Can Imagination Travel the Distance? Investigating the Role of Spatial Distance in Elaborative Thought Processes: An Abstract

Abstract

Consumers often make decisions that involve either a spatially close or distant consumption experience (Tversky 1992). These decisions have fascinated scholars, and recent scholarship has added to our body of knowledge regarding the roles of spatial distance in information processing and ensuing consumer judgments (e.g. Raghubir et al. 2011). Yet, much remains to be learned regarding how advertising messages about consumer experiences that will occur at different spatial, geographic distances are processed. Two separate experiments were conducted, both manipulating spatial distance and elaborative approach. The current inquiry increases knowledge and understanding about spatial distance by demonstrating that: (1) far spatial distance dampens the flow of triggered episodic memory and thus diminishes the efficiency of the consumer imagination in producing consumer responses, (2) close spatial distance facilitates the retrieval of triggered episodic memory, enhancing the consumer imagination and improving consumer responses, and (3) certainty and involvement provide the explanatory mechanism for the effects of spatial distance (far vs. close) on consumer responses when the tested cities evoke some degree of certainty. Overall, spatial distance perceptions differentially impact information flow in the imagine Our findings have implications for marketing practice. Results suggest that marketing communications that include various degrees of spatial distance differentially impact consumer responses. Advertising messages should be developed with consideration to how spatially close or far the consumption event will be. The appropriate elaborative approach should be utilized, based on the degree of spatial distance employed. Thus, marketing messages can be developed to take into account that when a consumption setting is spatially far, the flow of episodic memory is suppressed and the imagination is obstructed as a persuasive tool. For example, a vacation getaway to a distant, exotic, named locations (such as Bora Bora, Kathmandu or Timbuktu) is likely to be best received when promotional messages give specific details about the trip and the location.