“Million Dollar Smile?” How Smile Intensity, Relationship Norm and Consumer Self-Construal Influence Ad Effectiveness

Marketers widely use the image of a smile to create a positive impression among consumers. The well-known interpersonal benefits of a smile could lead one to believe that a smile always conveys positive information and receives positive social feedback. On the contrary, Wang et al. (2016) cautioned that bigger and broader smiles sometimes generate undesirable consequences, and a slight smile is perceived more favorably when people associate it with the trait of competence. Our study contributes to the evolving research stream regarding smile intensity by examining how consumer evaluations of service advertisements are affected by the way the model smiles in the ad. Drawing from the social-functional perspective, we explore the differences—and the reasons for those differences—in consumers’ responses to two types of smiles (broad and slight), and identify boundary conditions associated with the roles of relationship norm and consumer self-construal. Relationship norms affect compliance, and influence the decoding of the inferences consumers make regarding a consumption context (Scott, Mende, and Bolton 2013; Wan, Hu, and Wyer 2011). Two types of relationship norms have been distinguished: communal and exchange relationships (Clark and Mills 1993). The communal norm leads to an emphasis on warmth, as opposed to competence, whereas the exchange norm leads to a greater emphasis on competence than on warmth (Scott et al. 2013). A person showing a broad smile tends to evoke a perception of warmth while a person showing a slight smile is likely to be perceived as competent (Wang et al. 2016). Thus, we expect an interactive effect between relationship norm and the model’s smile intensity.