Går det att få distans att fungera? En kvantitativ studie om psykologisk distans inom konsumentbeteende online

Sammanfattning: The e-commerce has been growing rapidly in recent years as the sector is getting more globalized and digitalized. Though, consumer's can feel reluctance to online shopping involving unknown brands. Trust is a critical factor for conveying this barrier. Past research indicate that brands can create trust by lowering the psychological distance, that is, how tangible and contextualized a brand is in the consumer's mind. The purpose of this paper is to further investigate how an unknown brand is affected by the consumer's psychological distance to it. The study shows that the channel strategy and country of origin of an unknown brand affects the consumer's psychological distance. Furthermore it shows that the product knowledge and internet usage of the consumer are related to psychological distance. By using a conceptual model, the relationship between different factors and psychological distance can be confirmed, and that these have a significant positive effect when psychological distance is lowered. Further on this paper investigates how three different communicative stimuli can affect the psychological distance. By showing a picture of the brands office building, having a chat function on the webpage and showing third party reviews about the product contributes to lowering the psychological distance and results in different positive effects.