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This research distinguishes between abstract brand concepts built through the development of diverse product portfolios (i.e. portfolio abstractness) and those built through establishing human-like images (i.e. image abstractness), and investigates the joint effect of the two types of brand abstractness on building brand equity.

The three studies presented use experimental design with participants in a laboratory setting and members of an online participant panel.

Three studies demonstrate that while building abstractness by expanding a brand’s product portfolio can generate favorable brand evaluations, this positive effect is marginal compared to when the brand is imbued with human-like characteristics. Furthermore, the favorable effects on brand equity because of abstractness associated with a human-like brand image are evident in protection from brand dilution in the face of negative publicity.

The findings suggest that a consideration of different forms of abstractness is key to unlocking the complexities of understanding customer-based brand equity.

This research shows that although building abstractness through a diversified product portfolio or a symbolic, human-like brand image can favorably impact customer-based brand equity (i.e. attitudes and responses to negative publicity), the former strategy has a marginal effect compared to the latter.

This is the first research to conceptualize brand abstractness as stemming from broad portfolios or from human-like brand images. Additionally, it provides a holistic understanding of how these two forms of abstractness jointly influence brand evaluations and responses to negative publicity.

Managers prefer semantic imbeds in brand names, but extant literature has primarily studied fictitious names for their sound-symbolic perceptions. This paper aims to explore sound-symbolic perceptions of products with blended brand names (BBNs), formed with at least one semantic and one nonsemantic component. Unlike most extant literature, this study not only estimates the effect of vowels and consonants individually on product perceptions but also of their combinations. The boundary condition for this effect is examined by classifying products by their categorization and attributes by their abstractness.

Through a within-subject experiment, this paper tested perceptions of products with BBNs having high-/low-frequency sounds. A mixed-design experiment followed with sound frequency, product-level categorization and attributes’ abstractness as predictor variables.

For BBNs, vowel sounds convey brand meaning better than the combinations of vowel and consonant sounds – and these convey brand meaning better than consonant sounds. Differences in consumers’ perceptions of products with BBNs occur when the degree of attributes’ abstractness matches product-level categorization, such as when concrete attributes match subordinate-level categorization.

Brand managers/strategists can communicate product positioning (attribute-based) through BBNs created specifically for product categories and product types.

This research presents a comparative analysis across vowels, consonants and their combinations on consumers’ perceptions of products with BBNs. Manipulation of names’ length and position of the sound-symbolic imbed in the BBN proffered additional contributions. Another novelty is the interaction effect of product categorization levels and attributes’ abstractness on sound-symbolic perception.

This paper investigates how two characteristics of language, abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity, influence user engagement in communication exercises on innovation targeted to the general audience. The proposed conceptual model suggests that innovation fits well with more abstract language because of the association of innovation with imagination and distal construal. Moreover, communication of innovation may benefit from greater adherence to the narrativity arc, that is, early staging, increasing plot progression and climax optimal point. These effects are moderated by content variety and emotional tone, respectively.

Based on a Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) application on a sample of 3225 TED Talks transcripts, the authors identify 287 TED Talks on innovation, and then applied econometric analyses to test the hypotheses on the effects of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity on engagement, and on the moderation effects of content variety and emotional tone.

The authors found that abstractness (vs concreteness) and narrativity have positive effects on engagement. These two effects are stronger with higher content variety and more positive emotional tone, respectively.

This paper extends the literature on communication of innovation, linguistics and text analysis by evaluating the roles of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity in shaping appreciation of innovation.

This paper reports conceptual and empirical analyses on innovation dissemination through a popular medium – TED Talks – and applies modern text analysis algorithms to test hypotheses on the effects of two pivotal dimensions of language on user engagement.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of product-related description abstractness/concreteness on perceived trustworthiness and the role of consumer product expertise and shopping-stage mindset in the persuasiveness of abstract vs concrete product descriptions.

Two online experiments were conducted: Study 1 (description abstractness – manipulated between-subject; consumer product expertise, perceived trustworthiness, purchase intent – measured), Study 2 (consumer shopping-stage mindset – manipulated between-subject; description abstractness – manipulated within-subject; consumer product expertise, perceived trustworthiness, abstract/concrete description preference – measured).

The negative effect of the abstractness (abstract descriptions vs the ones supplemented with relevant product details) on description trustworthiness was evidenced in Study 1. Trustworthiness was positively related to purchase intent, especially for high product expertise. Study 2 replicated the effect of product description abstractness on its trustworthiness in terms of two other forms of abstractness (abstract descriptions vs the ones supplemented with irrelevant product details and product benefits vs attributes). The goal-oriented (vs comparative) mindset had a positive effect on the benefit (vs attribute) description preference, especially for high product expertise.

For marketers, the results suggest the positive consequences of presenting concrete information on product attributes and the conditions enhancing the effectiveness of presenting product benefits.

The paper integrates the existing views on consumer response to abstract vs concrete information (lexical abstractness/concreteness, means-end chain theory) and links them to consumer product expertise and shopping-stage mindset.

