Despite evidence that currency denomination can influence spending, researchers have yet to examine whether the physical appearance of money can do the same. This is important because smaller denomination bills tend to suffer greater wear than larger denomination bills. Using real money in the context of real purchases, this article demonstrates that the physical appearance of money can override the influence of denomination. The reason being, people want to rid themselves of worn bills because they are disgusted by the contamination from others, whereas people put a premium on crisp currency because they take pride in owning bills that can be spent around others. This suggests that the physical appearance of money matters more than traditionally thought, and like most things in life, it too is inextricably linked to the social context. The results suggest that money may be less fungible than people think.

Across four studies, the authors demonstrate that consumers intuitively link disconfirmation, specifically sensory disconfirmation (when touch disconfirms expectations by sight), to a brand’s personality. Negative disconfirmation is often associated with negative posttrial evaluations. However, the authors find that when negative sensory disconfirmation is introduced by an exciting brand, the source of disconfirmation can sometimes be perceived positively. This occurs because consumers intuitively view disconfirmation as more authentic of an exciting personality. Similarly, despite the wealth of literature linking positive disconfirmation to positive posttrial evaluations, the authors find that sensory confirmation is more preferred for sincere brands because consumers intuitively view confirmation as more authentic of a sincere personality. The authors conclude by demonstrating the intuitive nature of this phenomenon by showing that the lay belief linking brand personality to disconfirmation does not activate in a context where sensory disconfirmation encourages a more deliberative assessment of the product.

The success of new incongruent products hinges largely on whether consumers can efficiently make sense of the product. One of the most efficient ways that people make sense of new objects is through feature-based association. Such associations often incorporate an enabler (e.g., the color green) to help make sense of a semantically related feature (e.g., vitamin enriched). Evidence from three studies suggests that marketers can strategically incorporate enablers in product design to help consumers make sense of an extremely incongruent feature. As a result, consumers tend to reflect more favorably on the product. Furthermore, the authors find that even if the enabler itself is incongruent and leads to lower evaluations on its own, when combined with an atypical feature the effect can still be positive. Thus, a small but semantically meaningful adjustment in design can help marketers successfully introduce extremely incongruent innovations.

New products are often incongruent with consumer expectations. Researchers have shown that consumers prefer moderately incongruent products, while being adverse to extremely incongruent products. Evidence from three studies suggests that this phenomenon is highly influenced by a consumer's state of arousal. Specifically, low arousal decreases preference for moderate incongruity while increasing preference for extreme incongruity, whereas high arousal decreases preference for any form of incongruity. Underlying these effects are discrete emotional states brought on by a physiological response to incongruity. Varying arousal subsequently varies the severity of the emotion, be it negative (anxiety) or positive (curiosity), which in turn varies evaluations for the product. This suggests that creating excitement around a product launch may be good for incremental innovation, but it may not be a good idea for something truly innovative.

Evidence from three experiments shows that due to superior visuo-spatial elaboration, females (relative to males) have a heightened ability to identify visually incongruent products that are promoted among competing products. Females discriminate relational information among competing advertisements and use this information to identify incongruent products that would otherwise go unidentified. Consequently, they evaluate the products more favorably. Consistent with predictions of a limited capacity in working memory, we find this performance for females coincides with a reduction in ad claim recognition. Close inspection reveals the trade-off between product identification and ad recognition is the result of involuntary resource allocation from verbal processing to visuo-spatial processing. Hence, females may be able to use the advertising context to identify an extremely incongruent product, but this performance is not without a cost. Our results have important implications for research on product incongruity, gender, and advertising context.