Be Good or Do Good? A Construal Level Theory Perspective on Corporate Ambivalent Behaviors: An Abstract

During the COVID-19 crisis it is crucial that companies understand that the brand messages they are delivering to their consumers may be perceived differently based on mental distance, hence being mindful of the decisions they make. The goal of this research is to understand how psychological distances can influence the perceptions of consumers toward organization’s decisions in ambivalent situations. We examine such responses from the view of consumers and rely on Construal Level Theory (CLT) to inform and predict possible outcomes. Their actions, which can often send mixed messages, indicate ambivalence depending on whether they convey morality or competence efforts more. It is important, through the lenses of CLT, to examine how psychological distance formed from messaging can influence how consumers perceive an organization’s level of competence or morality. We investigate the perspectives and evaluations of consumers regarding ambivalence acts of an organization based on spatial distance (near vs. far). A between subject’s behavioral experiment design was used and we randomly assigned participants to one of the two different spatial conditions, near or far. Participants read about the ambivalent situation we created regarding the university’s decision during COVID-19 and were randomly assigned to either competence ambivalent or morality ambivalent. We demonstrate that this can result in varying customer perceptions toward the organization. Our findings show that customers at a distance (far spatial distance) will value the moral decisions made by the organization more than its level of competency. Whereas there was no significant difference when customers are local (near spatial distance). Our results suggest that in order to be perceived more positively and increase customer satisfaction levels, organizations should take morality based actions over competence based actions.