'It's Better Over There': How Spatial Distance Affects Consumers' Product Evaluation

摘要

There is increasing evidence showing that how marketers position product images in ads can alter processing and impact consumer perceptions. Conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) provides a theoretical tenet in explaining how to influence consumers' product perceptions and attitudes. Drawing on the conceptual metaphor theory, researchers have discovered that the location of product image (Chae and Hoegg 2013; Chae, Li, and Zhu 2013; Elder and Krishna 2012) or in packaging design (Sundar and Noseworthy 2014) matters in influencing product attitudes. There is a saying in Chinese that "distance enhances beauty!' The implication is that people enjoying the beauty of nature, art and other aesthetic processes should maintain an appropriate distance. The other Chinese poem "It can be only appreciated distantly but not touched blasphemously" suggests that a certain distance makes something more valuable. Geert Hofstede invented the Power Distance Index to measure the extent to which the less powerful members of society, organizations, or institutions accept and expect that power is distributed unequally (Zhang, Winterich and Mittal 2010). We propose that it could be advantageous to separate the product and the model by a greater distance, based on a different conceptual metaphor: "distance is worth."