The Role of Psychological Distance in Enhancing Identity-Relevant Brand Awareness
研究通过三项实验发现，自我身份相关的心理距离影响消费者对品牌信息的记忆：当前身份促进具体信息回忆，未来身份促进抽象信息回忆，并可通过匹配心理距离与解释水平或广告信息具体性来增强品牌知识检索。
Advertisers are increasingly prioritizing brand awareness, as it has become a top marketing objective, yet market trends suggest that much of consumers’ brand knowledge is not easily retrieved from memory. To inform advertising strategies designed to address this issue, we examine how self-identity–driven psychological distance affects the type of brand information that consumers are more readily able to retrieve from memory. Study 1 demonstrates that the psychological distance associated with a self-identity influences consumers’ ability to recall concrete (vs. abstract) identity-relevant brand knowledge. For identity-congruent brands related to a current (future) self-identity, consumers elaborate on and process more concrete (abstract) brand information, resulting in stronger brand associations that are more easily recalled from memory. Study 2 leverages this effect to enhance the recall of brand knowledge by matching the psychological distance of a self-identity with a construal mindset. Study 3 demonstrates that retrieval of newly learned brand information can be enhanced by matching the psychological distance of a self-identity with the concreteness of advertising messaging and identifies consumers for whom this effect may not occur (i.e., those with high product involvement). The research makes important theoretical contributions and suggests actionable advertising strategies for enhancing the retrieval of brand knowledge.