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The impact of humorous advertising on consumer's buying, word of mouth and recall
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | El-Tazy, Ghada W. Dinana, Hesham O. |
| Copyright Year | 2018 |
| Abstract | This paper aims at investigating the effect of “humorous advertising” on the Egyptian viewer. It is studying the effect of humorous advertising (HA) on the consumer's buying behaviour, probability to purchase and actual sales, as mediated by the attitude; along with studying its effect on recall and Word of Mouth. The research depends on both qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative data includes five interviews with advertising experts and two focus groups, one with youth and another with adults. Quantitative data were collected through a survey. The data revealed that using humour in ads affects positively and strongly consumer attitude which has positive strong effect on probability to purchase; yet the consumer attitude effect on actual purchase choice was direct weak. Humour in ads has positive strong effect on word of mouth; as well as on recall. The marketers can use the humorous execution to lead to branding. As well as the paper clarifies for advertising agencies that this appeal needs special care in its creation to lead to the intended result; otherwise, it could lead to the opposite result. This paper fulfils an identified need to know the best marketing objective that can be achieved through humorous advertising. Corresponding author: Hesham Dinana Email addresses for corresponding author: hdinana@aucegypt.edu First submission received: 7th June 2017 Revised submission received: 22nd July 2017 Accepted: 20 August 2017 Background There are two types of ads, cognitive and emotional. Advertisers and marketers attempt to select the right type to achieve the campaign objective by getting a certain reaction out of the viewers, that can be characterized as “advertising stimulus effects” (Percy and Rossiter, 1992). Humor in ads is categorized as an emotional appeal. Although humorous ads cannot be purely categorized as emotional appeals because not all their types require emotional processing, some of them need cognitive processing as well (Spielmann, 2014). Previous research resulted in finding a relation between perceived humor and affective factors, such as attitude towards the ad (Gelb & Zinkhan, 1986). This research though is mainly about studying some cognitive factors, namely “recall and persuasion”. However, the relation between persuasion, which is represented in that research as consumer's buying, and Humorous Ads (HA) is mediated by the attitude. Previously both ads and Word of Mouth (WOM) were considered as alternatives (Huang, Cai, Tsang & Zhou, 2011), but now they seem more as complementary. Because advertisers and companies should focus on the types of ads that can promote positive WOM about the brand and products (Casielles et al., 2013), one of this paper objectives is to answer if Humorous Ads (HA) can promote positive WOM about the brand, along with studying the recall and persuasion as mentioned above. Humor A humorous Ad can be described shortly as a funny ad. The humor does not have a clear definition as it has many dimensions; Humorous Ads (HA) become successful when the audiences have positive responses for it (Fugate, 1998). Journal of Business and Retail Management Research (JBRMR), Vol. 12 Issue 2 January 2018 www.jbrmr.com A Journal of the Academy of Business and Retail Management (ABRM) 203 There are different techniques of humorous ads, such as arousalsafety (A-S), incongruity resolution (IR) (Spielmann, 2014) and humorous disparagement (Hatzithomas et al., 2011; Brown et al., 2010; Alden et al., 2000). Arousalsafety (AS) comes from the relief theory (Brown et al., 2010); the situation can be funny after being sure that things are safe (Spielmann, 2014). Incongruity resolution (IR), as stated in two theories in psychology, is mostly a reflection of incongruity and incongruity resolution that causes laughter (Duncan, 1982). One theory demonstrates that incongruity alone is sufficient to create humor; the other one says that incongruity alone might make the audience confused, as they simply did not get the joke; therefore, its resolution is necessary to be humorous (Alden and Hoyer, 1993; Alden et al., 1993). Humorous disparagement (HD) as mentioned by Brown et al. (2010) is the disparagement humor that could be elicited by the desire to feel superior; as it is based on laughing at people in an attempt to feel you have control over them. Recall The exposure of the population to the advertising along with recall is the first sign to be effective for a media campaign (Dunlop et al., 2014). The memory network in our brains works through what is called "spreading activation" theory; that theory states that in our subliminal level certain nodes are activated when we are exposed to certain stimuli, this activation moves from nodes to other nodes through links (or associations) among them; the amount that moves the activation depends on the strength of the link; the nodes are the pieces of information, such as brands, product features and attributes. and so on; this network is called "the cognitive structure”. The