Abstract
Recent years has witnessed a rapid growth in online shopping. This paper draws from the construal level theory to examine the divergent effects of the creative text descriptions of products on consumers' purchase intention in an online context. It also investigates consumers' construal level and the moderating role of construal level in this relationship. An assumption has been made that the creative description embraces more rhetorical devices with analogies. In doing so, such texts are in need of consumers who are having a more abstract, top-down, flexible mindset, which makes it more persuasive to some consumers with high-level construal. Three experiments add evidence to this study. These results suggest that the creative text descriptions are generally more persuasive than the non-creative ones in an online context, and that the persuasiveness of the creative descriptions can be accentuated (vs. attenuated) especially for high- (vs. low-) level construal individuals. The findings hold various theoretical implications for the creative marketing messages and construal level theory. First, in the current research, broadening, and integrating relevant research were possible by exploring the creative language in an online context. Also, it demonstrates that construal level—that is, consumers' internal thoughts, rather than external factors—influences their preference for a creative description style, thus helping extend the applications of the construal level theory to the field of creative marketing communications and integrate the research discoveries in metaphor communication.
Highlights
Improved logistics chains and the popularization of “smart” mobile devices have given consumers access to online shopping platforms anytime and anywhere when they choose to shop (Batra and Keller, 2016)
The results of Study 1 in the context of online shopping are consistent with the relevant research that confirms that the creative marketing message has general advantages (West et al, 2019) and high-level construal could enhance the effectiveness (Landau et al, 2019)
Differing from the previous two studies, Study 3 merely manipulates construal level between the groups with social distance, and the significant results provide additional support for our core Hypothesis 2: creative descriptions are highly persuasive to high-level construal individuals
Summary
Improved logistics chains and the popularization of “smart” mobile devices have given consumers access to online shopping platforms anytime and anywhere when they choose to shop (Batra and Keller, 2016). These changes motivate online retailers to compose appealing and persuasive messages and advertisements. From the perspective of consumers themselves, West et al (2019) propose that an individual’s information process or a cognitive mindset may play a critical role in improving the persuasiveness of creative messages. This study identifies consumers’ construal level as a moderating factor to provide new insights into the boundary conditions of creative text’s persuasiveness
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