Imagine if your treadmill was more than just a "cold machine" — what if it was a "training partner" with its personality and name? Would you then be more motivated to exercise?

Lack of motivation is a common obstacle to achieving health goals. Various innovative strategies have been developed to address this challenge, with anthropomorphic design gradually gaining attention as a new marketing approach.

Anthropomorphic design enhances consumers’ emotional connection and interactive experience by endowing products or services with human-like characteristics or behaviors.

Despite the increasing practical application of anthropomorphic design, there is little research on how it affects consumers’ motivation to pursue a particular goal.

This is created by a sense of companionship, a feeling of being in the company of a friend or partner, which the anthropomorphic design fosters. As motivation increases, consumers are more inclined to purchase products that can further improve their motivation. In addition, the study investigated the applicability and boundary conditions of the anthropomorphic effect in different scenarios, providing important insights for the practical application of anthropomorphic design.

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The study was published in the Journal of Marketing (one of UTD24 and FT50) and is titled “Cardio with Mr. Treadmill: How Anthropomorphizing the Means of Goal Pursuit Increases Motivation.”

Data shows that while more than 50% of people worldwide have set health and exercise goals, only half can stick to them. Lack of motivation has become a significant obstacle in pursuing essential health, study, and career goals.

Lack of motivation threatens consumers’ physical and mental health and poses a challenge to market performance and companies’ long-term development. In particular, it manifests in a decline in the volume of purchases and frequency of use of products or services (such as fitness equipment) and low trial and repurchase rates, affecting the company’s return on investment.

Faced with this reality, companies are constantly striving to innovate in the design of health equipment (such as skipping ropes and treadmills) to help consumers better adhere to using the products.

Considering that "anthropomorphic design" has become a common strategy in modern marketing and can potentially overcome the problem of consumers’ insufficient motivation to achieve their health goals and help companies increase the repurchase rate of their products, WANG Lili’s team carefully designed eight experiments to demonstrate the potential of anthropomorphic strategies in improving consumers’ motivation to pursue their health goals.

The study raises the following key questions: Does anthropomorphic design affect consumers’ motivation to pursue their goals? What is the underlying mechanism? What are the limits of its effect? How can we avoid the adverse impact of anthropomorphic design, especially for innovative products?

Researchers used eight custom-designed experiments to explore these questions in depth. The subjects included the most essential tools for achieving health goals, such as skipping ropes and treadmills. By comparing consumer behavior in anthropomorphic design and non-anthropomorphic design, the significant effect of the anthropomorphic strategy in increasing consumers’ motivation to pursue health goals was revealed.

The anthropomorphic design not only extends consumers’ weekly workout time but also increases the fun and attainability of the workout goal by enhancing the “sense of camaraderie” among consumers, effectively boosting consumer motivation to pursue a goal. When consumer motivation increases, they are more likely to purchase products that can improve it even further!

These research findings provide companies with design ideas and offer consumers a new perspective when choosing and using products and services.

Although anthropomorphic design as a product innovation method can improve user experience and appeal when applied to fitness products or services, it does not always work. WANG Lili’s team also uncovered the boundary conditions of the anthropomorphic design effect and found that it does not work best in all situations.

Companion Factor

The study found that the effect of anthropomorphic tools is weakened when consumers already have a training partner. People can feel real emotional resonance and a sense of ownership in social interactions, which is difficult to replace with an anthropomorphic design fully; for users who already have a regular training partner, an additional anthropomorphic design may be icing on the cake rather than a life-saving aid.

Fun Design

Suppose the health tool is designed to be interesting enough to encourage users to participate and enjoy their workout actively. In that case, the added value of the anthropomorphic design will be limited. For example, a fitness app combining gamification elements and a rich interactive user interface can encourage user interest and participation without anthropomorphic characters.

Setting Goals

If consumers have high confidence in achieving their health goals, the positive effect of anthropomorphism will also diminish. In other words, when people have high confidence in achieving their health goals, they are more inclined to rely on their willpower and plans to achieve their goals and less on motivation from external factors (including anthropomorphic design). This shows that anthropomorphic design may not provide additional motivation or support in a self-confident user group, and its influence naturally becomes weaker.

Role of the Supervisor

Furthermore, the study has shown that the intelligent design of health tools often has a misalignment of roles, positioning the tools as "monitors" rather than "companions." This design tends to emphasize the monitoring and control functions of the tools over the users, such as recording data and reminding them of tasks, while ignoring the users’ needs for emotional support and companionship. In the long term, this misalignment of roles can weaken users’ autonomy and lead to them becoming dependent on or disgusted by the health tools, ultimately harming the pursuit of long-term health goals.

- We thank Prof. WANG Lili and her research team for their study on the impact of anthropomorphic design on consumer motivation. The research offers valuable insights into both academic theory and practical applications.

- You can read the original article in Chinese  here