The Difficulty of Imagining for Cognitive Misers

Min Zhao, Assistant professor of Marketing at the Rotman School of Management

In your research, you study the differences between marketing really new products (RNPs) and incrementally-new products (INPs). How do you define these terms?
RNPs are products that include new benefits and entail a high learning cost. For example, the iPad. The primary product type we studied was technology-based RNPs, but our definition also includes other types of products and services whose benefits and costs are not understood for individual consumer groups. For example, a baby stroller isn’t typically thought of as an RNP, but for new parents who have no prior experience with them, the benefits and learning costs of a stroller may not be easily understood, making it a RNP for this group.   Like RNPs, INPs also include new benefits, but they do not include a high learning cost, because consumers are already familiar with the product type.  For example, Dell might add a new feature to an already-familiar laptop, such as a keyboard light, but the way consumers use the product will not change.

Advertisements for new products often instruct consumers to use their imagination (‘Imagine yourself…’; ‘Picture yourself…’). Is this a smart approach ?
Mental simulation of product usage has long been believed to be an effective tool for helping consumers learn about the benefits associated with new products. A common approach is to ask people to look ahead (using their imagination) and create images around new usage opportunities to unveil the new benefits the product will provide. However, extensive research shows that we humans are cognitive misers who naturally conserve our limited information-processing resources. As a result, people are often reluctant to engage in the extensive cognitive work that might be required for effective forward-looking simulations.  Instead, we tend to rely on known, existing usage scenarios – ‘the path of least resistance’.  There are two reasons for this. First, selecting a known usage scenario reduces uncertainty; and second, relying on known, existing imagery is less cognitively taxing than producing imaginative thoughts.   As a result, consumers often base their mental images on their memories of existing consumption routines and underestimate the usefulness of new products or features, lowering their overall evaluation of the new product.  

Discuss the roles of ‘process simulation’ and ‘outcome simulation’ as they relate to INPs and RNPs.
Process simulation entails asking people to think about the process of using the new product. For example, if it’s a laptop, you might ask people to imagine how to turn it on or how to click on different windows to get to the function that they want.  Outcome simulation asks people to focus on the benefits of using the product.  Think about a new software package.  As a marketer, you can ask people to do process simulation by going to the computer and downloading the software and then spending some time learning about how to use the different features; whereas if you’re focusing on outcome simulation, you would get people to think about the final outcome of using the new software; if it’s a new photo-album software, you might ask people to picture the final Photobook that they will be able to create with it.  

Research indicates that if a product is incrementally-new, people automatically focus on the benefits of the new feature.  If you ask them to imagine the benefits of the product, it doesn’t add much to their evaluation because they are already thinking about that. We have found that that if you ask people to think about the process of using the INP, people actually feel more engaged and they like the product more.

For RNPs, marketers should be more cautious, because the usage process for these products is often difficult and can lead to negative evaluations. For this type of product, marketers should shift consumers’ focus away from the cognitive considerations of the usage process, by encouraging them to imagine how they would feel while interacting with the product, or to imagine the benefits of the product.

What is ‘imagination difficulty’, and what leads to it?
This is the difficulty that people experience when they try to imagine using a product. For example, when faced with a RNP, because people have no prior experience with the product, they often find it hard to picture themselves using it as an addition to their regular day-to-day routine.  In general, ease of imagination increases new product evaluation whereas difficulty of imagination decreases new product evaluation.

For INPs or common, everyday products, ease of imagination plays a smaller role than for RNPs.  For RNPs, people don’t have lots of expertise, so they are influenced and biased by ‘context effects’, such as whether it is easy for them to imagine using the product.  If it isn’t easy for them to imagine, they take this as a cue that the product isn’t useful to them.  For INPs, people know the product relatively well and they are less susceptible to context effects. For example, if you see a new version of a Dell laptop, you will be familiar with the features of the product, so you are able to use your own capacity to judge it. As a result, you are less susceptible to being biased by whether the product will be easy or difficult to use, because you already know clearly what kind of features the product has and you’re able to evaluate them. 

But for RNPs such as the iPhone, if you ask people to imagine using the product, they might find it difficult to imagine scenarios, and they might have trouble judging all the new features it offers.  And as we found, they are likely to think that because they are having trouble imagining usage scenarios, it probably isn’t a very useful product.

In summary, what are the key challenges of marketing a RNP?
One of the biggest challenges is the issue of the associated learning costs.   I suggest marketers help consumers go through the usage process -- maybe even step by step -- and rather than asking them to figure out the technical rationale behind the various features, get them to think more about how they will feel when they use the product.  For example, if you ask people to imagine using the iPad, you probably shouldn’t focus on the fact that the way you touch and swipe the screen represents a major innovation within the computing industry; instead, have them focus on how they will feel while they’re using it: they will feel cool, they will feel high-tech, etc.  Such imaginative visualization opens up a new perspective and can enhance the perceived value of the benefits inherent in the RNP, while a memory focus limits participants’ imagery to existing product usage scenarios. The freedom participants enjoy during the imagination process enables them to construct visual images that bring to life the value of the new features of the RNP.

Your findings provide caution to managers who are trying to introduce new products into the marketplace. Please summarize the take-aways.
First of all, marketers have to decide which aspects of the product or service they want consumers to focus on.  If the product is really new, they will want to encourage people to focus on the new benefits or new uses that they have never experienced before.  Counter to the current practice of providing one or two key benefits to consumers, our research implies that providing multiple examples of a RNP’s new benefits may lead to higher evaluations and faster adoption in the marketplace, because it will make people’s imagination experience less difficult.  

However, encouraging consumers to imagine multiple uses of a RNP without providing specific examples may lead to lower evaluations because of the difficulty of imagination in this instance.  For example, think about the Segway Human Transporter, an RNP that never took off. Our results suggest that while convincing consumers of the novel product benefits, marketers should have reduced the difficulty of imagining new uses by focusing only on generating one example, thus making the imagination experience easier.  Further, marketers could have provided abundant concrete examples with specific, new usage scenarios in order to facilitate evaluation and adoption.  

Whenever marketers ask consumers to imagine using a product, they must consider the difficulty-of-imagining aspect, because when people are not familiar with something, their imagination can lead them pretty much anywhere -- and you can’t guarantee that it will go somewhere positive.  You have to make it easy for people to imagine, either by guiding them to a certain aspect of the product or providing examples of using it.  

What has your research contributed to the field?
Our research provides marketing managers with a new approach that can enhance consumer evaluations and reactions to RNPs. We suggest that when marketing RNPs, they encourage customers to use their imagination and focus on the new uses they have never experienced before. Having consumers envision the usage of these new benefits may help them realize the value of those benefits, leading to higher product evaluations. My colleagues and I believe that our findings are not only applicable to new technological products, but are generalizable to any product or service that is characterized by high levels of novelty and learning costs.

Min Zhao is an assistant professor of Marketing at the Rotman School of Management.  Rotman faculty research is ranked in the top 20 worldwide by the Financial Times.

[This article has been reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management]