The Effect Of Ownership Implying Language On Customer Psychological Ownership

In recent years,inspired by the study of psychological ownership in organizational behavior,marketing researchers have introduced the concept of psychological ownership into the study of consumer behavior.Although the empirical research on “customer psychological ownership” began in 2008,a number of marketing scholars had mentioned the phenomenon ten years earlier under the topics such as “customer cooperator”,“brand ownership”,“customers becoming marketers”,“pre-factual ownership”,and “pseudo endowment effect”.Because of the lack of the common term for the concept and the unified measurement of the concept,no real research progress was achieved in this field during this period of time except some sporadic mention of the phenomenon.At present,although there has been some progress in research on customer psychological ownership in marketing,the definition of this concept is still unclear.The overreliance on theory of psychological ownership in organizational behavior has also hampered the research on its relationship with existing theories in marketing and,as such,further hampering the progress of research on customer psychological ownership.This dissertation systematically reviews the development of the literature on customer psychological ownership from the researcher's early sporadic attention to the phenomenon to the recent empirical studies.Topics discussed include the historical origin and connecting link of customer psychological ownership,endowment effect,the name letter effect,and the mere ownership effect.Based on the review,the concept of customer psychological ownership is redefined,and its content and level are also clarified.Therefore,this dissertation is an attempt to shift the research focus from the theory of employee psychological ownership in organizational behavior to the relevant theories of endowment effect,name-letter effect and mere ownership effect,thus contributing to the advance of the field of customer psychological ownership.Based on the literature review from the development of customer psychological ownership and from the relatedness of endowment effect,the name letter effect,mere ownership effect and researches on self-awareness in psychology,the concept of ownership implying language is defined.This concept helps building the relationships among the endowment effect,the name letter effect,the mere ownership effect and the two paradigm of self-awareness from the perspective of consumer self and ownership.Based on the literature review on customer psychological ownership and ownership implying language,this dissertation proposes a conceptual model to investigate the impact of ownership implication on the customer's psychological ownership and marketing effectiveness.This dissertation also investigates the mediating role of self-product/brand connection as well as the role of self-construction,self-threat,and consumer type,thus revealing the pseudoownership effect in advertising and the name effect in product customization.This dissertation investigates the above content by literature review and three empirical studies.The results are as follows.Customer psychological ownership refers to the state in which customers feel as though the target(products,brands and firms etc.)of ownership or a piece of that target is “theirs”,emphasizing the possessive core of the target which are related to consumption.Customer psychological ownership includes two levels: individual psychological ownership and collective psychological ownership.It involves four aspects: product psychological ownership,brand psychological ownership,corporate psychological ownership,brand community psychological ownership and so on.Ownership implying language refers to the words that communicate possessive relationship between objects and individuals.The most common ownership implying language is possessive pronouns,such as my or our;the most special ownership implying language is one's personal name.A personal name has the meaning of ownership because it has the legal meaning of showing the individual property right.Study 1 and study 2 revealed the pseudo-ownership effect in advertising.In study 1,the results of three experiment showed that the first person singular(plural)possessive pronoun "my"("our")positively affected individual(collective)customer psychological ownership and this effect was fully(partially)mediated by self-product(brand)connections.The two types of possessive pronouns further positively influenced customer attitude and purchase intention through the mediating effect of customer psychological ownership.In study 2,the results of two experiments showed that,in general,the persuasion effect of the second person singular possessive pronoun was the best comparing to other forms of possessive pronouns.In addition,self-construal and consumer type moderated the effect of possessive pronouns on customer psychological ownership and brand attitude.Specifically,independent self-construal consumers perceived stronger ownership of brands that incorporating singular possessive pronouns in advertising and liked the brands more,whereas interdependent self-construal consumers liked the brands more that incorporating plural possessive pronouns in advertising.For current customers,there was no difference between the effect of using the first person possessive pronouns and the second person possessive pronouns.However,for potential customers,perceived ownership and brand attitude are both more positive when using the second person possessive pronouns comparing to using the first person possessive pronouns.Study 3 revealed the name letter effect in product customization.The results of three experiments showed that adding customers' personal names on a standard product positively affected their attitude toward and purchase intention of the product,and that these effects were fully mediated by psychological ownership.Furthermore,the relationship between personal name and customers' responses(product attitude and purchase intention)was moderated by self-threat,whereby threatening customers' self-concept enhanced their attitude and purchase intentions toward the product with their name on.However,the relationship between personal name and customer psychological ownership was not moderated by self-threat.The present research extents literatures on customer psychological and has managerial implications for corporates' marketing strategies about building customer psychological ownership.