Emotional Branding and Consumer Behavior
Literature review
An advertisement is a non-personal communication processed through the media, which is paid and sponsored to promote the ideas, goods or services being offered in the advertisement and provides a platform to create awareness of the advertised products. Meanwhile, EAs generate an emotional response in the minds of consumers. It also influences the audience in making a purchase decision, raising awareness of the brand, and influencing their positive response in favor of the advertised product. Companies spend billions of dollars in developing marketing strategies and advertisements to influence the behavior of consumers. However, Lewis et al. note that such kinds of investment efforts are lost when consumers' desired responses are not obtained. This may be because consumers have different behaviors which are shaped by their emotions.
Emotions are depicted as a universal language and a state of the mind, which are shaped by cognition, thinking and experiences with diversified feelings in order to bring a change to social and physical behaviors. Emotions are often linked to actions, for example, gestures, posture, and facial movements, which enable respondents to manage their behaviors. Consequently, behaviors could be positive (for example love, pride, happiness, joy, and warmth) or negative (for example guilt, greed, sadness, fear, and anger).
Academic literature sheds light on a variety of combinations of emotions, for example, basic (primary) emotions, complex (secondary) emotions, or a mixture of basic and complex emotions. Plutchik and Zammuner encapsulate basic emotions with sub-constructs of both positive and negative emotions,that is, fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, love, anxiety, surprise, compassion, etc. Bindu et al. further fuel the discussion with a classification of some other basic emotions, that is, pride, lust, ecstasy, rage, revenge, sorrow, shame, grief, enthusiasm, and hate in tandem with the basic emotions categorized by Plutchik and Zammuner. Bindu et al. further claim that these basic emotions may give birth to complex emotions as well which could include remorse, nostalgia, forgiveness, offense, disappointment, jealousy, cheer, hope, etc. However, Ekman's arguments are worth mentioning here, whereby he notes the universality of the basic emotions, that is, happiness, sadness, pride, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise. He suggests that these basic emotions are universally expressed and accepted by everyone regardless of time, place, and culture due to their common biological origin.
However, it has also been widely discussed that people who belong to different cultures may experience different emotions, and their behavior may also be dominated by contextual emotional developments. Behavioral intentions incorporate buying behavior in its diversified dimensional frames. The diversity in consumers' behavior leads to different emotional responses to marketing stimuli which companies develop for consumers. Some researchers support the marketing notion that marketers should attempt to understand consumers' behavior towards promotional stimuli as understanding consumers may shape better marketing strategies for them.
Since consumers may have a variety of consumption behaviors, shaped by their emotions, there is a difference in advertising to men and women because both react differently to emotional stimuli. It is noted that women may generate positive responses towards emotionally advertised stimuli and a stronger buying impulse, based on emotional feelings, may come from women themselves. Women prefer long-term considerations in their decision-making and repeat buying is more important to females than to males. Moreover, Knerl notes that women may reinvest 90% of their income in their communities; however, their male counterparts only reinvest 30 to 40%. This is evidence that suggests that women may form long-term relationships with companies that value them.
Many scholars have discussed women's emotional nature and their ultimate impact on consumption behavior. Vigil notes that women may have a strong response in understanding the emotions of others, and may express their emotions more than men do. Further, women's emotionally expressive behavior may influence the consumption behavior of other people around them, for example, friends, family members, and children. This provides a valid basis for advertisers to consider women's emotions towards advertised stimuli and the resultant consumption behavior in order to effectively boost their business volume. Since consumers' consumption behavior may be influenced by their emotions, advertisers inject emotional feelings into advertisements with the intention of capturing the attention of women and influence their consumption patterns. By doing so, professionals in the marketing and advertising fields have started to mix positive and negative emotional feelings while developing promotional stimuli. For example, skin care advertisements have been found to be effective in manipulating women's emotions and skin care product consumption pattern. Advertisers of skin care products first touch on the beauty enhancement feelings of women, and generate fear about bad skin tones if the advertised product is not used, and with the actor/actress showing depressed and sad face. Later, the fearful emotional feelings that have been invoked are dissipated with hope in the form of the consumption of the advertised product as a solution to enhance beauty, happiness, and pride which will allow the consumers to avail themselves of all of life's privileges. Hence, EAs continuously endeavor to influence the emotions of women and persuade them to buy the advertised product. This may also generate a plethora of better memories which the targeted audience may recall later.
