The effect of different advertising appeals on consumers’ attitudes : a study among University students

Abstract

In this competitive day and age, it is becoming increasingly difficult to be visible online, thus the importance of creative advertising should not be underestimated. Through the application of advertising appeals, consumers may be compelled towards acknowledging the brand being advertised. Advertising appeals aim at grasping the attention of the target audience in creative manners. The study introduced three experimental groups which were all presented with the same survey. The primary group was not exposed to any treatment (advert) in order to serve as the control group. One of the remaining groups was exposed to a humorous advert and the other group to a rational advert. The influential impact of brand attitude on purchase intention was assessed. The adverts introduced in this study are by a taxi service company called eCABS which prevailed on social media with these engaging adverts. The rational appeal intended to influence attitudes based on informative appeals implying superiority. The emotional appeal on the other hand played on humour and on corporate social responsibility due to the anti-drink-driving initiative embedded in the advert. The analysis was based on 150 respondents from a random sampling pool of University Students. The results which were analysed by means of SPSS, revealed that the relationship between brand attitude and purchase intention was strong, however the experiment did not find the humorous advert to be more effective than the rational appeal.