Dare or Dare Not: The Impact of Power Pose on Consumers’ Price Perceptions

This dissertation research examines how an advertising model’s pose that signals power influences consumers’ price perceptions. Prior research on social judgments suggests that people generally indicate submissive behavior (e.g., averting gaze and look down) when encountering with a powerful subject. Yet, little attention has been paid to how this effect is associated with consumes’ processing marketing information. Across six studies, this research finds that displays of the model’s nonverbal dominant gestures such as presenting a powerful pose stimulates consumers to selectively attend to and process price information. Specifically, when a model exhibits a high-power pose (vs. low-power pose), consumers are more likely to pay attention to and process price information of the product that are displayed on the bottom (vs. top). Consequently, consumers indicate better price recall for the outfits and accessories displayed on the face and upper body (vs. lower body) of the model adopting dominant (vs. submissive) pose. Consumers also more accurately estimate the price discount depth when the comparative price promotion appear below the image of the model with high-power pose. Similarly, they indicate better estimation of the deal when it is visualized above the model with low-power pose. This effect occurs both when an image of a model is presented and when an actual model displays power through the pose. However, the effect of power pose reverses when the model’s face is not visible. When the face is eliminated, consumers are not dominated by the powerful pose, such that they are not willing to show submissive behavior. Instead they attend more to the model’s upper body than the lower body to identify possible threats. Therefore, consumers indicate better performance in recalling price information of the outfits displayed on the upper body compared to the lower body when they are exposed to the high-power pose. The mediating role of anxiety is introduced as a potential underlying mechanism. This research provides novel insights to help marketers identify ideal locations for displaying price information when using a model in advertising and for instore displays.

Many thanks to Jeonggyu’s dissertation committee: • Committee Chair – Rajneesh Suri – Professor – Drexel University • Committee Member: Daniel Korschun - Associate Professor – Drexel University • Committee Member: Yanliu Huang – Associate Professor- Drexel University • Committee Member: Chen Wang - Assistant Professor – Drexel University • Committee Member: Joseph Hancock - Professor – Drexel University