Maintaining warm, trusting relationships with brands: increased temperature perceptions after thinking of communal brands.
Classical theories on interpersonal relations have long suggested that social interactions are influenced by sensation, such as the experience of warmth. Past empirical work now confirms that perceived differences in temperature impact how people form thoughts about relationships. The present work first integrates our knowledge database on brand research with this idea of "grounded social cognition". It then leverages a large sample (total N = 2,552) toward elucidating links between estimates of temperature and positive versus negative evaluations of communal brands. In five studies, the authors have found that thinking about positively (vs. negatively) perceived communal brands leads to heightened temperature estimates. A meta-analysis of the five studies shows a small but consistent effect in this noisy environment, r = .11, 95% CI, .05, .18. Exploratory analyses in Studies 1a and b further suggest that temperature perceptions mediate the (significant) relationship between perceived communality and willingness to purchase from the brand. The authors discuss implications for theory and practice and consider the effects from a Social Baseline Perspective.
VU University, Department of Clinical Psychology, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Hans
H
IJzerman
Tilburg University, Department of Social Psychology, School of Social & Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg, the Netherlands.
Janneke A
JA
Janssen
University of Virginia, Department of Psychology, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America.
James A
JA
Coan
D000328:Adult; D000329:Advertising; D003080:Cold Temperature; D005260:Female; D006358:Hot Temperature; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D012919:Social Behavior; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013697:Thermosensing; D035502:Trust / Q000523:psychology