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This research aims to investigate how consumers’ authentic pride versus hubristic pride affects different construal levels of mind-sets and subsequent product evaluation by activating local versus global cognitive appraisal tendencies. Furthermore, this research also examines how lay theories impact the effects of pride on construal levels and how power moderates the effect of hubristic versus authentic pride on product preferences varying in construal levels.

Drawing on cognitive appraisal and construal level theories, this research conducts eight experimental studies to test the hypotheses with an ANOVA, bootstrap analysis and binary logistic regression analysis. The details of the experiments are presented in the paper.

The results show that people feeling authentic (hubristic) pride dominantly adopt a lower (higher) level of construal, and consequently put more weight on feasibility over desirability (desirability over feasibility) attributes. Authentic pride’s inclination to appeal behavior-specific appraisals triggers local appraisal tendencies and bestows lower construal levels, whereas hubristic pride’s inclination to connect the entire self triggers global appraisal tendencies and confers higher construal levels. Incremental (vs entity) theorists are likely to attribute the pride experience to their efforts (traits), and thus feel authentic (hubristic) pride. Furthermore, the product preferences of people experiencing authentic vs hubristic pride depend on their power state.

Notwithstanding the importance of this research, it is worthwhile to note some of its limitations to encourage future research. First, eight studies in the lab were conducted, but no real behavior study was conducted. Although there is a high correlation between the results of lab studies and those of real behavior studies, the authors encourage future researches to elicit the consumers’ pride in the actual consumption situation using a real behavior study. Furthermore, this research mainly focuses on pride, and does not examine other positive emotions, e.g. happiness. Therefore, the authors encourage future research to examine other positive emotions.

The findings suggest that it is appropriate to use construal levels to match consumers’ pride types. In fact, marketers can induce hubristic pride or authentic pride in ads by simply using words or sentences (“feeling proud because of your hard work” or “feeling proud, you are so superior and remarkably unique”), and present either higher- or lower-level construal of desired behaviors to improve advertising effects.

The research contributes to literature by documenting how hubristic/authentic pride can affect distinct construal levels via activating global/local appraisal tendencies. And this research thoroughly illustrates the mechanism by which hubristic/authentic pride activates global versus local appraisal tendencies. More importantly, this research finds how lay theories affect construal level given a pride experience and it also corroborates the moderating effects of power in the proposed relationship, which establish the boundary conditions of the effects of prides on construal levels.

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.

Previous studies have vague views about whether employees who are required to complete large amounts of work (i.e. role overload) would proactively create a change in their job characteristics (i.e. job crafting), because the cognitive mechanism underlying the nexus between role overload and job crafting is unclear. The aim of this study is to identify why and when role overload has an impact on job crafting.

This study builds a second-stage moderated mediation model. Using a two-wave panel field study of 213 employee–supervisor matched data, this study examines the proposed hypotheses.

Results show that role overload decreases construal level, which can determine the tendency of employees to focus on the feasibility (low level of construal) or desirability (high level of construal) of behaviors. Goal self-concordance is the degree to which employees pursue their personal goals based on feelings of personal interests and values. The authors find that goal self-concordance guides employees who have higher levels of construal to exert more effort in job crafting. The authors further find that goal self-concordance moderates the mediating role of construal level. Specifically, for employees in pursuit of self-concordant goals, role overload reduces their construal level, resulting in less effort in job crafting. For employees who do not pursue self-concordant goals, role overload decreases their construal level, thereby improving job crafting.

The findings of this study enrich the literature on role overload and job crafting by revealing the mechanism and boundary conditions of the relationship between role overload and job crafting.

Consumers usually respond favourably to ingroups but negatively to dissociative groups and products linked to dissociative groups, termed the dissociative group effect. Despite important implications for branding, advertising and celebrity endorsement, little is known about how to attenuate the effect. This paper aims to introduce a mechanism which attenuates the dissociative group effect by drawing on construal level theory.

An experimental approach was used which included two-part between-subjects designs.

High identifiers prefer products linked to their ingroup over ones linked to a dissociative group, however, the opposite is true for low identifiers. The difference in preference is attenuated for high and low identifiers when they are placed in an abstract mind-set. The underlying mechanism of this effect is similarity focus.

