IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joepsy/v32y2011i5p789-796.html

The abstractness of luxury

Author

Listed:
  • Hansen, Jochim
  • Wänke, Michaela

Abstract

The purchase of luxury goods is relatively exclusive, limited, and often merely hypothetical. Thus, luxury goods may be perceived as more psychologically distant than ordinary goods. Based on the link between psychological distance and abstract mental representation, we hypothesized and found in three studies that both consumers and advertisers describe luxury products in more abstract language than they describe ordinary products, and that abstract product descriptions are perceived as more luxurious than concrete product descriptions.

Suggested Citation

  • Hansen, Jochim & Wänke, Michaela, 2011. "The abstractness of luxury," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 789-796.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:32:y:2011:i:5:p:789-796
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2011.05.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487011000845
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joep.2011.05.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nueno, Jose Luis & Quelch, John A., 1998. "The mass marketing of luxury," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 41(6), pages 61-68.
    2. Kemp, Simon, 1998. "Perceiving luxury and necessity," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 591-606, October.
    3. DUBOIS, Bernard & LAURENT, Gilles & CZELLAR, Sandor, 2001. "Consumer rapport to luxury : Analyzing complex and ambivalent attitudes," HEC Research Papers Series 736, HEC Paris.
    4. Anthony D. Miyazaki & Dhruv Grewal & Ronald C. Goodstein, 2005. "The Effect of Multiple Extrinsic Cues on Quality Perceptions: A Matter of Consistency," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 32(1), pages 146-153, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Abhishek Pathak & Gemma Calvert & Carlos Velasco, 2017. "Evaluating the impact of early- and late-acquired phonemes on the luxury appeal of brand names," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 24(6), pages 522-545, November.
    2. Virginie de Barnier & Sandrine Falcy & Pierre Valette-Florence, 2012. "Do consumers perceive three levels of luxury? A comparison of accessible, intermediate and inaccessible luxury brands," Post-Print halshs-00786023, HAL.
    3. Raluca CIORNEA & Marius D. POP & Mihai F. BACILA & Alexandra M. DRULE TIRCA, 2012. "Was Luxury Little Researched? An Exploration Of Studies And Research Trends In The Area Of Marketing Of Luxury Goods, Before 2005," Management and Marketing Journal, University of Craiova, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, vol. 0(2), pages 325-340, November.
    4. Parguel, Béatrice & Delécolle, Thierry & Valette-Florence, Pierre, 2016. "How price display influences consumer luxury perceptions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 341-348.
    5. Silvia Ranfagni & Wilson Ozuem, 2022. "Luxury and Sustainability: Technological Pathways and Potential Opportunities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-12, April.
    6. Catherine Janssen & Joëlle Vanhamme & Adam Lindgreen & Cécile Lefebvre, 2014. "The Catch-22 of Responsible Luxury: Effects of Luxury Product Characteristics on Consumers’ Perception of Fit with Corporate Social Responsibility," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 119(1), pages 45-57, January.
    7. Heine, Klaus & Phan, Michel, 2011. "Trading-up mass-market goods to luxury products," Australasian marketing journal, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 108-114.
    8. repec:dau:papers:123456789/14326 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Bao, Wuxia & Hudders, Liselot & Yu, Shubin & Beuckels, Emma, 2025. "Virtual luxury in the metaverse: NFT-enabled value recreation in luxury brands," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 557-572.
    10. Cesare Amatulli & Matteo De Angelis & Carmela Donato, 2019. "Communicating the luxury dream: The moderating role of brand prominence on the effect of abstract versus concrete language on consumer responses," MERCATI & COMPETITIVIT?, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2019(4), pages 91-108.
    11. Anja Marie Bundgaard & Rikke Dorothea Huulgaard, 2019. "Luxury products for the circular economy? A case study of Bang & Olufsen," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 699-709, July.
    12. Mundel, Juan & Huddleston, Patricia & Vodermeier, Michael, 2017. "An exploratory study of consumers’ perceptions: What are affordable luxuries?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 68-75.
    13. Michel Gutsatz & Klaus Heine, 2018. "Is luxury expensive?," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 25(5), pages 411-423, September.
    14. Ko, Eunju & Costello, John P. & Taylor, Charles R., 2019. "What is a luxury brand? A new definition and review of the literature," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 405-413.
    15. Alexandra Giuliana ANDRONIC, 2021. "Consumer Behaviour In Purchasing Luxury Goods During Economic Crises," SEA - Practical Application of Science, Romanian Foundation for Business Intelligence, Editorial Department, issue 25, pages 9-14, May.
    16. Stępień Beata, 2018. "Snobbish Bandwagoners: Ambiguity of Luxury Goods’ Perception," Journal of Management and Business Administration. Central Europe, Sciendo, vol. 26(1), pages 79-99, March.
    17. Sharma, Amalesh & Soni, Mauli & Borah, Sourav Bikash & Saboo, Alok R., 2020. "Identifying the drivers of luxury brand sales in emerging markets: An exploratory study," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 25-40.
    18. Mandler, Timo & Johnen, Marius & Gräve, Jan-Frederik, 2020. "Can’t help falling in love? How brand luxury generates positive consumer affect in social media," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 330-342.
    19. Béatrice Parguel & Thierry Delécolle & Pierre Valette-Florence, 2014. "The impact of price display on perceptions of luxury: a masstige perspective," Working Papers halshs-00948953, HAL.
    20. Amélia Maria Pinto Cunha Brandão & Hugo Eduardo Magalhães Barbedo, 2023. "Going (in)conspicuous: antecedents and moderators of luxury consumption," Journal of Marketing Analytics, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(2), pages 202-218, June.
    21. Jennifer Kunz & Stephanie May & Holger J. Schmidt, 2020. "Sustainable luxury: current status and perspectives for future research," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 13(2), pages 541-601, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing
    • M37 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Advertising

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:32:y:2011:i:5:p:789-796. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.