The effect of construal level on consumer evaluations of products with semantic contradiction

• Main Authors: Ya-hsuan Wu, 吳亞軒
• Other Authors: Man–ying Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/25856120764413323399

碩士 === 東吳大學 === 心理學系 === 100 === This study investigated the interaction between types of product semantics and construal level(Hong & Lee, 2010；Liberman & Trope, 1998)by focusing on products that embody contradictory semantics in their design language. Semantic contradiction was divided into concrete and abstract contradiction while abstract contradiction was further divided into implicit and explicit contradiction. Two experiments examined that how different semantic types of products and construct level reciprocally influenced the feelings of conflict, fluency and preference experienced by the consumers. The results showed that compared to the products with single/unitary semantics, products with semantic contradiction led to stronger feelings of conflict, lower processing fluency, and thus lower preference. The feelings of conflict was stronger when it was triggered by concrete contradictions than when the contradiction emerged from the use of abstract symbols. Also, abstract contradictions with strong opposite semantics (explicit contradiction) triggered higher conflict ratings than abstract contradictions with less opposing semantics (implicit contradiction). High construal-level participants could better distinguish between explicit and implicit contradictions, suggesting that feelings of conflict will in turn affect processing fluency and preference. In other words, the type of product semantics had a greater influence on participants with high construal level while there was no evidence showing that participants with low construal level could process product semantics in a similar manner. The conflict ratings in low construal-level participants was not related to their ratings of processing fluency and preference. Their product evaluation was less susceptible to the type of semantic contradiction. In this study, the author elucidated the differences in cognitive processing for products with various semantic contradictions as well as the role of construal level in these processes. The findings have implications for design practice in terms of achieving communications between products and their consumers.