a supportive servant, depending on consumer’s mind-set  aptly termed implicit theories. Implicit theories are the beliefs that people have about the nature of human characteristics. In specific, entity theorists believe human traits are relatively fixed and stable; and incremental theorists believe human traits are substantially changeable (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). These two implicit theories trigger many distinctive cognitive and behavioral patterns. For example, entity theorists prefer effortless success and receiving assurances to signal their abilities. In contrast, incremental theories emphasize on self-improvement through high effort to realize their self-enhancement and intentions (Park & John, 2014). We generalize this theory to anthropomorphic brand positioning and adopt consumer’s efficacy (confidence) to explain the underlying mechanism. We hypothesize a servant brand is more appealing to entity theorists, because they prefer situations in which they are guaranteed of being satisfied effortlessly (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). Therefore, they are more confident about their abilities when a servant brand acts as an assurance for providing benefits. In contrast, a partner brand may be more attractive to incremental theorists, because they believe their abilities can be improved through working with the partner brand. Thus, they should be more self-assured about their abilities, and increase their perceived efficacy to realize their intentions. Three studies were conducted to test the hypotheses by both manipulating and measuring implicit theories. The consistent results revealed the significant interactions between brand roles and implicit theories on brand evaluation as well as the mediation effect of consumer efficacy. In sum, this research contributes to brand managers by advising them to cultivate appropriate brand role position in accordance with the target and potential consumer’s distinct mind-set.

While previous research has demonstrated the effect of implicit theories (i.e. the belief whether human attributes are fixed or malleable) on attitudes and behaviors in many domains, such a relationship has not been investigated in the domain of beauty. In this research, we examine the effect of implicit theories of beauty on how consumers access their actual versus ideal self, and how they experiment the self, in turn influencing brand variety seeking. We theorize that believing beauty is fixed (versus malleable) would make the ideal, desired self more accessible, as entity theorists tend to orient more towards performance goals, ones that ensure the desired judgments (Dweck, Hong, & Chiu, 1993) while incremental theorists strive to enhance their ability (i.e. learning goals) (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). In an experiment using a reaction time task, we found that participants who were primed with an incremental theory of beauty (i.e. beauty is malleable) took longer to react to words that describe their ideal self compared to words that describe their actual self. On the contrary, participants who were primed with the entity theory of beauty (i.e. beauty is fixed) reacted towards ideal self related words as quick as the actual self related words. Results from this experiment shows that when people believe is fixed, their ideal self is as accessible as their actual self. Believing beauty is fixed activates the yearn to possess characteristics that one desires, making the ideal, desired self more accessible. We further examined the effect of implicit theories of beauty on experimenting tendency and brand variety seeking, as experimenting different looks by using cosmetic products might be a way to experience multiple ideal selves. With a sample of over 1200 female consumers in four countries, including two Asian countries (Indonesia and Thailand) and two Western countries (the UK and Australia), we found a consistent pattern that the beauty is fixed (vs. malleable) belief is associated with greater tendency to experiment with beauty looks, which in turn leads to higher variety seeking of beauty brands. This result demonstrated that beauty essentialism can be a universal mechanism that drive behaviour in a beauty domain. Our finding provides insights for the marketing of beauty products. We show that beauty essentialism is a factor that drives consumer’s desire for their ideal self, similarly drives the tendency to experiment with new makeup looks as a way to express the multiple ideal selves. The belief whether beauty is fixed or malleable is thus a factor that customer segmentation can be based on. Further, communicating the message that beauty is fixed might motivate the consumers to try out new makeup products. Our findings further shed lights on some of the strategies that are currently implemented by companies. For instance, does Dove’s Real Beauty campaign really encourage consumers to embrace their actual beauty, or does it in fact make them desire for the ideal beauty even more?

In the past, scholars and policy makers have tried to educate as well as incentivize practices like recycling to avoid reduce landfill stocks and create new objects from past used materials. Such products have been commercialized more and more by big brands (i.e. Adidas and Levi’s) and by famous fashion designers (i.e. Stella McCartney). While more academic literature has focused on drivers for consumers’ motivations to engage in recycling activities, there has been little research investigating consumers’ underlying psychological factors to favour recycled products over standard ones. In this study we address this issue by experimentally testing consumer evaluation and intention to adopt recycled products through an implicit theory – or mind-sets-framework on. In a set of three studies we demonstrate how consumers holding and incremental mind-set – who believe that trait like intelligence, morality or personality are malleable and transformable over time – are more keen top adopt products made of recycled materials. In contrasts, individuals with an entity mind-set – who instead believe human traits are fixed and non-mutable- are more sceptical to embrace such products. In Experiment 1 we demonstrated that the chronic incremental mind set of individuals influences their intention to acquire a recycled – over a non-recycled – coffee mug. In Experiment 2, we demonstrate through a laboratory experiment that this preference for products made out of recycled materials is stable in individual with an incremental min-set – over their entity min-set counterpart – even below the liminal attention threshold. Finally, in Experiment 3 we demonstrate that by attributing the merit of the transformation in a different object to qualities that are embedded in the materials used (rather than to the process to transform them) can make recycled products more appealing also to individuals with an entity mind-set. The results of these studies contribute to the literature on implicit theory by investigating another area in consumer psychology (intention to adopt recycled products) so far unexplored. On a managerial point of view, this study suggests how highlighting the effort spent by a company in creating the product can attract consumer (especially incremental theorists) to intend to buy the product, while highlighting the qualities of the material used can attract more entity theorists.

This study demonstrates how consumers’ implicit self-theory orientations (Entity vs. Incremental) relate to their perceptions of luxury brand appeals (Functional vs. Non-functional). Specifically, our experiments show that the entity theorists are likely to value the hedonic appeal of luxury brands, whereas incremental theorists value their functional appeal. The study provides useful insights for managers for designing advertising messages and their positioning strategies for luxury brands.