Sustainability is a growing trend and companies are increasingly engaging sustainability in their core business strategy. One example of how this is manifested is through the development of products that are  labelled as energy-efficient. There is a lack of insights into how consumers perceive and gain benefits from such sustainable products, particularly so regarding the nonfunctional and non-economical benefits and into how culture influences those benefits. The purpose of this study is to investigate consumer perceived non-functional and non-economical benefits that are associated  with energy-efficient products,  in order to gain a deeper understanding on how the Swedish compared to the Thai culture influence consumers perception of energy efficient products within the home appliance industry. The literature review regarding the  symbolic meaning of products concludes that the most relevant perceived benefits of products includes emotional-, self-expressiveness-, and social benefits. A cross-cultural quantitative study performed in Sweden and Thailand determines that culture influences consumers understanding of products and thereby influence their perceived benefit from energyefficient home appliances. How culture influences consumer perceived benefits depends on the characteristics of the different cultural dimensions established by Hofstede (2010), involving: power distance, masculinity, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation.

Facial expressions provide valuable information in making judgments about internal emotional states. Evaluation of facial expressions can occur through mimicry processes via the mirror neuron system (MNS) pathway, where a decoder mimics a target’s facial expression and proprioceptive perception prompts emotion recognition. Female participants rated emotional facial expressions when mimicry was inhibited by immobilization of facial muscles and when mimicry was uncontrolled, and were evaluated for self-expressiveness level. A mixed ANOVA was conducted to determine how self-expressiveness level and manipulation of facial muscles impacted recognition accuracy for facial expressions. Main effects of self-expressiveness level and facial muscle manipulation were not found to be significant (p > .05), nor did these variables appear to interact (p > .05). The results of this study suggest that an individual’s self-expressiveness level and use of mimicry processes may not play a central role in emotion recognition.