Anna Carmela Martinez Levy

The present research examines how color differentiation shapes not only consumers' immediate evaluations of products but also their expectations about how long those products will remain appealing. In luxury markets, where value is closely tied to perception of timelessness, subtle visual cues may influence anticipated length of ownership and use. Study 1 combines fMRI and self‐report measures to show that exposure to lower‐differentiation color composition is associated with greater activation in reward‐related brain regions (including bilateral nucleus accumbens and the anterior cingulate cortex) and with higher liking, choice, willingness to pay, and perceived length of product use. Importantly, neural reward responses predict downstream behavioral intentions. Study 2 provides evidence consistent with the proposed role of chromatic timelessness: lower color differentiation increases perceived chromatic timelessness, which is associated with greater liking and, subsequently, with stronger choice and long‐term use intentions. Study 3 establishes a boundary condition, showing that these effects are driven primarily by consumers low in sensation seeking. Together, the findings contribute to research on visual design and consumer inference by linking the degree of color differentiation within the bundled color composition to reward processing, timelessness perceptions, and individual differences, while offering actionable guidance for luxury brands seeking to foster enduring consumer value.

Luxury consumers are becoming more and more sensitive to sustainable development issues, and thus they increasingly care about how to spend their money to improve the lives of present and future generations. However, making responsible choices has long proved challenging for luxury brands, since many customers have long used to think that a product’s sustainability comes at the expense of its quality. Recently, however, literature about sustainable consumption has evolved towards a more positive view of sustainable luxury, whereby luxury goods have some intrinsic elements, such as their higher durability based on higher quality of material and production processes, which make them inherently sustainable and long-lasting. While concurring with the idea that durability stems from tangible elements such as product high quality, we argue that how long consumers use a luxury product for can also depend on hedonic element of luxury goods, such the aesthetic experience of customers with luxury goods. Therefore, this chapter aims to review extant literature about sustainable luxury consumption also adding specific insights on how consumers experience luxury aesthetics, thus highlighting the aesthetics dimensions which are more relevant in shaping sustainable behaviors.

Not all elements displayed in a YouTube in-stream video ad are attributable to the ad itself. Some of those are automatically introduced by the platform, such as the countdown timer and the time progress bar. In recent years, some authors started exploring the effects associated with the presence of such non-ad items, providing valuable findings. However, objective evaluation of viewers’ visual attention is lacking in this context as well as emotional investigation. In addition, previous research showed how the manipulation of seemingly negligible details can yield dramatically different outcomes in the context of in-stream advertising. To extend knowledge, the authors explored the effects of the non-ad items’ presence by employing eye-tracking and facial coding techniques in combination with self-reports in a between-subjects experimental design focusing on the YouTube 15-s, mid-roll, non-skippable in-stream ad format. Results showed that the ad format currently employed by YouTube performs worse than its equivalent without the non-ad items on all the investigated measures and than its equivalent in which the non-ad items’ presence was experimentally reduced on facial coding disgust, self-reported disgust, ad irritation, and ad attitude. Managerial insights and challenges concerning the future of in-stream advertising and neuromarketing are highlighted.

It has been demonstrated that odors could affect humans at the psychophysiological level. Significant research has been done on odor perception and physiological mechanisms; however, this research was mainly performed in highly controlled conditions in order to highlight the perceptive phenomena and the correlated physiological responses in the time frame of milliseconds. The present study explored how human physiological activity evolves in response to different odor conditions during an ecological olfactory experience on a broader time scale (from 1 to 90 s). Two odors, vanilla and menthol, together with a control condition (blank) were employed as stimuli. Electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in four frequency bands of interest, theta, alpha, low beta, and high beta, and the electrodermal activity (EDA) of the skin conductance level and response (SCL and SCR) were investigated at five time points taken during: (i) the first ten seconds of exposure (short-term analysis) and (ii) throughout the entire exposure to each odor (90 s, long-term analysis). The results revealed significant interactions between the odor conditions and the time periods in the short-term analysis for the overall frontal activity in the theta (p = 0.03), alpha (p = 0.005), and low beta (p = 0.0067) bands, the frontal midline activity in the alpha (p = 0.015) and low beta (p = 0.02) bands, and the SCR component (p = 0.024). For the long-term effects, instead, only one EEG parameter, frontal alpha asymmetry, was significantly sensitive to the considered dimensions (p = 0.037). In conclusion, the present research determined the physiological response to different odor conditions, also demonstrating the sensitivity of the employed parameters in characterizing the dynamic of such response during the time. As an exploratory study, this work points out the relevance of considering the effects of continuous exposure instead of short stimulation when evaluating the human olfactory experience, providing insights for future studies in the field.

In recent years, technological advances and the introduction of social streaming platforms (e.g., Twitch) have contributed to an increase in the popularity of esports, a highly profitable industry with millions of active users. In this context, there is little evidence, if any, on how users perceive in-game advertising (IGA) and other key elements of the game viewing experience (e.g., facecam and chat) in terms of visual attention. The present eye-tracking study aimed at investigating those aspects, and introducing an eye-tracking research protocol specifically designed to accurately measure the visual attention associated with key elements of the game viewing experience. Results showed that (1) the ads available in the game view (IGAs) are capable altogether to attract 3.49% of the users’ visual attention; (2) the chat section draws 10.68% of the users’ visual attention and more than the streamer’s face, known as a powerful attentional driver; (3) the animated ad format elicits higher visual attention (1.46%) than the static format (1.12%); and (4) in some circumstances, the visual attention elicited by the ads is higher in the “Goal” scenes (0.69%) in comparison to “No-Goal” scenes (0.51%). Relevant managerial implications and future directions for the esports industry are reported and discussed.