Thus, it is proposed that:
H1: Emotional feelings injected into an advertisement lead to significantly positive changes in the consumption behavior of women.
Sometimes desires, which are a confluence of emotions and state of mind, become more important than needs in a mature marketing environment. Consumers may desire intangible factors, for example, trust, love, fulfillment of dreams, and association with certain personalities, while evaluating and consuming the products being offered or advertised. Advertisers may attempt to market products which consumers may not need. They endeavor to influence consumers' consumption patterns favorably by capitalizing on the human emotions that might be triggered by their dreams and idols. Consumers sometimes perceive celebrities as their idols and become ready to emotionally align their buying and consumption styles with ways celebrities present. From this perspective, women's behavior may be more responsive to the products being endorsed by celebrities. Klaus and Bailey document that women consumers respond more positively to celebrity endorsement compared to men. Many studies have documented women's favorable behavior towards products endorsed by celebrities. Hence, celebrities' glamour is perceived to be transferred to women while consuming the endorsed product.
It has been documented that consumers between 16 and 34 years of age are more responsive to the purchase of products endorsed by celebrities. A celebrity endorser, as defined by McCraken and noted by Seno and Lukas is a person who has a public identity and uses his/her recognition to promote a consumer good by drawing consumers' attention in an advertisement. Hence, the importance of featuring celebrities and their seminal role in drawing attention to boost the buying or consumption of the advertised products has been widely acknowledged by advertisers. Agrawal and Kamakura solidify these notions and document increases in a company's stock prices when contracts with celebrities for the company's promotion are announced. Erdogen et al. document that about 25% of the advertisements in the United States (US) feature celebrities, and has become a fashionable phenomenon in the US retail business.
However, marketers prefer to feature celebrities in their advertisements who are credible, attractive, and possess certain associations with their brand image. Billions of dollars are invested every year in various showbiz and sports' celebrity endorsement contracts. Famous sports and showbiz celebrities, for example, Cristiano Ronaldo, Megan Fox, and Tiger Woods, have been featured in advertisements in order to influence consumers' buying and consumption behavior Martin and Bush. These celebrities have played instrumental roles in the advertisement industry. The female athlete Venus Williams, a tennis player who won the Wimbledon championship in 2002, signed contracts for the promotion of sportswear with Reebok International Inc. Chan documents that Hong Kong's media actively engage famous singers, movie actors, and athletes as spokespersons for their products and services in television commercials. The author also emphasizes that about half of Hong Kong's political campaigns also engage the services of celebrity endorsers for publicity. It is generally held that featuring celebrities in advertisements generate publicity, positive word-of-mouth, and are influential in capturing the attention levels of consumers.
Although featuring celebrities in advertisements have been considered effective in generating favorable responses among women, the success of the advertisement is still not guaranteed. This is because there are certain risks which are associated with featuring celebrities in advertisements. For example, Miciak and Shanklin document a successful celebrity endorsement in only one advertisement out of five which lived up to consumers' and advertisers' expectations. The desired functioning of the celebrities thus depends on properly featuring them according to the context in the advertisements. However, a famous face may still hold consumer's attention. Consumers may still enjoy a little extra entertainment, aspiration, and imagery while associating themselves with the celebrity's endorsed products. Considering the featuring of celebrities in advertisements and theories about women's emotions and responses towards advertisements, it is proposed that:
H2: Featuring a celebrity in an advertisement leads to significantly positive changes in the consumption behavior of women.
