ABSTRACT
Although marketers may believe that associating products and brands with humanlike traits will make them more endearing and desirable, recent research has revealed that anthropomorphizing may produce complex patterns of results, sometimes serving as an eective tactic and sometimes being counterproductive. In this chapter, we will briey summarize prior research on anthropomorphism from diverse elds such as psychology, religion and robotics. Next, we will review the growing work in marketing that has studied this fascinating phenomenon to identify the main ndings that emerge – primarily in terms of the antecedents, processes and consequences of product and brand anthropomorphism. Subsequently, we will suggest some key directions for future research in the area.
