Dissertation
EXPANDING THE ROLE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCE IN SHAPING CONSUMER BRAND ASSOCIATIONS, EVALUATIONS, AND BEHAVIOR
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2018
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/118055
Abstract
Human beings are innately egocentric. Our self is the center of our reality. We are grounded in the here and now, as viewed through our own subjective perception. This experience of closeness to or distance from one’s self is referred to as psychological distance (Trope and Liberman, 2010), an abstract concept with myriad implications for understanding how consumers perceive and relate to the brands that they use throughout their daily lives. In this dissertation, three distinct yet related essays serve to enhance the field’s understanding of the role of psychological distance in shaping consumers’ brand evaluations, intentions, and purchase behaviors, as well as the structure and accessibility of brand associations in memory. In doing so these essays provide a number of impactful contributions to both marketing theory and practice alike. Essay 1 demonstrates that consumers’ evaluations, intentions, and spending behavior can be positively influenced by aligning consumers’ construal mindset, or the concreteness of an advertising message, with the level of psychological distance associated with the type of relationship the consumer has with a target brand. Essay 2 shows that altering the psychological distance of brand communications can be an effective means of mitigating the inherent skepticism that consumers have toward prosocial corporate action. As skepticism places consumers in a low-level, concrete mindset, matching this mindset with psychologically close CSR information positively affects their evaluations of the CSR initiative and the brand itself. Essay 3 examines the effect of psychological distance on brand associations from a cognitive perspective. Brand knowledge associated with a psychologically distant future self-identity is shown to be encoded at a high level of abstraction whereas brand knowledge associated with a psychologically close current self-identity is encoded more concretely. As a result, retrieval and recall of this information is enhanced when consumers are placed in an appropriate construal mindset – an effect that is shown to occur as a result of increased accessibility of this information in memory.
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Details
- Title
- EXPANDING THE ROLE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCE IN SHAPING CONSUMER BRAND ASSOCIATIONS, EVALUATIONS, AND BEHAVIOR
- Creators
- Scott Connors
- Contributors
- Andrew W. Perkins (Advisor)David Sprott (Committee Member)Matt Thomson (Committee Member)Chadwick Miller (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Carson College of Business
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 241
- Identifiers
- 99900581623801842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation