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While consumer–brand relationships bring to mind commonalities such as shared interests and values, the way consumers construe information can differ depending on the situation and their connections to the brand. This study aims to propose that construal level impacts how consumers process information and looks at how two dimensions of psychological distance affect the persuasiveness of different types of advertising appeals.

Four experimental studies test the singular effects that social and temporal distance construals have on the persuasiveness of advertising appeals. This research further investigates whether social distance construals can be situationally primed and matched with advertising appeals to improve willingness to pay. Overall, the combined effects are tested when both dimensions are simultaneously activated, but the valence of the construal levels potentially moves in opposite directions.

Studies 1 and 3 find that matching social distance construals and advertising appeals positively impacts willingness to pay, whereas Study 2 reveals that matching temporal distance construals and advertising appeals also positively effects willingness to pay. Furthermore, Study 4 finds that the social distance dimension has a more dominant impact on willingness to pay, except in near future scenarios when there are combined effects of competing construals.

This research indicates that initial social distance construals are more salient than subsequent temporal distance construals.

This study helps marketers to identify the most effective advertising appeals for consumers with different types of relationships and psychological distance construals.

This study contributes to both theory and practice by extending knowledge of which types of construals are more salient when competing construals are triggered and by helping marketers identify the most effective advertising appeals for consumers under these different conditions.

Joint advertising is an emerging strategy where marketers promote both brands in the same marketing communication. This research determines how the domestic, foreign, or global nature of the partner impacts important brand-related outcomes and identifies underlying psychological process mechanisms and contextual variables that affect this relationship.

Across three experiments, we investigate how the type of joint advertising partner impacts consumer attitudes and behaviors. We establish the number of similarities between the partners and perceived cognitive fit as the mediating process mechanisms underlying this relationship, with holistic processing moderating the effect.

We find that when consumers are exposed to joint advertisements between domestic or global [foreign] brands, they will be able to generate more [fewer] similarities between the partners and perceive a stronger [weaker] cognitive fit. Moreover, these similarities interact with consumer cultural traits related to holistic processing style to differentially influence perceived cognitive fit and downstream consumer attitudes and behaviors.

Partnering for mutually beneficial, joint advertisements is a growing phenomenon that redefines traditional thinking about advertising, but the success of the joint advertisement is contingent upon the characteristics and compatibility of the partners.

Although endorsers are thought to be highly effective when they match-up with a product, the current understanding of endorser match-up offers little insight for distinctions between equally attractive and trustworthy endorsers who have equivalent expertise in the product category, yet still diverge in their performance. Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to understand how a match between social judgments (i.e. warmth vs competence) of a celebrity endorser and specific advertising appeals (i.e. symbolic vs utilitarian) can improve consumer responses to an endorsement.

A preliminary study empirically distinguishes perceptions of warmth and competence from prevailing celebrity endorser evaluative criteria. Then, the authors conduct multiple 2 (warmth vs competence) × 2 (symbolic vs utilitarian) between-subjects experiments to demonstrate the effect of matching social judgments and advertising messaging, across celebrity genders (i.e. male and female), forms of marketing communications (i.e. print ads and interactive online ads) and types of brands (i.e. well-established and new/unknown).

The findings demonstrate that matching celebrity endorser social judgments with the appropriate type of advertising messaging positively influences consumer response to the brand for both male and female endorsers. Additionally, despite a commonly held belief that celebrity endorsements are more effective at changing attitudes than actual behaviors, for interactive online ads, the authors find that the match strategy can motivate consumer response through two different pathways. For well-established brands, the match improves overall brand response predominately through cognitive and behavioral mechanisms. Alternatively, for new or unknown brands, the match initially impacts affective responses, which are subsequently related to consumers shopping a brand’s product category, rating a brand higher in customer recommendations, choosing a brand’s products over top competitors and paying more for the brand’s offerings.

The main contribution of this research is the demonstrated support for an alternative and effective application of the match-up hypothesis, based on a fit between the endorser and the advertising messaging itself.

The purpose of this paper is to address an overarching question: Does matching consumer place–brand associations with stereotype-consistent messaging affect consumer perceptions of an advertisement?

This paper presents two experiments that examine participants’ differing evaluations of advertisements under various experimental conditions. Study 1 examines the match of place–brand warmth versus competence stereotypes and the use of symbolic versus utilitarian advertising messaging for both new foreign and domestic brands. Study 2 examines this match for global brands.

The paper reveals that stereotype-consistent messaging increases the perceived fit between the advertisement and the brand for new foreign brands but not for new domestic or global brands. Furthermore, in a post-hoc analysis, this congruence is found to improve attitude towards the brand, purchase intentions and brand response, through the mediating effect of attitude towards the ad.

Place–brand stereotypes impact consumer attitudes and opinions regarding brands from different countries. This paper applies two universal social judgment dimensions from social psychology—warmth and competence—to the novel context of advertising messaging to examine previously unexplored facets of the place–brand image.