before and thereby recognize the brand. As knowledge affects construal level (Lee et al., 2017) it was decided to ask participants in our study about their knowledge of the Gestus brand. The partici-pants are asked to answer the question “To what extent do you know the following brands” (appen-dix 2). This question is relevant in order to determine the degree to which the participant knows the Gestus brand, in order to evaluate if the people who have a larger knowledge of the brand deviate from the general evaluation of the Gestus products. This can indicate that these participants may recognize the products in the experiment even though the brand logo was removed.
One product category
Due to the focus of the study on a certain product category it is not possible to know if the findings apply to other product categories. Therefore, it would be interesting to conduct the same type of ex-periment with other product categories in order to determine if it has any validity in these catego-ries. Furthermore, it should also be researched if there are differences in how abstract the imagery is. It can be argued that product imagery can be even more abstract than the ones used for this study, it would be interesting to investigate if there is a limit as to how abstract a product imagery can be before it may or may not have any effect on the perception of product quality and luxurioness. It would also be interesting to investigate if there are any differences in the type of brand us-ing abstract and concrete product imagery and investigate if less known private labeled brands could benefit from using abstract imagery to compete and draw attention from more well known public labeled brands.
Ecological validity
A limitation to the study is how it is conducted in a laboratory and not in a supermarket where the products would be placed next to many other products. This was chosen as the interest of the thesis was to know how consumers perception of the product was affected by the visual imagery on the product packaging. For further research it would be interesting to see if consumers in the store would consider these specific product properties as luxurious and high quality in the store when seeing the product packaging tucked in between myriads of other choices. The experimental set up would be relatively easy to conduct in a more realistic setting either in a staged supermarket or in an actual supermarket, with the participants wearing physical ET glasses during their supermarket
experience. Conducting the experiment in a real-life setting, makes it possible to see how the ab-stract and concrete imagery would function when there are a lot of other stimuli present.
The proposed experiment is less ecologically valid as it will only be the shape, color, text and visual imagery which is accessible to the consumer in judging the luxuriousness/quality of the product. In real-life settings the products would often contain patterns, brand, slogan, labelling and perhaps a mixture of illustrations and photographs. As mentioned CLT is something that can make coherence of the whole package. Even though this thesis argues for the existence of a relationship between ab-straction and perceived luxuriousness/quality, it is not certain which other stimuli on the package adds to the perception of a product being perceived as luxurious and of high quality e.g. special col-ors, the font of the text, the angle from which the visual imagery is depicted, the placement of the imagery, the shape of the product packaging etc. This should be further researched.
Price as a variable
It could be interesting to include price as a variable as we know the high construal often make peo-ple perceive the product as more expensive. This could be done either by showing the price with the product or by having the participant to indicate their perceived price of the individual products. As mentioned previously, consumers perceive a higher price as an indication of higher quality (Fortu-nato et al., 2014). Studies have shown that a higher construal leads consumers to rely more on the price as they see it as more psychologically distant (Maglio, 2020). Considering price, it would be interesting to investigate if the effect of consumers perceiving abstract illustrations as more luxuri-ous than the concrete photographs also affect their willingness to buy the product, as rating the product as luxurious might not be an indication that they would buy it. Furthermore, as mentioned a misfit between the perceived luxuriousness and the product category affect consumers negatively (Hansen & Wänke, 2011). Therefore, taking the next step and asking people after they rate the product as luxurious if they would like to buy it, could indicate that consumers see a mismatch be-tween grocery products being presented as luxurious.
Consistent CLT of whole packaging design
CLT is useful in how it connects the whole packaging design. It does not only refer to one specific stimuli on the package as is evident throughout this thesis which means that “Construal level theory can guide a more holistic view of messages by offering insight into how a multitude of seemingly distinct message components may have underlying consistencies. This principle can motivate fur-ther research on how multiple message components can be manipulated togefur-ther to communicate topics more effectively and bring about intention and behavior change” (Lee et al., 2018, p. 320).
The implications of finding how all the different components on the packaging design interacts is how certain visual imagery, text and background can align with different construal levels and if it is possible to match the construal level across all components on the product packaging it will lead to more persuasive effects as all components for example working on a higher construal level leads to
“a consistent high construal representation in one’s mind and entail easier processing and effective persuasion” (Lee et al., 2018, p. 323).