They’re Just Not That into You: How to Leverage Existing Consumer–Brand Relationships Through Social Psychological Distance

While prevailing marketing practice is to encourage ever-stronger relationships between consumers and brands, such relationships are rare, and many consumers are relationship-averse or content with the status quo. The authors examine how marketers can more effectively manage existing brand relationships by focusing on the psychological distance between consumers and brands in order to match close (distant) brands with concrete (abstract) language in marketing communications. Through such matching, marketers can create a beneficial mindset-congruency effect leading to more favorable evaluations and behavior, even for brands that are relatively distant to consumers. Study 1 demonstrates the basic mindset-congruency effect, and Study 2 shows that it is capable of affecting donation behaviors. Study 3 documents two brand-level factors (search vs. experience goods, brand stereotypes) that moderate this effect in managerially relevant ways. Study 4 shows that activation of the mindset-congruency effect influences consumers to spend more and that these behaviors are moderated by consumer category involvement. The authors conclude with marketing and theoretical implications.