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The abstractness of luxury
Abstract and Figures
The purchase of luxury goods is relatively exclusive, limited, and often merely hypothetical. Thus, luxury goods may be perceived as more psychologically distant than ordinary goods. Based on the link between psychological distance and abstract mental representation, we hypothesized and found in three studies that both consumers and advertisers describe luxury products in more abstract language than they describe ordinary products, and that abstract product descriptions are perceived as more luxurious than concrete product descriptions.
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... Perceptual distance is essential to investigate to advance our understanding of masstige purchase behaviour. Perceptual distance refers to the perceived difficulty to obtain a desirable product which brings pleasure but is relatively expensive (Hansen & Wänke, 2011;Togawa & Sugitani, 2022). Consumers perceive that brands help manage the image they want to maintain, but the high price of branded goods causes these consumers to compromise (Chatterjee et al., 2023). ...
... Thus, the findings of this study are critical in advancing the marketing literature related to masstige goods (Kumar et al., 2020). The explanation behind this relationship is that something which is communicated in social media tends to be luxury (Bao et al., 2024;Leban et al., 2020) and, thus, drives the perception that the product is hard to obtain (Hansen & Wänke, 2011;Togawa & Sugitani, 2022). ...
... Luxury perception enhances purchase intention. For most people, the essence of a luxury purchase is a special treat that is out of the ordinary (Hansen & Wänke, 2011). However, previous studies that examined this relationship were limited to the context of fashion brand collaborators (Lee & Cho, 2023). ...
... According to construal level theory, existing research indicates that luxury brands are often associated with abstract representations due to their perceived psychological distance. This sense of distance enhances the perception of luxury, reinforcing its exclusivity and desirability (Hansen & Wänke, 2011). Such distance can be social, with luxury ingrained in consumption habitus that establishes social distinction (Bourdieu, 1984). ...
... Lastly, we posit a moderation effect of consumers' construal level, further demonstrating the pivotal role of construal level theory in research concerning luxury consumption. While earlier work has revealed the association between luxury and construal level (Hansen & Wänke, 2011) and the linkage of status perception to physical distance (Chu et al., 2021), our research extends construal level theory as a comprehensive framework for examining the influence of temporal fit and abstract mindsets in consumers' cognitive processing of heritage brand information. These theoretical insights also broaden the scope for understanding the impact of influencer marketing strategies in the luxury sector. ...
Luxury brands today face the challenge of preserving their timeless allure while adapting to contemporary trends in the digital age. However, the impact of digital experiences on the value addition to luxury brands remains unclear. Drawing upon construal level theory, this research explores how influencer type (human vs. virtual influencers) interacts with luxury brands' heritage narrations (past vs. present emphasis) and influences consumers' luxury consumption. Three studies conducted with middle‐income Chinese consumers reveal that combinations of influencer type and heritage narration type, representing higher temporal alignment between influencer and heritage narrative tense (virtual influencer + present narration or human influencer + past narration), elicit more favorable consumer responses (purchase intent, brand attachment, and brand credibility perception), compared to other combinations that represent lower temporal alignment (Study 1). Furthermore, we find that consumers' incremental mindset mediates the positive impact of temporal alignment on consumer responses (Study 2), and consumers' construal level state moderates the influence of temporal alignment on incremental mindset (Study 3). This research provides valuable insights for luxury brands seeking to harness the potential of virtual experiences and heritage management effectively.
... Moreover, luxury makes consumers' experience a hedonic experiential and symbolic benefit while shopping (Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982;Kivetz & Simonson, 2002). Consequently, luxury is associated with high social status and prestige (Dubois et al., 2021;Hansen & Wänke, 2011). However, luxury brands also need to manage the process of evolution through innovation and craftsmanship as a consequence of organisational and environmental changes (Athwal & Harris, 2018). ...
... Importantly, some price signals may imbue utilitarian products with non-utilitarian attributes (Gerstner 1985) and consequently change the advertising persuasion environment in which streamers interact with consumers (Suri et al. 2007;. For example, when the price of a utilitarian product is higher than a certain bar, consumers may regard the product as a luxury good (Kapferer and Laurent 2016), and the advertising for it would be strongly different from that of a normal utilitarian product (Hansen and Wänke 2011;Vigneron and Johnson 1999). Given the existence of price dispersion in most utilitarian product categories that are available on live-streaming commerce platforms (Wang et al. 2021), it is also necessary to inquire "How is the role of streamerconsumer gender match in advertising utilitarian products contingent on heterogeneous price signals?" ...
