Visualization Ability And The Elaborations That Sustain Product Desire

Although product desire is a central force driving consumption, much remains unknown about the internal processes that contribute to consumers' desires to purchase a product. This study focuses on these internal processes and draws on elaborated intrusion theory to understand how product desire develops and is reinforced by mental elaborations. Extant theory is extended to better fit consumption contexts by introducing transformation expectations as the mediator through which elaborations impact product desire, and visualization ability is identified as an important moderator of the elaboration process. Across two surveys and two experiments, findings show that thinking about or visualizing ownership of a desired product increases expectations about transformations that will occur as a result of product acquisition. However, this result is not constant across consumers but rather occurs only for those high in visualization ability. Findings also show that the effect of elaboration on desire appears to accumulate over time, but that even a single visual elaboration serves to increase product desire among those high in visualization ability. Results also indicate that the elaboration-desire sequence can influence consumers' willingness to take on debt to purchase a wished-for product, especially for those with high visualization ability.