The same context was used to ensure that the attenuating effect found was not due to contextual factors. However, further studies should replicate the findings in a wider variety of contexts.

This research offers practical recommendations on how to manage multiple customer segments in increasingly diverse marketplaces. By inducing an abstract mind-set in customers, for example, via advertising copy, website architecture or contextual factors such as pitch of the music, marketers can increase the effectiveness of identity-linking marketing for consumers’ high/low in identification.

This is one of the first empirical studies to evidence the applicability of construal level theory within identity marketing and offers a novel mechanism to attenuate the dissociative group effect. The findings shed new light on how low identifiers relate and respond to identity-linked marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on a potential tradeoff between security and usability in people’s use of online passwords – in general, complex passwords are secure and desirable but difficult to use (i.e. difficult to memorize) whereas simple passwords are easy to use, but are insecure and undesirable. Construal level theory (CLT) explains how high vs low construal level causes people to focus on “desirability” vs “feasibility” of an action, which in the research context can translate into the “security” vs “usability” of using passwords.

The authors conducted a series of three laboratory experiments manipulating people’s construal level and investigating its impact on password use.

The authors found that people who were induced to think at a high construal level created or showed intention to choose stronger passwords relative to people who were induced to think at a low construal level. Furthermore, this effect was also significantly different from the control group who did not receive any experimental treatment. In addition, the authors found that perspective taking targeted at the desirability of creating a strong password further strengthened the effect of a high construal level on intended password choice.

This research makes several contributions to existing literature on password security. First, this research offers CLT as a theoretical lens to explain an individual’s thinking and behavior concerning online password use. Second, this research offers empirical evidence that a high construal level improves users’ password use, a desirable feature for improved security. Third, this research contributes to the literature on how to apply nudging to influence human behavior toward more desirable, stronger, password use. Finally, our research identifies PT as a factor enhancing the positive effect of a high construal level on online users’ password use.

The purpose of this study is to propose differential marketing tactics for high-quality products versus low-price products by building on construal level theory.

Two studies were conducted, one using students and another using data collected from more than 7,000 online auctions.

When consumers consider high-quality products, they use more abstract mental models, and when they consider low-price products, they use more concrete mental models. Differentiation based on primary features product is more effective for products that are positioned on quality, while differentiation based on the secondary features is more effective for products that are positioned on price. Also, marketing efforts to attract attention are more effective for products positioned on quality than those positioned on price.

This research focused on how consumers use different mental models for considering high-quality versus low-price product offerings but did not examine whether a given segment/consumer uses different models in considering high-quality versus low-price alternatives.

Managers wishing to reinforce a high-quality position should focus on marketing efforts compatible with consumers’ high level construal by enhancing and highlighting the primary features, and drawing consumers’ attention to their product offerings. Managers wishing to reinforce a low-price positioning should focus on marketing efforts that are compatible with consumers’ low level construal by enhancing and highlighting secondary features.

This research makes an important theoretical link between construal theory and brand positioning.

Based on the construal level theory, the purpose of this study is to prove the effect of interaction between construal level and visual crowding on consumers' buying intention. The study tries to explain the reasons behind the different buying intention toward visual crowding among consumers with different construal level.

This study was conducted through two situational simulation experiments. The main data analysis methods are ANOVA and bootstrap analysis.

(1) the matching of construal level and visual crowding has a significant effect on consumers’ buying intention. (2) Perceptual fluency mediates the interaction between the construal level and visual crowding on buying intention.

This study measures consumers' buying intention through situational experiments but does not measure consumers' buying behavior through real scenarios.

According to the study conclusions, consumers prefer visually crowded packaging that matches their construal level. Enterprises should consider the impact of the construal level on the effect of packaging stimulation.

This study enriches the theory related to construal level and highlights the mediating role of perceptual fluency. The addition of perceptual fluency explains the mechanism by which visual crowding affects consumers' buying intention. This extends the research on the antecedents and effects of perceptual fluency.

This study innovatively introduces visual crowding into packaging and matches visual crowding to construal level, explaining why different consumers buy different visually crowded packaging.

