Stop and smell the roses: How and when busyness impacts consumers' preference for minimalist advertisements
通过实地研究和实验，发现忙碌会促使消费者偏好极简广告，其机制是通过激发放松欲望和避免处理不流畅感，且时间价值感知和时间节点会调节这一效应。
Abstract In an era marked by the rapid growth of digital media and increasingly limited attention spans, advertisements employing minimalist aesthetics have emerged as a compelling approach. Yet, the specific conditions under which consumers favor minimalist ads remain underexplored. Through a comprehensive series of studies, including a field study and five scenario‐based experiments, this research unveils new insights into how busyness shapes consumer preferences for minimalist ad designs. This research found that busyness notably steers preferences toward minimalist over complex ads, both in real‐world (Study 1) and experimental environments (Study 2). Notably, we revealed a serial mediation, with busyness affecting ad preference through the desire for relaxation (distal mediator) followed by the intent to avoid processing disfluency (proximal mediator) (Study 3). Furthermore, two boundary conditions were identified in which this effect is attenuated or intensified. When consumers place a high (vs. low) price on time, the busyness effect on minimalism preference is undermined (Study 4). In addition, this effect is more pronounced when a temporal landmark that designates an end (vs. start) is made salient (Studies 5 and 6). These insights not only illuminate consumer behavior in visual marketing but also carry significant practical implications for advertisers, marketing professionals, and policymakers.