Marketers love awe. Sweeping mountains, fireworks and starry skies are a staple of advertising. But when the product being sold is a limited edition, that sense of wonder tends to backfire, according to a set of nine studies.
People who feel awe become less interested in exclusivity, the very thing a limited edition promises. The result is fewer clicks, weaker attitudes and fewer choices of the special version.
The research was carried out by Aysu Senyuz of the University of Sussex, Jonathan Hasford of the University of Tennessee and Ze Wang of the University of Central Florida. It appears in the October 2025 issue of the Journal of Marketing Research.
A real ad campaign on Facebook
The authors started with a pilot look at 226 TV ads for limited edition products and 457 comparable ads for regular products, using the measurement platform iSpot.tv. Awe was just as common in both groups, at 79.6% and 74.2% of ads. Yet stronger awe went with lower consumer engagement only for the limited edition ads.
They then ran a week-long Facebook campaign with a restaurant in a major city in the southeastern United States. The ads invited people to join an email list to sample one of the restaurant’s Spanish wines. Half showed fireworks outside the restaurant, an awe-inspiring image, and half showed the restaurant’s interior. Half of each set called the wine “Limited-Edition.”
The ads reached 119,169 Facebook users and drew 2,075 clicks. For the limited-edition wine, the awe ad got a click-through rate of 1.04%, against 3.07% for the interior photo. Overall, people were 66.2% less likely to click a limited edition ad with the awe image, and 12.2% less likely to click the awe ad when it featured the limited edition rather than the regular wine.
The authors note a weakness here: the indoor photo may simply have looked like a better fit for wine. That is one reason they moved to controlled experiments.
Why awe and exclusivity clash
In three experiments with participants recruited on Prolific, the team compared awe with other uplifting emotions: elevation, gratitude and compassionate love. Only awe lowered interest in limited edition products, which suggests the effect is specific to awe rather than to feeling good in general.
The proposed reason is a mismatch. Awe makes people feel part of something larger and pushes them toward unity and collective well-being. A limited edition, by contrast, sells distinctiveness. A further study measured this directly and found that people shown awe-inducing ads placed less value on exclusivity, which in turn lowered their preference for the limited edition item.
A study set in a metaverse simulation pointed the same way. Among 252 undergraduates, those whose virtual home sat among mountains picked fewer limited edition items for their avatars and homes (an average of 1.07 choices) than those whose home was in an ordinary neighborhood (1.55). Without the limited edition label, the pattern flipped.
How marketers can make awe work
The clash can be turned around. In a study of 272 people shown a commercial for a fictitious hotel resort, awe hurt attitudes toward limited edition slippers pitched as “exclusive, elite, and unique.” When the same slippers were pitched on craftsmanship and quality, awe actually helped, lifting attitudes to 5.81 on a seven-point scale versus 5.07 after a compassionate love ad.
Messages about connection also reversed the effect. When an awe-inspiring camera ad added lines such as “Enjoy the connection to the world,” the limited edition model scored higher than the regular one. A cause-related cue did the same for a photo book: once the ad mentioned a partnership with a water charity, attitudes toward the limited edition rose to 6.03, above the regular version.
The authors focused on positive awe. They point out that threat-based awe, the kind felt during thunderstorms or floods, was not tested and might push preferences in the opposite direction.
For now, the practical lesson is specific: an awe-filled ad for a limited run should sell quality or shared purpose, not status.
Study Details:
- Title: How Awe in Marketing Communications Decreases Consumer Preferences for Limited Edition Products
- Authors: Aysu Senyuz, Jonathan Hasford, Ze Wang
- Journal: Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 62, No. 5, pages 818-836
- Publication Date: October 2025
- DOI: 10.1177/00222437251333742