Purpose – We apply theories of physical distance to better understand behavior and judgment in intragroup and intergroup negotiations.

Approach – By applying theories of physical distance to the domain of intragroup and intergroup negotiations we develop predictions about how large magnitudes of physical distance from in-group and out-group members should affect individuals' trust, interpretation of behavior, and willingness to use negotiation to resolve conflict.

Findings – Based on the current application of physical distance theories, several predictions are made for how increased distance should differentially impact the negotiation process when negotiating with in-group versus out-group members. Notably, it is predicted that because of increased schema-reliance associated with increased physical distance, negotiations with out-groups should have increased challenges.

Implications – The current chapter yields several interesting avenues for future empirical research. Moreover, we propose specific strategies that may be of use in reducing the potential harmful impact of increased physical distance in intergroup negotiations.

Value of the paper – We integrate several theories of physical distance to generate novel predictions for group negotiation.

Communication about sustainability in fashion is complex. While fashion businesses have increasingly sought to manage their sustainability practices, their understanding of how to communicate about sustainability persuasively remains limited. The authors argue that a key problem with a firm’s efforts in communicating about sustainability is that it is a psychologically distant issue for both businesses and stakeholders. This paper aims to apply construal level theory to explore managers’ construal level in shaping communication about sustainability.

The paper used a two-phase qualitative methodology. Phase one involved undertaking interviews with ten managers in fashion firms to address communications about sustainability in the UK. In phase two, 16 consumers interpreted and reflected on the persuasiveness of communications about sustainability encompassing both concrete and abstract forms of messaging.

The authors identify the factors driving different approaches to communication (concrete and abstract) depending on the construal levels of managers, managers’ perceptions of the construal level of target stakeholders and the perceived authenticity of the sustainability claim. The paper highlights the conditions under which the (mis)match with the brands’ sustainable practices works in crafting communication. The authors also highlight three main communication strategies in responding to the complexity of sustainability in fashion ecosystems: amplification, quiet activist and populist coupling.

As an in-depth qualitative study, the authors seek to expose an under-researched phenomenon, yet generalisations both within the fashion industry and beyond are limited by this focus.

Fashion managers need to be flexible and evaluate how their communications about sustainability affect stakeholders’ evaluations of their brands. As sustainability in fashion brands grows, concrete and specific sustainability messaging may be necessary to improve sustainable behaviours.

The prevailing literature encourages symbiosis between sustainability practices and communications; such relationships are rare, and studies outside the consumer perspective are also rare. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this exploratory study is the first to understand how managers’ construal level influences decisions around communications about sustainability in fashion and how these messages are perceived by consumers.

According to construal level theory, close (versus far) psychological distance is associated with low (versus high) construal level. Despite the evidence for discount frame effect, it is unclear whether psychological distance and product nature play moderating roles. In addition, little has been known whether the effect of discount frame can extend to other dependent variables such as willingness to pay (WTP). Driven by construal level theory, five experiments were conducted to explore whether the effect of discount frame is dependent on psychological distance and product nature (i.e. utilitarian versus hedonic product).

The experimental method was used, with discount frame, psychological distance and product type as the independent variables and purchase intention, attitude towards the advertisement, perceived value and WTP as the dependent variables. Participants were presented with promotion scenarios in which psychological distance and discount format were manipulated. In order to test the generalizability of results, promotional scenarios for both utilitarian (i.e. backpack bag and shampoo) and hedonic products (i.e. scenery ticket and perfume) were presented. Data were collected via the online experiment platform (i.e. www.Credamo.com).

The authors found an interaction between discount frame and spatial distance in that consumers had more positive attitude toward percent off than amount off under near-spatial distance. However, no interaction was observed between discount frame and temporal, social or hypothetical distance.

Taken together, the current study for the first time reveals that the effect of discount frame is contingent on a specific dimension of psychological distance (i.e. spatial distance), regardless of whether the product is utilitarian or hedonic. Findings from this study for the first time pose a challenge to the notion that construal-level match necessarily leads to more favorable consumer responses, suggesting that there may be a unique mechanism underlying the joint effects of spatial distance and discount frame. The current findings can provide important implications for marketers and retailers in an effort to design effective promotional messages.