The Extended Transportation-Imagery Model: A Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents and Consequences of Consumers’ Narrative Transportation

77 Pages Posted: 2 Apr 2012 Last revised: 12 May 2016

See all articles by Tom van Laer

Tom van Laer

The University of Sydney

Ko de Ruyter

Maastricht University - Department of Marketing & Supply Chain Management

Luca M. Visconti

ESCP Europe; USI Università della Svizzera italiana

Martin Wetzels

Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE) - Eindhoven Center for Innovation Studies (ECIS)

Date Written: 2014

Abstract

Stories, and their ability to transport their audience, constitute a central part of human life and consumption experience. Integrating previous literature derived from fields as diverse as anthropology, marketing, psychology, communication, consumer, and literary studies, this article offers a review of two decades’ worth of research on narrative transportation, the phenomenon in which consumers mentally enter a world that a story evokes. Despite the relevance of narrative transportation for storytelling and narrative persuasion, extant contributions seem to lack systematization. The authors conceive the extended transportation-imagery model (ETIM), which provides not only a comprehensive model that includes the antecedents and consequences of narrative transportation but also a multidisciplinary framework in which cognitive psychology and consumer culture theory cross-fertilize this field of inquiry. The authors test the model using a quantitative meta-analysis of 132 effect sizes of narrative transportation from 76 published and unpublished articles and identify fruitful directions for further research.

Keywords: Communication, Meta-analysis, Narrative Persuasion, Narrative Transportation, Storytelling

JEL Classification: M31

Suggested Citation

van Laer, Tom and Ruyter, Ko de and Visconti, Luca M. and Visconti, Luca M. and Wetzels, Martin, The Extended Transportation-Imagery Model: A Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents and Consequences of Consumers’ Narrative Transportation (2014). Journal of Consumer Research, 40(5), 797-817, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2033192 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2033192

Tom Van Laer (Contact Author)

The University of Sydney ( email )

University of Sydney
Sydney, NSW 2006
Australia

Ko de Ruyter

Maastricht University - Department of Marketing & Supply Chain Management ( email )

Endepolsdomein 150
Maastricht, Limburg 6201 BE
Netherlands

Luca M. Visconti

USI Università della Svizzera italiana ( email )

Via Buffi, 13
Lugano, TN 6900
Switzerland

ESCP Europe ( email )

79 Avenue de la Republique
Paris, 75011
France

Martin Wetzels

Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE) - Eindhoven Center for Innovation Studies (ECIS) ( email )

PO Box 513, 5600 MB
NL-5600 MB Eindhoven
Netherlands
+31 40 2473841 (Phone)
+31 40 2465949 (Fax)

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