Effects of Construal Level on the Price- Quality Relationship

versus Concrete Inputs: Construal Level Theory While there may be several different ways of addressing this inconsistency, the current research proposes one such resolution by drawing on construal level theory (CLT; Trope, Liberman, and Wakslak 2007). CLT states that objects, events, and individuals can be perceived as being either psychologically near or far along different dimensions of distance such as spatial, temporal, and social (Trope et al. 2007). The key premise of the theory is that psychologically distant objects are represented as abstract, high-level construals that rely on generalized schemas rather than on specific details. In contrast, psychologically close objects are represented as concrete, low-level construals that focus more on specific detail rather than on generalized abstractions. For instance, in the realm of interpersonal distance, it has been found that people describe similar others’ actions in relatively more concrete, means-related terms (e.g., construing the act of reading a book as “preparing for an exam”) rather than more abstract, ends-related terms (e.g., “getting a high grade”; Liviatan, Trope, and Liberman 2008). A wealth of similar findings from the construal theory literature (e.g., Förster, Friedman, and Liberman 2004; Liberman and Trope 1998) suggests that abstract information, compared with concrete information, tends to exert more impact on representations and judgments of psychologically distant events, while the reverse holds when the focal judgment is about psychologically near events. We argue that this premise contains direct implications for how quality inferences are formed in different situations. Compared to specific, concrete product attributes, price can be thought of as a more abstract, general cue, especially with regard to its implications for quality. One reason for the relatively more abstract nature of the price cue has to do with its being a universal component for practically all products; thus, the price-quality heuristic itself represents a generalized abstraction of a consumer’s many observations and experiences. In contrast, the diagnosticity of attributes is usually specific to different product categories (e.g., hard disk capacity can be used to infer computer quality but is inapplicable to judgments about cars; however, the physical attractiveness of packaging is often used for quality judgments of food items but less so for computers). Another reason for the more abstract nature of the price cue is that it acts as a funnel, reflecting the overall favorability of a product’s attributes; thus, an overall set of desirable (undesirable) attributes is usually associated with a high (low) price. Indeed, the idea that the price-quality belief is an abstract “theory” while feature-specific product attributes are more concrete “data” has been widely adopted in previous consumer research (Baumgartner 1995; Broniarczyk and Alba 1994). In 378 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH light of this distinction and given the preceding arguments arising from CLT, the following prediction can be made. H1: Consumers’ reliance on price (product attributes) for making quality inferences will be enhanced when the judgment is psychologically relatively distant (relatively close). Of note, this prediction seemingly conflicts with existing findings in the CLT literature, which have shown that price actually exerts a greater influence on consumer judgments for psychologically nearer compared to more distal purchases (Liberman and Trope 1998; Thomas, Chandran, and Trope 2005). As discussed in more detail subsequently, we resolve this apparent dilemma and contribute to CLT by showing that the same feature (e.g., price) can be part of either low-level or high-level construals depending on the type of judgment being formed, namely, quality inferences (as in the current work) versus purchase intentions (as in past work; e.g., Liberman and Trope 1998). Overview of Experiments This article reports five studies that examined our hypothesis regarding the impact of psychological distance on the price-quality relationship. Experiments 1A, 1B, and 2 manipulated interpersonal distance using the “self” versus “other” distinction following other research that has used the same manipulation of psychological distance (Kim, Zhang, and Li 2008). These studies tested the prediction that price (attributes) will have a lower (higher) impact on quality inferences when the quality judgment is made with regard to one’s own rather than another’s behavior. The selfother dimension is of particular relevance to the question of how consumers form quality inferences since we often make these inferences on the basis of someone else’s behavior with regard to the product, whether in an offline (e.g., going shopping with a friend) or an online context (e.g., e-commerce Web sites in which prospective buyers are informed about what other consumers bought in that category). Of more importance, a study of the self-other difference is of theoretical significance in its own right. While consumer researchers have paid relatively little attention to this distinction, the psychology literature has identified various mechanisms to explain the different ways that actors and observers react to and process information, such as knowledge-based mechanisms (we typically know more about ourselves than we do about others; Nisbett et al. 1973) and motivational mechanisms (the tendency to find more positive explanations for our own behavior than another’s; Miller and Ross 1975). Our research adds to this literature by showing that actors and observers—the actor-observer distinction is used here interchangeably with the self-other distinction—also differ in the extent to which they are influenced by abstract versus concrete cues. Subsequent studies sought to increase confidence in our theorizing by generalizing the obtained effects to other dimensions of psychological distance and by illuminating the underlying process. Thus, experiment 3 studied the effects of temporal rather than interpersonal distance. Next, to test the process-related argument that psychological distance has its effect on quality inferences by influencing construal levels, experiment 4 directly manipulated construal type (abstract vs. concrete) prior to quality assessment. In both studies, we argued that the impact of price (attributes) on quality inferences should increase (decrease) at more abstract levels of construal. Finally, experiment 5 tested a crucial boundary condition for these effects by framing the product description so as to increase the relative abstractness of information relating to attributes (vs. price); our conceptualization predicts that doing so should reverse the usual pattern of findings.