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Introduction
Almost a decade ago, Hagtvedt and Patrick (2008a) published their finding of an “art infusion effect”. This phenomenon consists of a positive effect of art when a piece of visual art is used to promote a product. In a series of experiments, the authors show that art tends to elicit luxury perceptions that drive the positive effect of art on consumer evaluations. They combined artworks with products by depicting them in advertisements, on product packaging and directly on products. Interestingly, this art infusion effect seems to be positive per se independent of the valence of the image, i.e. even when a rather negatively valenced image such as a burning house is depicted, a positive effect has been demonstrated. Huettl and Gierl (2012) contributed to the art infusion model by identifying boundary conditions for the effect. They showed that only for hedonic products, art positively affects the attitude towards the product. Moreover, their study revealed that using artwork in ads can make a product appear more expensive in the perception of consumers what, in turn, can negatively affect purchase intentions under certain conditions.
This current research aims to build upon these prior findings. There are several aspects that might influence the art infusion effect which have not been addressed thus far. One such aspect is the art interest of the consumer. It might make a difference whether a consumer is highly interested in art or not at all. Prior research has mainly used samples consisting of students with one exception in which restaurant patrons were used (Hagtvedt and Patrick, 2008a, study 1). However, how highly art interested consumers react to ads containing artwork has never been considered, although such ads might especially raise the attention and interest of this consumer group. Moreover, ads using artwork or ads that contain art and design elements are often deliberately placed in media that target art interested individuals. On the other hand, the group of highly art interested individuals might also be more sceptical about using art for commercial purposes.
Another aspect which has not been investigated in detail is the familiarity of the artwork. Based on research which shows that familiar objects cause more favourable reactions (Zajonc, 1968), it can be assumed that the familiarity with the artwork,...