Research in e-marketing and virtual reality introduces the concept of affordance from product design literature. However, some researchers may misinterpret affordances as only perceived product cues. Li, Daugherty and Biocca (2003, 2002), for example, define product affordances as sets of rules or perceptual cues that “guide consumers interacting with products during prepurchase inspection” (2003, p. 397; 2002, p. 50). Although that definition is not entirely incorrect, it offers a narrow view of affordances. In fact, Li et al. (2003) also noted that affordances are what an object offers or what humans think an object offers. Perceptual cues, therefore, are not themselves affordances. However, perceptual cues as objects have affordances, i.e., what the cues offer or what humans think the cues offer.
According to Gibson (1966), information from perceptual systems specifies value, enabling individuals to “detect the values of things at a distance and move toward or away from them in accordance with what they afford” (p. 73). Norman (1998), from whose work Li et al. derive their definition, defines an affordance not as a property but as “a relationship that holds between the object and the organism that is acting on the object” (p. 123). Affordance, then, is the consequence of interaction between the organism and the object. However, the consequence may not have any connection with the actual properties or function of an object. In distinguishing real and perceived affordances, Norman (1998) points out that “the perceived affordances are what determine usability” (pp. 123-4).
Perceived affordances are like Dumbo’s feather. In the popular Disney movie (Grant & Huemer, 1941), a young elephant’s abnormally large ears afford him the ability to fly. Dumbo, the young elephant, does not perceive the affordance. A mouse gives Dumbo a “magic feather,” convincing Dumbo that the feather affords him the ability to fly. The feather does not have that real affordance, but Dumbo perceives that affordance and flies while holding the feather in his trunk. One might conclude, then, that although the feather does not afford the ability to fly, it does afford the confidence to fly. However, that affordance did not come from the feather. Rather, that affordance came from the mouse. The affordance was not connected with a physical object, as Norman (1998) discussed, but with a social object.
As Gibson (1977), from whom Norman (1998) appropriated the term “affordances” (p. 123), asserted “the richest and most elaborate affordances of the environment are provided by other animals and, for us, other people” (p. 75). Therefore, examining physical-object affordances while excluding social affordances ignores that which makes our relationship to our environment richest and most elaborate.
Physical objects are tools that afford people modified relationships to their environments. Further, since physical objects are components of environments, they afford people modified relationships with other physical objects. Similarly, animals and other people are also tools in the sense that they afford people modified relationships with their environments. Further, because people are components of environment just as physical objects are, people afford modified relationships with other people, animals and physical objects.
In contemporary consumer culture, marketing identifies and communicates information about tools that afford appropriately modified environments. Therefore, the most important question is, “How do consumers want to modify their environments?” The answer provides the key to selecting the tool, whether physical or social, with the appropriate affordance. However, because the modifying process often masks the true answer, a second but equally important question is, “Why do consumers want to modify their environments?”
Research that examines mediated product experience often emphasizes product features. Consumer learning studies by Daugherty, Li and Biocca (2001), Kempf and Smith (1998), Smith (1993) and others have commonly used the free-response technique to identify salient product attributes. However, individual product attributes may mask the critical consumer affordance. As Gibson (1977) asserts, people may perceive affordances more easily than they perceive isolated properties. Meaningful affordance appears only as a combination of properties, some of which inhere not to the product but to the use context.
The use context of a digital video camera, for example, does not appear in the product attributes. Although the free-response technique affords researchers the opportunity to learn the use context, researchers often have excluded use context by design. Consumers tend to use digital video cameras in social contexts. The attributes of those contexts reveal explicitly what product attributes reveal only implicitly: the specific manner in which consumers attempt to modify their relationships with their environments. In other words, research often tends to study how consumers interact with products but not how consumer interaction with products modifies consumer interaction with the environment. Further, since consumer interaction with digital video cameras has social consequences, i.e., social affordances, research often misses key consumer affordances.
According to Ajzen and Fishbein (1980), consumers form attitudes about any aspect of their world by simultaneous association with various characteristics, qualities and attributes. Although they recommend free response as the simplest and most direct procedure, their concern is not with salient attributes but with salient beliefs. Their examples of beliefs clearly demonstrate that their concept of beliefs is equivalent to the concept of affordances that Norman (1998) discusses. Salient beliefs are how consumers think that interacting with an object, i.e., any aspect of their environments, will modify a relationship with the environment.
Other examples by Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) include both actual and perceived affordances, such as weight gain and feelings of guilt. Although each is an affordance, neither is an object attribute. However, each is a consequence of interacting with the object. Each is also a negative consequence, illustrating that affordances can be negative as well as positive. Negative affordances accord with Reisman, Glazer and Denney’s (1953) classic work on universal social types in which guilt, shame and anxiety are mechanisms for ensuring compliance with social norms. Through guilt, shame and anxiety, behavior affords other behavior.
Eliciting salient product attributes can lead to insights into how consumers want to modify their relationships with their environments. Each salient attribute affords consumers a modified relationship with a specific aspect of the environment: the consumer product. A button affords the opportunity to activate a digital video camera. Without activation, the camera only affords consumers a modified environment in which papers do not blow from a desk or a door does not blow shut. In other words, without the affordance of a button, the digital video camera has the same affordances as paperweights and doorstops. However, if free-elicitation reveals that consumers want a large, easily accessible activation button, consumers likely want the product to afford modified relationships with unanticipated occurrences. Such an affordance may reveal in turn that an almost unconscious interaction with the product affords consumers to emphasize a richer, more involved interaction with the context.
Identifying salient affordances is a laddering process: features afford modified relationships to the product, which affords modifications to the physical environment, which affords modified relationships to the social and cultural environment. These are orders of affordances. The relationship between consumer and object is a first-order affordance. The relationship between the physical environment and the consumer-with-object is a second-order affordance. The relationship between the social/cultural environment and the consumer-with-object-acting-on-the-physical-environment is a third order affordance.
Consumption often involves establishing, reinforcing or changing positions within cultural categories. A consumer may want to be more feminine or masculine, younger, older or more powerful in relation to the social environment. Such psychodynamic motives are largely unconscious, according to Fishbein and Ajzen (1980), and therefore more elusive to researchers. Psychodynamic motives often drive consumers to select objects only for the third-order affordances the objects offer. Indeed, some objects afford very little in the first and second orders. The presence or absence of a brand, for example, affects the natural environment very little, yet its social/cultural impact can be substantial. Marketing is essential to managing third-order affordances.