The past few decades have seen significant methodological and theoretical change within sensory science, including in food sciences. The physiological reaction to the Autonomous Nervous System (ANS) provides insightful information in interpreting consumers’ sensory and affective reactions. In this regard, we investigated how explicit responses of liking and perceived intensity of sensory features (sweet, bitter, and astringency) and implicit objective physiological responses of Heart Rate (HR) and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) are modulated when varying the sweetness (sucrose concentration with 38; 83; 119; 233 g/kg) level in a cocoa-based product (dark chocolate pudding) and their relationship. The demographic effects on responses were also investigated. Results showed the effects of the sucrose concentration levels on liking and perceived intensity of all the sensory characteristics and on HR responses, which highlighted a significant effect of the sucrose concentration level. As regards the relationship between variables, a significant positive effect was found for the sucrose concentration level 3, where an increase in HR leads to an increase in liking; for the perceived bitterness, a significant positive effect of HR for the sucrose concentration level 1; and for the perceived astringent, a significant positive effect of HR for the sucrose concentration level 2. While we found no significant main effect of gender on our dependent variables, the results highlight a significant main effect of age, increasing the adult population responses. The present research helps to understand better the relationship between explicit and implicit sensory study variables with foods. Furthermore, it has managerial applications for chocolate product developers. The level of sweetness that might be optimal to satisfy at the explicit level (liking) and the implicit level (HR or emotional valence) is identified.

Advertising for non-profit organizations through television commercials is a valuable means of communication to raise awareness and receive donations. When it comes to social aspects, personal attitudes such as empathy are significant for reinforcing the intention to donate; and the study of eliciting emotions has critical attention in the literature, especially some types of emotion, such as guilt which mediates empathy. Different methodologies have been used to measure consumer emotions when faced with TV ads stimuli: mainly traditional techniques such as interviews or questionnaires after the ads viewing. In the last ten years, there has also been a great interest in new neuroscience techniques applied to measure emotional and cognitive reactions by physiological signals, frame by frame. Our research has applied neuromarketing technologies during the observation of a UNHCR commercial promoting legacy calls. The objective was to study cognitive and emotional reactions in order to increase the effectiveness whilst having the possibility to verify the results by measuring the benefits in terms of calls from contributors. The purpose of this research is to empirically prove the impact in calls thanks to changes in the message framing strategy in non-profit advertising suggested and measured by neuromarketing techniques. Particularly we measured the cerebral activity through an electroencephalogram to obtain an Approach-Withdrawal Index (AW); the heart rate and galvanic skin response through different sensors in the palm of one hand, to obtain an Emotional Index (EI), and finally, eye fixations through an eye tracker device to obtain the visual attention on key visual areas of the ads. After these indicators’ recordings on a sample of subjects, some suggestions to modify the advertising were made to create a more effective campaign. The results compared, those elicited by the first version of the spot (LVE) and those by the second version (HVE), confirmed that (1) the number of sellable and legacy calls increased with the message framing strategy modified in the second spot (HVE), (2) a lower cognitive and emotional reactions have been obtained in the final section of HVE, (3) the visual attention on the key information of the phone number to call, in the final call to action frames(CTA), was higher in HVE than in the first version of the spot (LVE), (4) the cognitive approach increased during the same CTA frames in HVE.

Neuroaesthetics, the science studying the biological underpinnings of aesthetic experience, recently extended its area of investigation to literary art; this was the humus where neurocognitive poetics blossomed. Divina Commedia represents one of the most important, famous and studied poems worldwide. Poetry stimuli are characterized by elements (meter and rhyme) promoting the processing fluency, a core aspect of neuroaesthetics theories. In addition, given the evidence of different neurophysiological reactions between experts and non-experts in response to artistic stimuli, the aim of the present study was to investigate, in poetry, a different neurophysiological cognitive and emotional reaction between Literature (L) and Non-Literature (NL) students. A further aim was to investigate whether neurophysiological underpinnings would support explanation of behavioral data. Investigation methods employed: self-report assessments (recognition, appreciation, content recall) and neurophysiological indexes (approach/withdrawal (AW), cerebral effort (CE) and galvanic skin response (GSR)). The main behavioral results, according to fluency theories in aesthetics, suggested in the NL but not in the L group that the appreciation/liking went hand by hand with the self-declared recognition and with the content recall. The main neurophysiological results were: (i) higher galvanic skin response in NL, whilst higher CE values in L; (ii) a positive correlation between AW and CE indexes in both groups. The present results extended previous evidence relative to figurative art also to auditory poetry stimuli, suggesting an emotional attenuation “expertise-specific” showed by experts, but increased cognitive processing in response to the stimuli.

Scents have the ability to affect peoples’ mental states and task performance with to different extents. It has been widely demonstrated that the lemon scent, included in most all-purpose cleaners, elicits stimulation and activation, while the lavender scent elicits relaxation and sedative effects. The present study aimed at investigating and fostering a novel approach to evaluate users’ experience with respect to scents’ effects through the joint employment of Virtual Reality and users’ neurophysiological monitoring, in particular Electroencephalography. In particular, this study, involving 42 participants, aimed to compare the effects of lemon and lavender scents on the deployment of cognitive resources during a daily life experience consisting in a train journey carried out in virtual reality. Our findings showed a significant higher request of cognitive resources during the processing of an informative message for subjects exposed to the lavender scent with respect to the lemon exposure. No differences were found between lemon and lavender conditions on the self-reported items of pleasantness and involvement; as this study demonstrated, the employment of the lavender scent preserves the quality of the customer experience to the same extent as the more widely used lemon scent.