The abstractness of luxury

Jochim Hansen and Michaela Wänke

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2011, vol. 32, issue 5, 789-796

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.

Keywords: Luxury; Language; Abstractness; Construal level theory; Linguistic category model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M31 M37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:32:y:2011:i:5:p:789-796

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2011.05.005

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