Although product desire is a central force driving consumption, much remains unknown about the internal processes that contribute to consumers' desires to purchase a product. This study focuses on these internal processes and draws on elaborated intrusion theory to understand how product desire develops and is reinforced by mental elaborations. Extant theory is extended to better fit consumption contexts by introducing transformation expectations as the mediator through which elaborations impact product desire, and visualization ability is identified as an important moderator of the elaboration process. Across two surveys and two experiments, findings show that thinking about or visualizing ownership of a desired product increases expectations about transformations that will occur as a result of product acquisition. However, this result is not constant across consumers but rather occurs only for those high in visualization ability. Findings also show that the effect of elaboration on desire appears to accumulate over time, but that even a single visual elaboration serves to increase product desire among those high in visualization ability. Results also indicate that the elaboration-desire sequence can influence consumers' willingness to take on debt to purchase a wished-for product, especially for those with high visualization ability.

中文翻译：

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可视化能力和维持产品欲望的阐述

尽管产品欲望是推动消费的核心力量，但对促成消费者购买产品欲望的内部过程仍有很多未知。本研究侧重于这些内部过程，并利用详尽的入侵理论来了解产品欲望如何发展并通过心理阐述得到加强。现有的理论通过引入转换期望作为细化影响产品需求的中介，扩展到更好地适应消费环境，可视化能力被确定为细化过程的重要调节器。在两项调查和两项实验中，结果表明，对所需产品的所有权进行思考或将其可视化会增加对因产品采购而发生的转变的预期。然而，这个结果在消费者中并不是一成不变的，而是只发生在那些具有高可视化能力的人身上。研究结果还表明，细化对欲望的影响似乎会随着时间的推移而积累，但即使是单一的视觉细化也会增加那些具有高可视化能力的人的产品欲望。结果还表明，细化-欲望序列会影响消费者为购买心仪产品而承担债务的意愿，尤其是对于那些具有高可视化能力的人。