When “the more the better”? Mindfulness enhances the effect of the number of displayed product features in short video ADs on purchase intention

Abstract

In the age of information explosion, consumers may no longer want to be overwhelmed with more information. But marketers are forced to display multiple features of a product in advertisements to fully demonstrate its competitive advantage, especially for a multifunctional product. Based on this, the authors explore when more could be an effective marketing strategy. The results of five studies demonstrated that the more features of multifunctional products displayed in video ads, the lower the processing fluency of consumers when watching the ads, thus reducing their positive emotions, and finally reducing their purchase intention, supporting the negative effect of more features on consumers in the context of marketing and revealed its cognitive and emotional mechanism. More important, we introduce mindfulness, an effective marketing strategy that alleviates the negative effect of too many product features on consumers, into the field of advertising marketing to address this issue. A high level of mindfulness, whether measured by trait scales or manipulated by experimental priming, weakens the negative effects of the number of displayed features. Specifically, when the level of mindfulness is high, the negative effect of displaying more product features on purchase intention is weak. When the level of mindfulness is low, the number of displaying more features has a strong negative impact on purchase intention.