Within the emerging live-streaming commerce context, streamer-consumer gender match has been considered an important topic in studies on advertising hedonic products. However, it is still under-explored how streamer-consumer gender match affects the mapping from functional benefits to advertising effectiveness when advertising utilitarian products and how the mechanism is contingent on heterogeneous price signals. To somewhat address the research gaps, we develop a number of hypotheses based on the elaboration likelihood model together with the price signaling mechanism and examine the research model drawing on a 28-day panel on 685 smartphones sold on Douyin Live Shopping. The empirical results indicate that (1) functional benefit performance has a positive effect on advertising effectiveness for utilitarian products with a middle-price signal, and the effect is stronger when the products are sold by male rather than female streamers; (2) also for advertising utilitarian products with a middle-price signal, male consumers resist male streamers when streamers leverage utilitarian information to stimulate consumers’ purchase intention; and (3) functional benefit performance contributes little to advertising effectiveness for utilitarian products with a high-price or low-price signal. The evidence uncovers that gender match mainly makes a difference to appending extra hedonic cues rather than amplifying the conversion of utilitarian information in the sense of advertising utilitarian products. The findings also highlight the risk of neglecting within-category heterogeneities in the by-product-category research on live-streaming advertising.
Advertisers typically publish in‐feed ads with two types of authorship: brand or influencer, yet little is known about the effectiveness of in‐feed ads between these two authors. In this study, we investigated the interactions and mechanisms of ad authorship (brand vs. influencer) and brand type (luxury vs. mass) on advertising effectiveness, and tested the moderating effect of upward social comparison based on the stereotype content model. A pilot study, by coding the secondary data from Most Liked WeChat Moment Ads, found that a greater proportion of luxury (vs. mass) brands were authored by brands (vs. influencers). Study 1 used eye tracking technique to identify the interactive effect of ad authorship and brand type on visual attention. Study 2 further identified perceived competence and warmth as mediators. Study 3 verified the moderating effect of upward social comparison on the above effects. This paper contributes to the theoretical literature on in‐feed advertising by showing the interactive effect of advertising authorship and brand types on advertising effectiveness. It also offers valuable insights for luxury or mass brands on strategically leveraging the brand itself or influencer for advertising.
This paper investigates how different phonetic structures used in brand names affect their luxurious appeal. Specifically, it was hypothesized that the phonetic structures within luxury brand names are distinct from those of basic brand names and that these distinctions help to maintain the perception of exclusivity associated with luxury brands in consumers' minds. The hypothesis was tested using two studies involving both explicit and implicit methods. The results indicate that luxury and basic brand names differ in their use of distinct phonetic features and that these phonetic characteristics can be formally identified. Furthermore, when the different phonetic patterns associated with luxury and basic brands were used to create novel, hypothetical brand names in each category, respondents were able to successfully classify them as luxury or basic brands, including at an implicit level. In sum, the paper reveals how sound symbolism operates at a phonetic level in the context of brand names and implicitly influences the way in which consumers perceive a brand's apparent premium or basic status.
The increasing popularity of inclusive marketing as part of the broader strategies of brand activism, linked to the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) movement, is creating new opportunities for luxury fashion brands to signal their responsibility and openness when it comes to these issues. However, such inclusivity initiatives can lead to consumer backlash when luxury brands rely on perfectionism and self-esteem to elicit admiration and desirability. We ask whether weaving models with disabilities into brand narratives contributes to positive consumer responses. Using signaling theory, our study employs a structural equation modeling approach to show that, despite the negative effect of perceived brand inclusivity on consumers’ willingness to buy, the serial mediation by transportation into brand stories and advertising credibility flips the effect to positive. By doing so, this study also extends extant literature on inclusive advertising in luxury fashion by going beyond dominant manifestations of inclusivity tackling feminism and LGBTQAI+ rights.
Purpose
This study aims to examine the interaction effects of chatbots’ language style and customers’ decision-making journey stage on customer’s service encounter satisfaction and the mediating role of customer perception of emotional support and informational support using the construal level theory and social support theory as conceptual frameworks.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used a scenario-based experiment with a 2 (chatbot’s language style: abstract language vs concrete language) × 2 (decision-making journey stage: informational stage vs transactional stage) between-subjects design.
