That’s too close! The role of product-body proximity in naturalness marketing

Purpose In light of the increasing focus on naturalness in marketing, this paper aims to determine when and why consumers are inclined to favor natural fast-moving consumer goods. Design/methodology/approach In the in-person Study 1, participants indicated their preference for naturalness across six fast-moving consumer goods from different categories. For the online Study 2, the authors recruited participants from prolific who indicated their naturalness importance toward a product, their perception of the product’s impact on well-being and their feelings when using a synthetic alternative. Findings The empirical findings indicate that consumers’ inclination to favor naturalness is higher for products that are intended to nourish (vs clean) and increases with higher levels of product-body proximity. Their inclination toward naturalness increases with product-body proximity for two reasons. First, consumers have a stronger feeling of contamination for products used in high proximity to the body. Second, products used in higher proximity to the body have a more pronounced impact on consumer well-being. Research limitations/implications Future research should use multi-item measures to assess the effects found in this research in greater depth, investigate the effect of product-body proximity and product function in the category of durable goods, uncover further negative expectations that consumers have toward natural products, investigate how to reassure consumers of the effectiveness of natural cleaning products and refine the product-body proximity construct. Practical implications Marketers should position nourishing products as natural goods, but they should refrain from naturalness cues for cleaning products, particularly for those used distant from the body. Additionally, marketers should reduce the feeling of contamination regarding synthetic ingestible products. Moreover, marketers of ingestible and body care products should emphasize the positive impact their products have on well-being. Originality/value Marketers from various sectors allude to naturalness to make their products more attractive to consumers. However, the authors demonstrate that this might be counterproductive as consumers have a lower inclination toward naturalness for certain products, depending on product-body proximity and a product’s function. Moreover, the authors elucidate the underlying mechanism behind the varying inclination toward naturalness.