Psychological Distance of Brand Associations

Abstract

The language consumers use to address brands can be psychologically close or distant. An example of psychologically distant language is a consumer tweeting to YSL “nail polish looks so lush love to do a review for it”. Inversely, an example of psychologically close language is the following consumer tweet “I've been buying @zara cropped pants like it's no one's business”. Consumer brand associations can therefore be psychologically close or distant based on the language they use. Psychological distance refers to how psychologically close or distant objects are based on consumers’ ego-centric reference point (Trope & Liberman, 2010). The idea that brands are mental representations and can thus be psychologically close or distant is novel. Previous psychological distance studies have largely focussed on the psychological distance of products (Bornemann & Homburg, 2011; Goodman & Malkoc, 2012; Hamilton & Thompson, 2007; da Costa Hernandez, et al., 2015; Schellekens, et al., 2010; Labroo & Patrick, 2008; Pyone & Isen, 2011; Williams, et al., 2014). Only one study focussed on brand extensions (Kim & Roedder John, 2008) and another one on brand experience (Kim & Song, 2016). The last two studies have not investigated the psychological distance of bands per se. This is the gap this study addresses by providing the psychological distance of 30 brands from a consumer viewpoint based on 6000 consumer tweets.