Findings
Findings show that during the informational stage, chatbots that use abstract language style exert a strong influence on service encounter satisfaction through emotional support. During the transactional stage, chatbots that use concrete language style exert a strong impact on service encounter satisfaction through informational support.
Practical implications
Findings provide some suggestions for improving customer–chatbot interaction quality during online service encounters.
Originality/value
This study offers a novel perspective on customer interaction experience with chatbots by investigating the chatbot’s language styles at different decision-making journey stages.
Three studies examined the cognitive implications of linguistic categories in the interpersonal domain. On the basis of conceptual and linguistic criteria, we advance a four-level classification that distinguishes between verbs and adjectives in the interpersonal domain. These four levels (in terms of increasing abstractness) are descriptive action verbs, interpretive action verbs, state verbs, and adjectives. Results from the first two studies reveal a systematic relation between the respective linguistic category and the temporal stability of the quality expressed in the sentence, the sentence's informativeness about the subject, the sentence's verifiability and disputability, and the sentence's informativeness about a specific situation. Results from the last study support the four-level linguistic classification and its differential cognitive functions. Implications for social cognition and personality research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A model of interpersonal terms (verbs and adjectives) is reviewed in terms of the research on: (a) the systematic cognitive inferences these terms mediate, and (b) the implications of this model for social cognitive processes as it is applied in different domains such as attribution processes and intergroup relations.
Two decades of research on the linguistic category model (LCM) have resulted in considerable empirical evidence that can be organized by distinct paradigms: the linguistic intergroup bias, the linguistic expectancy bias, the question-answering paradigm, and language-based attribution. The present article explicates the metatheory underlying the research that was actually conducted within these paradigms. This metatheory provides the organizing structure for a review of potential LCM research that has not been conducted yet because it does not fit the common metatheory. Untapped LCM research encompasses communication failures, deception, the inclusion of measures of effective communication, and the joint determination of language and cognition by social roles and ecological constraints. Because many of these often overlooked topics are theoretically important and practically useful, they suggest themselves as prominent goals of future research.
This research proposes a feelings-based account of brand extension evaluation and demonstrates that the promise of pleasure (hedonic potential) associated with luxury brands is a key driver of brand extendibility. In four studies, we contrast a luxury brand with a value brand. Both brand concepts lead to equally favorable brand evaluations, but the luxury brand concept results in more favorable brand extension evaluations due to the hedonic potential inherent in this concept. However, the luxury brand is shown to be sensitive to inconsistent brand cues, leading to diminished hedonic potential and consequently decreased brand and brand extension evaluations. The legendary Scheherazade of Arabian Nights fame kept herself from being beheaded by the promise of pleasure from her fascinating stories. She enraptured the king, who typically executed his virgin wives after one night of being with them, by telling him a story that made him eagerly anticipate her next exciting new story, night after night, for one thousand and one nights. The promise of pleasure is indeed powerful, and evokes in us the motivation to re-experience pleasurable feelings again and again. We draw inspiration from this tale to investigate how, like Scheherazade, luxury brands make a similar promise of pleasure, not only for the experience of that product alone but also for other products that bear the same brand name. The central thesis of this research is that luxury brands are more extendible than value brands by virtue of their hedonic potential, or, in other words, their promise of pleasure.
Whether choosing a cell phone, a senator, or a kitchen appliance, consumers today quickly find themselves awash in information from commercials, magazines, and websites. Whereas some of this information is broad, decontextualized, and abstracted across multiple individuals and instances, other information is more closely tied to a single experience within one specific context. The present research asks: under what circumstances do people rely on abstracted averages, and when are they swayed by another individual’s particular experience? Across three studies, we show that temporal distance increases the relative weight placed on aggregate vs. individualized information when participants are asked to choose between two sleeping pills, migraine medications, or kitchen appliances, and that this process impacts not only evaluation but also willingness to pay and choice. Potential implications for evaluation, decision-making, and base-rate utilization are discussed.
Four studies examined the prediction of construal level theory that the more distant future events would be construed in higher-level, more abstract, and simple terms. Objects were categorized into broader categories when they pertained to distant future situations than to near future situations (Study 1). Positive and negative experiences in the more distant future were expected to be more prototypical—less variable and more extreme (Study 2). More distant future coping experiences were expected to be less variable (Study 3). Preferences for events and activities that were expected in the distant future were organized around simpler structures than preferences for the same events when they were expected in the near future (Study 4). These results support the principle of temporal construal, according to which the more distant future is represented in a more schematic, abstract, and coherent way.