Affective Persuasion of Comparative Advertisements: Interplay Between Context-Induced and Ad-Induced Affect

• In Event: Cognition, Attitude, and Persuasion

Abstract

Both the advertising context and the advertisement itself are able to eliciting emotional feelings. This study conducted a 2 2 2 between-subjects experiment to investigate the interplay between context-induced and ad-induced affect on the effects of a comparative versus a non-comparative advertisement. The results showed that there were significant three-way interaction effects on participants’ ad and brand attitudes. In the condition of positive context-induced affect, participants preferred the comparative ad to the non-comparative ad when ad-induced affect was positive, but expressed similar responses to both types of ads when ad-induced affect was negative. In the condition of negative context-induced affect, participants expressed more favorable responses to the ad that elicited positive affect. This study is believed to provide both theoretical and practical implications to research of advertising and affective information processing. Directions for future studies are also discussed.

Authors

• Linwan Wu, U of South Carolina, Columbia

• Jing (Taylor) Wen, U of Florida