Tastes great or tasty? Matching advertising language to product construal

Abstract

Our research finds evidence that matching the construal level of advertising copy to that of the focal product can improve product attitudes by facilitating processing fluency, a finding that has significant implications for attitude and advertising research. Construal level theory (CLT) research has shown that desirability is more abstract than feasibility, idealistic values (respect, honesty, etc.) are more abstract than pragmatic and functional concerns (uses, extrinsic benefits) and hedonic products (music, chocolate) are also more abstract than utilitarian products (glue stick, ball point pen). CLT has also discovered that psychological distance can be affected by temporal, geographical and social distance in such a way that objects that are farther away on these dimensions are construed more abstractly.