You Can Do It! or Can We? Personal Pronouns and Their Impact on Consumer Goal Pursuit

ABSTRACT Consumers often use apps to support them with the pursuit of physical and cognitive fitness goals. Subtle linguistic strategies such as personal forms of address can encourage consumers to attain these goals, but the effectiveness of such strategies may crucially depend on consumer traits. The present research tested the hypothesis that the impact of personal forms of address (‘you’ vs. ‘we’) in marketing communication of apps to improve concentration and creativity depends on consumers' trait self‐esteem. Three studies (N = 198; N = 699; N = 210) employed a usage of pronoun (you vs. we) factorial between‐subjects design with trait self‐esteem as a continuous moderator, task performance (effort and creativity) as key dependent measures, and consumer attributions as explanatory factors. Findings showed that the usage of the pronoun ‘you’ improved the performance of consumers higher in self‐esteem, while the usage of the pronoun ‘we’ boosted the performance of consumers with lower self‐esteem. Importantly, congruence between pronoun usage and level of self‐esteem resulted in higher attribution of performance outcomes to the self, which, in turn, boosted performance. We conclude that pronoun usage in marketing communication should be tailored to consumers' self‐esteem.