How psychological distance affects consumer behavior towards sustainable product features and attributes

Abstract

Consumers are constantly confronted with decision making processes on a daily basis and the number of different offers and the vast amount of opportunities can be challenging. But also, for marketeers creating the right amount of attention and desire to promote and place their products at the right time and right way is challenging. An important factor and variable plays the construal level theory, that states that people can be either in a more concrete (low) or in a more abstract (high) state of mind. This theory of psychological distance is an important key factor forunder standing consumer behavior and to understand what effects this can cause and what are the different dimensions that influence psychological distance. With sustainable consumption on the rise and the offer for more sustainable product alternatives constantly rising, this dissertation aims to explore the connections and the effects psychological distance manipulation has on how consumers evaluate and rate products with sustainable product features and attributes. Previous research has stated that sustainable attributes gain importance when consumers are in a more abstract state of mind with the construal level theory examining, that people that are in a more concrete state of mind are more detailed orientated in their decision- making process. And the combination of those two theories are the baseline of this dissertation. It hypothesizes that psychological distance is a mechanism that affects consumer behavior towards sustainable product attributes. Two studies were conducted for testing these hypotheses.

Date of Award	15 Oct 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	João Niza Braga (Supervisor)