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Video advertising often involves dynamic presentations of products that are displayed to move in a similar way to animals. When products are animated to move faster in video ads, they look smaller in consumers’ eyes. Practitioners should be aware of the general negative relationship between animated movement speed and product size assessment. Guided by this principle, they could further determine the ideal animated movement speeds for their products through speed calibration tests tailored to their products’ natures and marketing communication objectives.
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Related Marketing Courses:
Consumer Behavior; Digital Marketing; Marketing Communications
Full Citation:
Jia, H. (Michael), B. Kyu Kim, and Lin Ge (2020), “Speed Up, Size Down: How Animated Movement Speed in Product Videos Influences Size Assessment and Product Evaluation,” Journal of Marketing.
doi.org/10.1177/0022242920925054(opens in a new tab)
Article Abstract:
Digital ads often display video content in which immobile products are presented as if they are moving spontaneously. Six studies demonstrate a speed-based scaling effect, such that consumers estimate the size of an immobile product to be smaller when it is animated to move faster in videos, due to the inverse size–speed association they have learned from the domain of animate agents (e.g., animals, humans). Supporting a cross-domain knowledge transfer model of learned size–speed association, this speed-based scaling effect is (1) reduced when consumers perceive a product’s movement pattern as less similar to animate agents’ movement patterns, (2) reversed when a positive size–speed association in the base domain of animate agents is made accessible, (3) attenuated for consumers who have more knowledge about the target product domain, and (4) mitigated when explicit product size information is highlighted. Furthermore, by decreasing assessed product size, fast animated movement speed can either positively or negatively influence willingness to pay, depending on consumers’ size preferences.
Special thanks to Kelley Gullo and Holly Howe, Ph.D. candidates at Duke University, for their support in working with authors on submissions to this program.
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He (Michael) Jia is Assistant Professor of Marketing, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Hong Kong.
B. Kyu Kim is Associate Professor of Marketing, School of Business, Yonsei University, South Korea.
Lin Ge is a doctoral student, CUHK Business School, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.