information of these nodes moves from subliminal level to conscious level when activation overrides specific threshold (Grunert, 1996). Though most of the recalling process or information is made in the subliminal level, called "automatic process", the conscious level, called "strategic process", interferes as well sometimes; for instance, if someone asks you certain question, you start consciously the activation process to recall the information. One of the things that enhance the subliminal processing is the context in which the advertisement is placed; because "perception of the context facilitates perception of the advertisement" if they are related to each other (Grunert, 1996). Moreover, the similar the ad's source and even non-source cues to its target, the better; because that closeness will cause better automatic activation in the memory (Brumbaugh, 2002). Dunlop et al. (2014) mentioned that recency, being exposed recently to the ads, causes more recall along with the idea in its launch phase, novelty, more than replicating it with other executions. In addition, the more frequent the target audience is exposed to the ad, the better their recall gets. The frequency can be measured through “commercial TV ratings data providing Gross Rating Points or GRPs”. Gelb & Zinkhan (1986) debate that humor does not positively affect comprehension and “specifically, the ability to "play back" a message accurately”, but also there was no significant difference if the ad was serious. There was other research suggesting that humor causes less comprehension because of distraction (Bergeron & Vachon, 2008) that is changing the people's focus from the content to the context (Spielmann, 2014). However, there were some who concluded that humor causes better memorability and recall (Alden et al., 1993; Miller, 1996; Alden et al., 2000) along with the ad's attention (Tomkovick et al., 2001; Brown et al., 2010). Therefore, this paper is to examine which one of these contradicting results is the case in Egypt. Persuasion Persuasion is defined in the literature as the attitude and consumer's buying. Further, consumers' buying is represented as purchase intentions and actual choice (Gelb & Zinkhan, 1986). The attitude can be defined as, the tendency to have favorable or unfavorable response to a certain ad exposure. It is mentioned in more than a study that attitude towards the ad is usually reflected on the brand and products, namely, if the attitude for the ad is favorable, that will be the case of its advertised product and brand as well as the purchase intentions (Tomkovick et al., 2001). Probability to purchase or purchase intention can be defined as the desire to repurchase a product from the same provider. It includes several factors such as the probability that the person will actually repurchase, and the time expected to repurchase (Bergeron & Vachon, 2008). The purchase intent is studied massively in both marketing and economics fields; in marketing, it helps predict the sales; in Journal of Business and Retail Management Research (JBRMR), Vol. 12 Issue 2 January 2018 www.jbrmr.com A Journal of the Academy of Business and Retail Management (ABRM) 204 economics, it helps measure the confidence level of the economy (Bemmaor, 1995). In marketing, there are different factors that affect the intentions of purchase, such as store image, perceived value, pricing, discounts. and so on (Grewal, Krishnan, Baker & Borin, N.D.). Actual willingness to pay and purchase is defined as, the actual maximum payment an individual will pay to get the product (Barber et al., 2012). Bemmaor (1995) stated that the intent to purchase is not a precise predictor of the actual behavior (Barber et al., 2012) for many reasons; one of them is that the respondents of a survey that asks them about their intent to buy may actually change their intention after the survey time. In addition, one of the reasons could be lack of information at the time of the intention that is discovered at the actual buying time (e.g., actual price). This research is studying the effect of humor on consumer's buying represented as both purchase intentions and actual choice. The attitude towards the ad is mediating the relation between HA and consumer's buying as Gelb & Zinkhan (1986) found that there is a significant positive relation between the humorous ad (HA) and attitude; while the relation between HA and purchase intentions, and HA and actual choice were positive but not significant. Thus, this research assumes that attitude mediates the relation between humor and consumer's buying represented by two elements purchase intentions and actual choice. As Alden et al. (2000) stated that for a factor to be a mediator between other two factors, there are mainly four terms, three of them are about having direct relations on each other; that is each independent factor affects directly on a dependent one. The fourth is that the di |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.24052/jbrmr/v12is02/tiohaocbwomar |
| Volume Number | 12 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.jbrmr.com/cdn/article_file/content_41480_18-01-19-10-34-30.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.24052/jbrmr%2Fv12is02%2Ftiohaocbwomar |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