While attempting to persuade surgeons to accept their health technology, sales representatives for medical devices face daily challenges in the operating room. Surgeons exhibit cognitive complexity (abstractness vs. concreteness) when accepting any form of health technology. Surgeons choose technologies on behalf of their patients, taking patient priorities and expectations into account. Prior research has focused on cognitive complexity in the context of health technology adoption, but the issue of technology acceptance has not been addressed. The purpose of this study to use the construal level (CL) theory to determine the role of behavioural abstraction levels in the acceptance of surgical health technology.

On the basis of 556 min of seminar-based data and semi-directive interviews, the surgeons’ experiences regarding the acceptance of health technology were analysed. A non-directive observational method was used to permit the spontaneous emergence of CL dimensions in a natural environment. A categorization model was used for data coding, and MAXQDA, in addition to traditional multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis, was used to generate results with joint displays.

Effort expectancy, learning curve, performance risk, habit, patient clinical condition, clinical outcome expectancy, technology setting and social influence were construed at a low construal level (LCL). On the other hand, patient paying capacity, technology cost, price value, financial risk and patient performance expectation were construed at a high construal level (HCL). The study also reveals duality-based factors which showed proximity to HCL but intersected at LCL, and vice versa. Duality-based factors such as effort expectancy, surgical technique, trust and perceived risk intersected at HCL, whereas performance expectancy, relative advantage, time expectancy, perceived value, physical risk and peer group influence intersected at LCL.

This is one of the early studies that presented the impact of behavioural abstraction on behavioural intention to accept health technology for surgeries.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a behavioral theory of organizational vision.

Based on existing theoretical concepts and empirical evidence, this new theory development compares a diverse set of plausible logical, empirical, and/or epistemological conjectures so that highlighting occurs to form the substance of the new vision theory.

The approach takes the form of an emerging vision theory, which explains how vision attributes create an impact on organizational performance.

While vision is core to the prevailing vision‐based leadership theories, little is theoretically and empirically known about attributes for effective vision. Moreover, there is no existing leadership theory, which explains the process by which vision attributes create positive effects on organizational performance. The paper proposes a vision theory to fill this gap.

Whenever social injustice tackled by social movements receives heightened media attention, charitable crowdfunding platforms offer an opportunity to proactively advocate for equality by donating money to affected people. This research examines how the Black Lives Matter movement and the associated social protest cycle after the death of George Floyd have influenced donation behavior for campaigns with a personal goal and those with a societal goal supporting the black community.

This paper follows a quantitative research approach by applying a quasi-experimental research design on a GoFundMe dataset. In total, 67,905 campaigns and 1,362,499 individual donations were analyzed.

We uncover a rise in donations for campaigns supporting the black community, which lasts substantially longer for campaigns with a societal than with a personal funding goal. Informed by construal level theory, we attribute this heterogeneity to changes in the level of abstractness of the problems that social movements aim to tackle.

This research advances the knowledge of individual donation behavior in charitable crowdfunding. Our results highlight the important role that charitable crowdfunding campaigns play in promoting social justice and anti-discrimination as part of social protest cycles.

Service encounters are becoming increasingly virtual through the infusion of computer-mediated technologies. Virtual services separate consumers and service providers both spatially and temporally. With the advent of virtual services is the need to theoretically explain how service separability is psychologically perceived by consumers across the spectrum of computer-mediated technologies. Drawing on construal-level theory, the purpose of this paper is to conceptualize a theoretical framework depicting consumer’s construal of spatial and temporal separation across a continuum of technology-mediated service virtuality.

The authors conducted two studies: first, to investigate consumers’ levels of mental construal associated with varying degrees of service separation across a spectrum of technology-mediated services; second, to empirically examine consumer evaluations of service quality in response to varying degrees of spatial and temporal service separation. These relationships were tested across two service industries: education and tourism.

Consumers mentally construe psychological distance in response to service separation and these observations vary across the spectrum of service offerings ranging from face-to-face (no psychological distance) through to virtual (spatially and temporally separated – high psychological distance) services. Further, spatial separation negatively affects consumers’ service evaluations; such that as service separation increases, consumers’ service evaluations decrease. No such significant findings support the similar effect of temporal separation on customer service evaluations. Moreover, specific service industry-based distances exist such that consumers responded differentially for a credence (education) vs an experiential (tourism) service.

Recent studies in services marketing have challenged the inseparability assumption inherent for services. This paper builds on this knowledge and is the first to integrate literature on construal-level theory, service separability, and virtual services into a holistic conceptual framework which explains variance in consumer evaluations of separated service encounters. This is important due to the increasingly virtual nature of service provider-customer interactions across a diverse range of service industries (i.e. banking and finance, tourism, education, and health care). Service providers must be cognisant of the psychological barriers which are imposed by increased technology infusion in virtual services.

The purpose of the paper is to identify characteristics of visions that are associated with desirable performance outcomes.

The paper examines findings from various vision studies in American, Australian and Thai businesses to derive characteristics of effective vision statements.

Effective visions are characterized by conciseness, clarity, abstractness, stability, future orientation, challenge and desirability or ability to inspire in Australian, Thai and US businesses. Such visions are associated with higher performance outcomes.Originality/valueWhile vision is emphasized by authors and consultants as critical to superior performance, little is known about what characterizes effective vision. This study uncovers this unknown.