The Impact of the Abstractness-Concreteness of an Ad Copy on Consumers’ Responses to a Product: The Moderating Role of Consumers’ Regulatory Foci and Types of Product Attribute

i.e., the less specific) the object becomes. People may consider concepts in a similar way. That is, the extent to which a concept includes other concepts may determine whether the concept is more or less abstract or concrete. Also, it has been found that whether a concept is superordinate or subordinate is not related to the extent to which the concept activates visual imagery in people’s minds (e.g., Krammann and Streeter 1971; Wiemer-Hastings and Xu 2005). For example, most people consider the concept scientist as more abstract than the concept milk bottle. Still, when thinking about a scientist, people can picture various kinds of scientists, such as a physicist, a biologist, a chemist, and so on, as much as they can picture the image of a milk bottle. The above findings suggest that studies on the impact of the abstractnessconcreteness of an ad copy should clarify which aspect of the abstractness-concreteness of an ad copy they refer to. However, past studies have not been clear in this regard. For example, in an experimental study, MacKenzie (1986) developed abstract and concrete versions of an ad copy. The abstract version read that “According to industry sources, many watch breakdowns are due to water getting into the case,” whereas the concrete version read that “According to industry sources, 3 out of every 4 watch breakdowns are due to water or moisture getting into the case.” After reading one version of the ads, subjects rated the importance of a focal attribute (i.e., water resistance). The study found that subjects who were exposed to the concrete version evaluated the attribute as more important, as compared to subjects who were exposed to the abstract version. In the above study, the two versions of the ad copy differ between “many watch breakdowns” and “3 out of every 4 watch breakdowns” as well as between “water” and