 On Breaking Functional Fixedness: How the Aha! Moment Enhances Perceived Product Creativity and Product AppealSara Caprioli, Christoph Fuchs and Bram Van den Bergh Journal of Consumer Research, 2023, vol. 50, issue 1, 48-69 Abstract: How do consumers react to products assembled from existing components? Nine studies in both the lab and the field demonstrate that consumers evaluate products as more creative and more appealing when they consist of components that originally served entirely different functions. When consumers realize that the intended functionality of a component is not fixed, but versatile, they experience an aha! moment, which in turn enhances perceived product creativity and product appeal. This research bridges engineering and consumer research providing theoretical contributions to the product design and creativity literature. The findings of this research have substantive implications for designing sustainable products, especially for product upcycling, the process of transforming old or used components into new products. Keywords: product domain distance; functional fixedness; creativity; aha moment; product design; upcycling; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:50:y:2023:i:1:p:48-69. Access Statistics for this article Journal of Consumer Research is currently edited by Bernd Schmitt, June Cotte, Markus Giesler, Andrew Stephen and Stacy Wood More articles in Journal of Consumer Research from Journal of Consumer Research Inc. |
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