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Proceedings of 23rd International Business Research Conference
18 - 20 November, 2013, Marriott Hotel, Melbourne, Australia, ISBN: 978-1-922069-36-8
The Influence of Internet Advertisement Appeal and
Product Category on Emotion and Purchase Intention
Liang Yun Lin* Chin-Shan Wu** and Fei-Fei Cheng***
In recent years, due to the increase in Internet users and online
purchases, Internet advertising has become one of the important
channels for advertisers to communicate product information to
consumers. This study is an attempt to examine factors that might
influence the ad effectiveness. The factors include ad appeals
(rational, emotional), product categories (search, experience and
credence products) and personality traits (faith in intuition, need for
cognition). Using a sample of 643 subjects, the study showed that
different ad appeals had significant main effect on emotional
responses, which in turn influenced consumers’ purchase intention.
1. Introduction
With the rapid growth of the computers and Internet technologies, more and more
advertisers have started to take advantages of using computer-mediated
communications. Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. hit $36.6 billion for the
year 2012, representing a 15 percent increase over from 2011 (IAB, 2013). As
spending on Internet advertising continues to rise (eMarketer, 2011), advertisers are
increasingly looking for new ways to increase advertising effectiveness budgets.
Therefore, this research aimed to explore the combinations of different product
categories and ad appeals based on their emotional responses on purchase
intention.
2. Methodology
The research objective of this study is to examine the effect of different ad appeals
and emotional responses in online consumers’ purchase intentions. In addition, the
moderating effect of personality traits and different product categories on the
relationship between ad appeals and emotional responses were also examined.
The study is a 2 (ad appeal: rational/ emotional) x 2 (product category: search/
experience/ credence) between-subjects factorial design experiment, which included
twelve scenarios. The focal products in current study for search product were digital
camera and laptop; while perfume and teeth whitening were used for experience
product. Vitamin C and stock market investment were used for credence product.
The rational appeal is designed with messages such as product specifications,
numeric figures or price, while the emotional advertising appeal emphasize on the
psychological requirements as of how the subjects feels (such as happy, warm, love,
joy etc.) when viewing the ads.
* Mr. Liang Yun Lin, Institute of Technology Management, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan.
Email: [email protected]
** Dr. Chin-Shan Wu, Department of Information Management, Tunghai University, Taiwan
Email: [email protected]; corresponding author
*** Dr. Fei-Fei Cheng, Institute of Technology Management, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan.
Email: [email protected]
Proceedings of 23rd International Business Research Conference
18 - 20 November, 2013, Marriott Hotel, Melbourne, Australia, ISBN: 978-1-922069-36-8
3. The Findings
To evaluate the effect of ad appeals on emotion responses with moderating effect of
personality traits and different product categories, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was
conducted.
The advertisement appeal had significant main effect on pleasure, but no significant
effect on arousal was observed. Emotional ad appeal will result in more pleasured
feeling than rational ad appeal. The interaction effects of ad appeal and product
category and two personality traits were not significant. Surprisingly, the product
category had significant main effect on pleasure. The results indicated that
experience product is more likely to result in pleasured emotions.
In order to examine the relationship between emotional responses and the
respondents’ purchase intention, regression analysis was used. The results
indicated that both emotional responses are significant indicators of purchase
intention (R-square=0.224, p<0.001). Pleasure is more influential (beta=0.288) than
arousal (beta=0.226) on purchase intention.
4. Summary and Conclusions
The main purpose of this paper was to understand the difference of consumer
emotional responses towards different ad appeals, as well as to find out that if
personality traits and different product categories has any moderating effect
between ad appeal and emotions. The experimental results indicated ad appeals
had significant main effect on pleasure. Specifically, emotional ad appeals will result
in more pleasured feelings. Results from current study will be able to provide
practical implications for the marketers, advertisers and other online media
professionals for better understanding the factors leading to more effective banner
ads, which in turn help them get higher returns on investments. For advertisement to
be more effective the advertiser should consider the emotional responses of the
users as it would lead to different responses in purchase intention.
Acknowledgment
Funding of this research work is supported by the National Science Council
(grant number, NSC 101-2410-H-029-005-MY2), Taiwan.
References
EMARKETER 2011. US Online Ad Spending, 2010-2015.
IAB. 2013. 2012 Internet Advertising Revenue Full-Year Report [Online]. Available:
http://www.iab.net/media/file/IAB_Internet_Advertising_Revenue_Report_FY_
2012_rev.pdf [Accessed].