Hollis notes that anything which looks interesting and enjoyable may capture consumers' attention. A story, a brand, or an advertisement itself could also capture attention levels. Marketers often endeavor to tell emotional stories about the products or services offered for sale. Hollis further maintains that humans are emotional and emotions have enough power to grab their attention. Consequently, strongly charged emotional events that develop strong memories among consumers shape their consumption behavior in a particular way. In this context, the appeal drivers in advertisements may determine the overall rhythm of emotions in advertisements. Emotional appeals may touch customers' heartstrings in order to engage them in purchasing the product. Emotional appeals may awake either negative or positive emotions, which in turn motivate the consumers' buying decisions. Marketers engage a lot of appeal drivers to influence human emotions. For example, consumers might consciously think that a steak may be delicious when he/she watches it on television. Further, if the sound of steak sizzling is added to the same advertisement, consumers may begin to crave the steak.
Nowadays, companies are competing with each other with similar products or services; and it has become strategically necessary to offer products while highlighting them through diversified factors. For example, consumers might prefer to watch adverts with soothing music that evoke feelings of positive reactions to the nice fragrance and color of coffee, ice-cream, etc.. Hence, the multidimensional involvement of execution factors, for example, music, colors, meanings, symbols, etc., may stimulate favorable or unfavorable behavioral responses of the audience. The desired generation of emotional stimuli may penetrate consumers' perception through the multidimensional engagement of colors, music, symbols, and meanings in the advertisements. Music is a sensational stimulus to set the overall flow of the advertisement. The penetration of music and sounds in adverts is increasing in modern marketing. It has been documented that about 50% of an advertisement normally focuses on the music appeal driver in order to make the advertisement watchable. Advertisers are continuously engaging various appeal drivers, for example, images, messages, improved picture quality, or background music, in order to arouse favorable emotional responses from consumers. Hence, these emotional advertising stimuli may capture the attention mechanism of consumers while shaping their behavioral responses. Percy further supports the inclusion of emotional appeal drivers into advertisements. Many academic works on advertising have documented the emotional power of appeal drivers in order to shape consumption behavior. Studies have shown that an impactful advertisement can be developed with a premier focus on an advertising color, image or picture quality, music, and message being delivered. Additionally, Cacioppo and Petty note that the advertising message should be made relevant to the overall context of the advertisement in order to create the desired results. The presentation of appeal drivers in the advertisement may draw consumers' attention towards advertisement, which may ultimately impact their consumption patterns. The impact of advertising music, message, picture quality, and color appeal drivers on women's responses has been researched by academic scholars in various fields. The majority of such research shows the positive response of women towards those adverts which incorporate emotional appeal drivers while developing the advertisements.
Hence, an impactful advertisement may incorporate a variety of appeal drivers, for example, tone, lighting, message, sound, characters, picture quality, music, and different color combinations. Furthermore, these provide a base for the other elements of the advertisement and increase their effectiveness multifold. Since consumers respond more to catchy advertisements, these tactics determine the attention levels towards the advertisement, which ultimately turn into favorable consumption behavior triggered by the advertisements.
Thus, it is proposed that:
H3: Appeal drivers in advertisements lead to significantly positive changes in the consumption behavior of women.
The literature discussed in this study has illuminated the concepts of emotional advertising stimuli, with a focus on appeal drivers (A), celebrity endorsement (C), and emotions (E), and their likely associative influence on women's consumption behavior. Hence, emotional marketing has acknowledged the importance of women's feelings, emotions, motivations, and interest levels in the buying decision-making process. Advertisers strategically endeavor to grab the attention of women to elicit a favorable consumption response. The ACE based exposure of emotional stimuli may impact women's buying or consumption behavior after passing through their attention filters. This notion can further be solidified with the premises of the advertising response model (ARM) discussed by Mehta. Mehta's ARM presumes that consumers' attention places itself in between the exposure to advertising stimuli for a peripheral route, which is focused on advertising execution factors, and its ultimate impact on their buying behavior. ARM's notions of exposure to advertising stimuli can be linked and discussed in light of associative learning theory (ALT) as well, which supports the association of various created concepts, as mentioned by Till and Busler. The authors further note that conceptual linkages between various concepts, for example, an endorser's communicated emotions, messages, or fit with other advertising executional appeal drivers, may configure exposure to networks of stimuli which may prompt the desired response among women. The advertising execution factors encapsulated in the present study are color, picture quality, music, and message in tandem with emotions which will be shown by various celebrity endorsers.
