• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.3-12
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• 2014

A way to increase effectiveness of charitable donation ads is to activate or magnify emotional experiences (e.g., sympathy, empathy, psychological distress) among target audience. Past studies suggest that mental imagery and attention, which activate or magnify emotional experiences, can be influenced by verbal message attributes (i.e., message concreteness and valence) of charitable donation advertisements. Based on the previous research, the study built a conceptual framework for processing of charitable donation advertising: message concreteness and valence ${\rightarrow}$ mental imagery and attention ${\rightarrow}$ emotional experiences ${\rightarrow}$ donation intention. To verify the framework, the study investigated on the influence of message concreteness and valence on mental imagery and attention through assessing ERP responses. It also examined how message concreteness and valence have an effect on the intent to donate through measuring the amount of donation. The study revealed that concrete message activated mental imagery more than abstract message whereas negative message enhanced attentional level more than positive message. Compared to the other conditions, when the message was concrete and negative, the amount of donation was significantly large.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.73-80
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• 2015

Purpose - This study's objective is to analyze the content of the communications between users and producers based on the construal level theory. User generated content refers to content created in an online-based service where users and producers communicate interactively with each other. In a user generated content platform, the messages sent and received between the many players, the users and producers who use the content, may be analyzed at the psychological level based on construal level theory. Research design, data, and methodology - This study gathered user and producer participation through a snow-bowling sampling method. The data analyzed includes 125 video clips and 2,912 comments. The period of the data collection was from September 2014 to December 2014. The collected data was analyzed using a t-test and two-way ANOVA. Results - This study obtained the following research results. First, users who were a short social distance from producers responded to user participatory activities stated in concrete language rather than abstract language. In contrast, users who were at a longer social distance from producers tended to respond to the content requesting user participation through abstract language. Second, if users and producers were at a short social distance from each other, user preference increased more when a producer response to user participation was expressed concretely rather than when it was expressed abstractly. In contrast, if the users were at a longer social distance, users' preferences increased more when producer response was expressed abstractly rather than when it was expressed concretely. Conclusion - This study found that the effect of suitability, in which the social distance and the content were in congruence at the construal level, could be observed. Therefore, based on this, academic and practical implications were drawn. The three main insights of the study are as follows. First, firms can use psychological factors to analyze the message content of users in their distribution platforms. This study reveals managerial implications for marketing managers who want to take make use of this analysis of user and producer communications. This study indicates that the main factors include the concrete and abstract scores and social distance between users and producers. Second, we also provide the strategic guidelines to maximizing user preferences and other outcomes. The main dependent variable in this study is the user preference shift; the variable increases through the congruence effect; and the construal level is determined by the social distance between the users and producers and the type of producer response. The outcomes here from users can be utilized to develop several systemic strategies. One process to use the outcomes could be: (1) firms could measure the users and producers social distance; (2) calculate the concreteness or abstractness of the messages; and, (3) predict the user preference outcomes by the congruence between user and producer social distance and the abstractness or concreteness of the message content.

• Asia-pacific Journal of Multimedia Services Convergent with Art, Humanities, and Sociology
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• v.7 no.9
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• pp.141-149
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• 2017

Numerous products are on the market every day and consumption is becoming increasingly polarized. Some products have been introduced to the market for the first time and others are the existing products that have upgraded performance. For companies, new products must be released constantly to prevent losing existing customers and to increase loyalty. However, when companies released new product, they communicate consumer brand name and core benefits of the new product. Moreover, if a new product fails, the amount that the company has to pay is bound to grow. So companies often use brand extension strategies that use the names of famous brands that are already loved by their customers for new products. In this study, the effect of extension similarity, time of release, and message type on brand extension was investigated. Result shows that using abstract messages rather than specific messages is more effective when similarities with existing brands are poor. In particular, the closer the release period is, the more effective these effects are. However, in case of extending the brand with high similarity products, it is effective to focus on concrete messages when the release time is near, and to communicate abstract messages when the release time is long. This result suggests that companies should take into consideration not only the similarity of extension but also the timing and characteristics of messages when extending the brand.