Facing the “Right” Side? The Effect of Product Facing Direction

Abstract

Product image display in advertising plays an important role in consumer perception and behavior. In this research, we establish important downstream consequences of one significant aspect of product image display—facing direction—on product evaluations. Building on the literature of visuospatial attention and grounded cognition, we show that products with their images facing toward the left (versus right) in advertising are evaluated more favorably when consumers’ temporal focus is on the past, whereas the reverse holds true when consumers focus on the future. Furthermore, we establish that the impact of facing direction on product evaluations exists regardless of the horizontal position of product images. In addition, we demonstrate that for products higher on desirability features, a mismatch (versus match) between facing direction and consumers’ temporal focus leads to higher product evaluations, whereas the reverse holds true for products higher on feasibility features. Important implications for advertising theory and practice are discussed.