Methodology

Research design

For effective marketing stimuli, it is important to understand consumers' choice appropriately in order to influence their buying and consumption behavior. Despite the recent stock market and currency depreciating problems, Chinese consumers remain motivated and are resilient in their modern consumption behavior. Atsmon et al. note that the Chinese economy tripled between 2000 and 2010. This growth rate has attracted business investors from across the globe to enter Chinese business markets. However, Chinese consumer behavior is evolving rapidly with expected higher income levels between 2010 and 2020, which may challenge conventional marketing and advertising strategies as well. These are all reasons to understand Chinese consumer behavior appropriately, in the current context. Since Chinese women's participation in higher paid jobs is increasing, they are becoming more concerned about lifestyle, beauty, and wellness. Moreover, some research indicates that concerns about physical beauty among Chinese are making luxury beauty products very popular. The products which address wellness, lifestyle, and beauty needs have been deeply involved in exploiting human emotions. These narrations solidify the reason to conduct research on women's consumption behavior in the Chinese context. When a product is launched in China, advertising on Chinese television is a traditional way. It has been claimed that the emotional considerations will dominate Chinese consumers' buying decisions by 2020. These arguments strengthen the research justifications presented in this study to conduct research on emotional advertising strategies in electronic media and within the Chinese context.

For these reasons and to test the proposed hypotheses, voluntary respondents were invited from the student population at the Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, China. The chosen population was female and, to match the consent agreement requirement, at least 19 years of age. The participants were enrolled in university at the time of this research work. A total of 240 respondents, randomly chosen, voluntarily participated in the survey. The research design was a laboratory-based survey, which was administered to measure ACE variables' association and its ultimate impact on consumption patterns. The research design also supports the measurement of the mediation effect of attention levels between ACE variables and consumption behavior.


Participants and research stimuli development

The proposed hypotheses were tested by providing a believable scenario to the study participants. Respondents were invited to imagine that the situation being presented was a real situation. The situations depicted through the scenarios may increase the validity and direction of consumers' responses in different contexts. A scenario was designed in advance. The scenario allowed the respondents to choose the best combination of ACE variables, and develop their own advertisement, which would capture their attention and possibly convince them to buy the product (consumption behavior) if a product is advertised with the developed ACE mix. The guidelines to develop the scenario were adapted from the Central Park New York context, which was also used by Lee. However, it was adjusted according to the nature of this study through discussion with six persons, including one professor, two marketing instructors, one student, and two advertising professionals.

The procedure allowed the participants to listen to the scenario, explained by a neutral experiment facilitator who was engaged to minimize the biases of the study, and then to choose the ACE variables. The variables included message, colors in the ads, music, picture quality, the featuring of a showbiz celebrity or a sports celebrity, and the emotional feelings of happiness, sadness, fear, and pride (which were being shown through the faces of the celebrities), were provided as a toolkit to develop the EAs.

The celebrities' pictures, showing emotional expressions, were adapted from IMBD popular Hollywood actors and actresses, and Gaines's list of popular athletes in the world. The stimuli included multiple expressions to show happiness, sadness, fear, and pride which were considered appropriate for the psychological experiment. The sound appeal drivers were adapted from common sound clips heard in online advertisements which were adapted from Lewis et al., adjusted according to the nature of the study. The participants were offered headphones to listen to the sound stimulus via lab assisted computers. Photoscape 3.7 was provided as a tool to adjust the picture quality and color tone, and open access to the internet was arranged to write or select a message of any kind which the participants wanted to incorporate while developing the advertisements. McLeod's guidelines were followed to conduct the psychological experiment in this empirical study. The researchers controlled the laboratory environment to ensure that lighting and noise were at comfortable levels.

The questionnaire was used to measure the response of the participants to the ACE variables and their attention levels. The respondents' interest and attention levels were measured to determine their association with and priority of the ACE dimensions. To measure the interest and attention levels of the study respondents towards the ACE variables, the participants were asked to rate their response on a 7-point Likert scale (ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree). The developed instrument for the study was adapted from the studies of Doherty et al., Richins, Bijmolt et al., Lewis et al., Wei and Lu, and Dittmar et al. in order to measure the attention levels and consumption behavior of the audience. The adapted instruments were adjusted according to the context of the study, and for the appropriate understanding of the participants. Advertisers use some general demographic approaches to influence audiences as well. A lot of factors may influence women to behave a certain way in a certain situation, for example, age, education, and income. A consumer's age, personality, occupation, education, economic circumstances, values, and lifestyle are all personal characteristics which are likely to influence consumer behavior. In order to appeal to the audience for a desired response, marketers may use consumers' demographics information while developing advertisements.

Therefore, demographic questions on age, education, and work status were included in the questionnaire for analysis purpose in the study context. The number of study respondents is considered appropriate because in the rating scale, a sample size with over 100 participants is appropriate to estimate the results with a margin error of +/− 10%. The demographic profiles of the study participants are listed in Table 1. Immediately following the development of the ACE advertisement, the participants were requested to fill in the questionnaires. Based on an initial pilot study of 30 respondents, the Cronbach's α = 0.76 shows high internal consistency, and hence was considered appropriate for further study.

Table 1 Demographic profiles of the respondents

Variable Category Frequency Percent Cumulative Percent
Gender Male 0 0 0
Female 240 100 100
Total 240 100  
Nationality Others 0 0 0
Chinese 240 100 100
Total 240 100  
Age 20–25 136 56.67 56.67
26–30 83 34.58 91.25
31–35 21 8.75 100
Total 240 100  
Qualification Undergraduate 71 29.58 29.58
Graduate 129 53.75 83.33
Post-graduate 40 16.67 100
Total 240 100  
Work Status Full time student 138 57.5 57.5
Working part time 58 24.17 81.67
while attending school
Working full time 44 18.33 100
while attending school
Total 240 100  

Statistical analysis

PLS-SEM, more precisely, the SmartPLS 3.2.6 was used to analyze the study model. The suitability of PLS-SEM was determined due to certain reasons, for example, (1) this research work's scope is extended to predict and explain the variance levels in certain target constructs, (2) the study's research paradigm is complex, and, (3) the interaction of emotions, appeal drivers, and celebrity endorsement in the advertisement with attention level and consumption behavior is a new element that can add to theory development and thus provides an opportunity to shed light on new processes.