Abstract:

With the growing prevalence of phantom products phenomena, it hasn’t only brought manufactures or Merchants important transformations of marketing philosophy and strategy, but also brought consumers important effect on consuming psychologies and behaviors. On the exposure of different advertisement message framing of phantom products presented by manufactures or merchants, consumers will produce different information processing and cognition reaction, and finally produce an important impact on consumers’ purchasing intention. Across two experiments, we found that the negative message framing advertisement promoted greater intention to purchase phantom product than the positive message framing advertisement, but the process would be moderated by construal level and produced matching effect between advertisement message framing and construal level. Meanwhile, we also found that perceived scarcity would mediate the influence of advertisement message framing on consumer’ purchasing intention toward phantom product, and moreover the mediating process was also moderated by construal level and generated matching effect between advertisement message framing and construal level. The findings would not only deepen and perfect the phantom product theory, and but also enhance the manufactures’ or merchant’s operating ability to market phantom product and improve consumer’ rationality to purchase or consume phantom product.

Key words: advertisement message framing, phantom product, perceived Scarcity, construal level, intention to purchase