The premises of ARM support the notion of the mediating role of attention for emotional advertising exposure, which is also supported by ALT, and women's consumption behavior discussed in detail. Emotional advertising and its seminal role in influencing consumers' behavior through their attention filters has also been discussed by many academic scholars. More precisely, the featuring of celebrities and their exhibited emotions in tandem with the advertising execution factors have been discussed by researchers in order to explain their impact on women's attention and consumption behavior. The discussed theories provide grounds to postulate that:
H4a: The relationship between emotional feelings created in advertisements and women's consumption behavior is positively mediated by attention.
H4b: The relationship between a celebrity being featured in advertisements and women's consumption behavior is positively mediated by attention.
H4c: The relationship between appeal drivers in advertisements and women's consumption behavior is positively mediated by attention.
Measurement model
The AIDA model was developed as a behavioral model to generate awareness and interest in an audience through advertisements for products or services. Moreover, the model proposes that attention leads to ultimate actions, which may be described as consumption decision-making and buying. The AIDA model suggests that advertisements may hold attention by creating interest in the advertised product and shapes the desires of the audience to take action, i.e., creates a behavioral response to the advertised stimuli. EA emphasizes emotions, eye-catching, peripheral and symbolic cues, through for example, colorful ads, the use of celebrities, etc.; however, it differs from traditional advertisement, which focuses solely on product attributes, in terms of grabbing an audience's attention. In the emotional advertising context, the AIDA model brings together traditional and emotional advertising which is regarded as highly persuasive ground for the advertisers to work with which can effectively hold an audience's thoughts and influence their consumption patterns. It may also be considered as a concrete advertising base on which to build theory.
On the basis of the aforementioned literature, addressing the use of appeal drivers (A), celebrity endorsement (C), and emotions (E) in advertisements and their likely association through ALT and ARM, a theoretical model is presented in Fig. 1 which encapsulates exposure to the ACE-based advertisement in order to influence women's consumption behavior with a mediating role for attention. The present study's ACE model, which is theoretically embedded within the ARM and AIDA premises where exposure to advertisement is presented and its ultimate impact on the audience's behavior is documented integrates the subordinate levels of human emotions (i.e., happiness, pride, sadness, and fear), appeal drivers (i.e., message, picture quality, music, and colors), and celebrity endorsement (i.e., showbiz and sports) constructs in order to show their influence on women's responses (modeled with attention, interest, and consumption behavior). The emotions of happiness, pride, sadness, and fear are distilled from the literature by Cotte and Ritchie, Williams, and Rytel and are also a part of basic emotions as identified by Ekman, Plutchik, and Zammuner. These emotions are encapsulated into the ACE model considering their nature of universality. The showbiz and sports celebrities are considered in keeping with the arguments of Martin and Bush. More precisely, the discussion by Chan in the Chinese context was considered while depicting celebrities' role in the ACE framework in the present study.
Fig. 1 ACE model
Kotler and Armstrong document that consumers' social, symbolic, or psychological needs may best be targeted with emotional appeal drivers in order to stir up their motivation for the product/service consumption. Hence, the right choice of advertising appeal drivers is important while developing advertising which may ultimately impact the success or failure of advertisement. Considering these viewpoints, appeal drivers were chosen from the literature in this study focused on message, picture quality, music, and color as these were identified as important by many scholars. Hence, the constructs presented in the ACE model were developed out of the review of theories, models, and existing literature on emotions, advertisements, consumer behavior and market mechanisms coupled with gender differentials.