How Am I Construing My Brand? The Effect of Brand Experience on Consumers' Construal Level.

Research Question Consumers experience brands (in)directly in various ways, and build relationship with brand (un)intentionally. But how the brand experience influence consumers decision making process especially when they encounter marketing messages and what message strategies will enjoy the advantages for superior persuasion effects? This article proposes that consumers will have different levels of psychological distance toward a target brand depending on their brand experience (study 1). Drawn from construal level theory (CLT), furthermore, this paper demonstrates that emotional advertising appeals lead favorable brand evaluation for consumers with strong brand experience whereas cognitive appeals are more effective for consumers with weak brand experience (study 2). Method and Data Study 1 An experimental study was conducted. Two real grocery brands were used to investigate how brand experience can influence consumers' construal level and their psychological distance toward the brand. A total of 70 undergraduate students from two different universities in North Carolina and Ohio participated in the study. Study 2 The moderating role of brand experience on consumers' evaluation with a different advertising appeals was investigated in study 2. The effect of a match between brand experience and advertising appeals was examined in an experimental condition. A 2 (brand experience: strong vs. weak) × (advertising appeals: emotional vs. cognitive) between-subjects design was employed. A total of 101 undergraduate students from major southeastern university participated in the study online. Key Contributions The current research contributes to brand and consumer psychology literature on several fronts. First, this research addresses the effects of brand experience on how individuals construe brands. While there have been many studies using CLT to understand consumer and brand relationship such as choice confidence, brand attachment, and brand preference stability, there have been few empirical studies investigating the relationship between brand experience and consumers' construal level. The relation between brand experience and individuals' construal level can shed light on better understanding of how consumers conceptualize and process brand information. The results from this research show that brand experience plays a similar role as psychological distance on individuals' construal level. In other word, depending on the strength of experience that consumers have with a brand, they represent the brand either with high-level construal terms or low-level construal terms. Second, this research expands consideration of the brand experience concept. The findings from the study show that brand experience can have impact on how consumers perceive brands in their psychological space. These findings are important given that they can provide a new approach to understanding the relationship of consumer and brand based on consumers' brand experience. Third, this research provides further support to prior CLT studies. By using two real grocery brands, the current research can increase the generalizability of the theory and shows that the relation between construal level and psychological distance is not limited by experimental conditions. Finally, the current research identifies brand experience as the moderating variable that could have impact on the evaluation of different types of advertising appeal. The findings of the current research offer an opportunity to better understand brand experience effects in an advertising context. Summary of Findings We proposed brand experience as an antecedent to consumers' construal level and psychological distance. The results revealed that stronger brand experience leads consumers to construe the brand with lower level of construal than individuals with weaker brand experience. The influences of brand experience on psychological distance were also investigated. Specifically, we confirmed that stronger brand experience leads consumers to perceive that the activities related to the brand are more likely to occur and will be more likely to take place in near (proximal) future, compared to consumers with weaker brand experience. This study demonstrated that the brand experience is related to consumers' psychological distance, implying that consumers may have different psychological distance depending on their brand experience to a specific brand/product. As studies in construal level theory suggest, this study also proposes advertisers a new guideline to create advertising messages. Prior research has suggested that the emotional appeal advertisement are more effective to consumers with low-level construals (Septianto and Pratiwi 2014). Hence, creating different ad appeals based on consumers' brand experience can increase the efficacy of the advertisement. Through study 2, we confirmed that the emotional appeal ads were more persuasive for individuals with strong brand experience compared to individuals with weak brand experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]