About AMA

Executive Summary
This research demonstrates the strong influence that disgust can have in a consumer context. Although it might be believed that there are few products in a supermarket that are disgusting, the authors show that consumers view many common items as being at least moderately disgusting (e.g., cat litter, diapers, mayonnaise). Furthermore, they show that consumer evaluations may change in response to physical contact with products that elicit even moderate levels of disgust.

Across a series of six studies, the authors provide support for a theory of product contagion, in which disgusting products are believed to transfer offensive properties through physical contact with other products, thus influencing evaluations. They find that products that come into physical contact with a disgusting product are evaluated more negatively, whereas products that are close but do not actually touch the disgusting product do not suffer in terms of negative evaluation. They provide evidence that these product contagion effects are substantial and endure over time. This product contagion is often completely irrational because, in many cases, the disgusting product in question is a completely sterilized product and could not result in any actual contamination (e.g., feminine hygiene products, diapers).

The authors also show that product contagion has a large visual component, such that contact with a disgusting product leads to more negative effects on a product if the package facilitates visualization of the product. For example, products in clear or transparent packages that touch disgusting products are viewed much more negatively than products in opaque packages.

The product contagion effect has numerous implications for marketing managers and retailers. Although most retailers would not purposefully place products rated high on disgust in contact with other products on their shelves, it appears to occur fairly frequently in practice. For example, in the current research, the authors observe strong product contagion effects with lard as a source of contagion. This product is often placed in a section of the store for baking products, pans, and utensils. It is easy to imagine product contagion occurring between lard and baking pans, muffin papers, and so forth. Product colocation decisions that could also lead to product contagion include baby food and diapers, mayonnaise and soup, or breakfast meats and eggs, to name but a few. Perhaps more critically, each of the items that are selected from a shelf ultimately end up in the consumer's shopping basket, with little control over which products touch one another.

Although the temptation may be great to dismiss product contagion as an issue of limited concern to marketers, the combination of (1) a relatively large proportion of the typical shopping basket being perceived as at least moderately disgusting, (2) the frequency of potential product contagion situations both on the shelf and in the cart, and (3) the opportunity to take corrective managerial action all suggest that product contagion is a pervasive, everyday occurrence for many consumers and an issue marketing managers need to address and manage explicitly.

Biography
Andrea C. Morales is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. She received her PhD and MS in Marketing from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Economics and Liberal Arts from the University of Texas at Austin. Before joining Arizona State University, she was Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, where she received their prestigious Golden Apple award for teaching excellence. Her research interests include the influence of effort on decision making and consumer responses to retail environments. Her work has been published in Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Journal of Retailing.

Gavan J. Fitzsimons is Associate Professor of Marketing and Psychology at Duke University. He received his PhD and MPhil from Columbia University and his MBA and BSc from the University of Western Ontario. His research focuses on understanding how consumers may be influenced without their conscious knowledge or awareness by marketers and marketing researchers, often without any intent on the part of the marketing researcher. The traditional view of marketing and marketing research is that marketers attempt to persuade consumers to behave in a certain way and that marketing researchers attempt to assess consumer opinions and attitudes. In each case, little attention has focused on unintended effects of marketing or marketing research. Professor Fitzsimons's research demonstrates that marketers and marketing researchers have substantial unintended effects on consumers, and these effects are often behavioral in nature and substantial in magnitude. His work has been published in numerous academic journals, such as Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Marketing Science, Management Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Psychological Science.