Effects of metaphor advertising on brand extension evaluation: Construal level as mediator

Drawing on construal level theory, we investigated the effects of metaphor advertising on consumers’ construal level and brand extension evaluations in 2 empirical studies. Participants in each study were 140 Chinese undergraduate students. The results revealed that both visual (Study 1) and verbal (Study 2) metaphor advertising increased participants’ abstract mindset. Further, metaphor advertising enhanced their evaluation of brand extensions that were a good fit and reduced that of poor fit brand extensions. Moreover, the degree of abstractness of the mindset acted as a mediator in this effect. Our findings have both theoretical and practical implications for marketing products via the strategy of brand extension.