Emotional advertising

Transcription

1 Emotional advertising The connecting element for a global, culture-free advertising Mariana Atanasova Master s Thesis Communication and Information Sciences Specialization: Design of Business communication and Digital media Supervisor: Dr. A. el Aissati Second reader: Dr. P. Broeder Date: 31 st July, 2014

2 I have learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Maya Angelou ( ) 2

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4 Table of content ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 6 ABSTRACT 7 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION RESEARCH TOPIC RESEARCH METHOD STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT 10 CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND CULTURE AND INDIVIDUALS CULTURAL DIFFERENCES STANDARDIZATION OF ADVERTISING MIND-SHARE AND EMOTIONAL BRANDING CUSTOMER AND BRANDS: BRAND LOVE EMOTIONS EMOTIONAL CONTINUUM EMOTIONS IN ADVERTISING AND THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE ADVERTISEMENT EMOTIONS, BRAND EQUITY, MEMORY CONCLUSION 21 CHAPTER 3. HYPOTHESES 23 CHAPTER 4. METHODOLOGY TYPE OF RESEARCH MEASUREMENT SCALES MOTIVATION AND KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGE: ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE ADVERTISEMENT SCALE KNOWLEDGE: INTRINSIC INVOLVEMENT WITH THE ADVERTISEMENT SCALE KNOWLEDGE: FEELINGS TOWARDS THE ADVERTISEMENT SCALE MEASURING INVOLVEMENT BRAND IDENTITY AND LEVEL OF CONNECTION SCALE DESIGN MATERIALS FOCUS GROUP PRE-TEST SAMPLING AND PROCEDURE CONSTRUCT MEASUREMENT HYPOTHESIS 1: FEELINGS TOWARDS THE ADVERTISEMENTS HYPOTHESIS 2: INVOLVEMENT HYPOTHESIS 3: ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE ADVERTISEMENT HYPOTHESIS 4: BRAND IDENTITY AND CONNECTION ADDITIONAL TESTING. MEMORABILITY 32 4

5 CHAPTER 5. DATA QUESTIONNAIRE. DISTRIBUTION AND DURATION DATA CLEANING PARTICIPANTS PROFILE VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY OF CONSTRUCTS RELIABILITY ANALYSIS FEELINGS TOWARDS THE ADVERTISEMENT INVOLVEMENT ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE ADVERTISEMENT BRAND IDENTITY 36 CHAPTER 6. RESULTS UNIVARIATE FACTORIAL ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE HYPOTHESIS 1. FEELINGS TOWARDS THE ADVERTISEMENT Additional results HYPOTHESIS 2. INVOLVEMENT Additional results HYPOTHESIS 3. ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE ADVERTISEMENT Additional results HYPOTHESIS 4. BRAND IDENTITY Additional results ADDITIONAL FINDING. MEMORABILITY SUMMARY 43 CHAPTER 7. DISCUSSION FEELINGS TOWARDS THE ADVERTISEMENT INVOLVEMENT ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE ADVERTISEMENT BRAND IDENTITY 46 CHAPTER 8. CONCLUSIONS GENERAL CONCLUSIONS AND FINDINGS MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY AND FUTURE RESEARCH 49 APPENDICES 53 5

6 Acknowledgement It is a wonderful and exhilarating feeling to be at this point and reflect not only on the past few months but also on the past seven years of my life. Having a Master s degree has been my ultimate goal ever since I came to the Netherlands and the fact that I am so close to realizing it makes me extremely happy and proud of myself. But I would not have been so close if it was not for the support, care and love of my mother, Reneta and my father, Atanas. They have always been there for me, for my lows and highs, to lift me up and guide me though the challenges I have faced. My very special, warmhearted gratitude and appreciation for everything done for me go to my sister, Evgeniya. Without her, my life in the Netherlands would have been completely different and I thank her for that, for her love, care and understanding, which I for sure needed in the past year. I would also like to mention two other very special people for me, Robert and Franklin for their fearless feedback, for lifting me up and making me believe in myself and what I am capable of when I was lost. Their amazing positivity, encouragement to persevere and to have patience, have made the whole process of writing my thesis much more enjoyable and exciting. Lastly, I would like to express my appreciation to Mr. A. el Aissati for the time and efforts devoted in supervising me and discussing my ideas in order to create a master thesis, which I can be proud of. I also thank the second reader of my master thesis for taking the time to read and evaluate my work. Mariana Atanasova 6

7 Abstract This research aims to compare and evaluate the effectiveness of four types of advertising messages: standardized emotional, standardized rational, adapted emotional and adapted rational, while also considering the type of product, namely high or low involvement. An online experiment is conducted to find out whether standardized messages are more effective than adapted messages and whether standardized emotional messages are better than adapted emotional also when the type of product is concerned. These advertising messages are evaluated on the basis of four elements: feelings towards the advertisement, involvement, attitude towards the advertisement and brand identity. Based on the existing literature, the researcher noticed an opportunity and a challenge to attest some of the existing researches and their claims that companies should not standardize their messages but rather adapt them according to culture. The researcher goes a step further by discussing a way in which standardization can be successfully achieved, namely through emotions. Based on this, a number of hypotheses were designed. The results indicate that standardized and standardized emotional messages are more effective on the basis of feelings towards the advertisement and attitude towards the advertisement. No significant effects are found for the other elements. However, the abovementioned significant results lead to positive attitude towards the brand, credibility and meaningfulness which allows the researcher to conclude that on important factors standardized and standardized emotional advertising messages are more effective than adapted or adapted emotional. Keywords: standardization, adaptation, emotional advertising, emotions, attitude towards the advertisement, attitude towards the brand 7

8 Chapter 1. Introduction Cultural differences, their implications and importance in advertising have been researched for decades. In order to be successful in various countries, companies have been suggested to adjust their advertising messages according to the culture and the preferences known in the particular country. However, globalization and technology have led to the development and the empowerments of individuals, which can be difficultly defined as belonging to solely one culture. Therefore, instead of separating their communications according to the geographical location, companies pursue a more unified strategy through standardizing their advertising messages regardless of the culture of the country they operate in, which is also the main purpose of this research. More specifically, to investigate whether standardization can be considered as the more effective advertising strategy on the basis of a few important criteria. It is important to note that the purpose of this study is not to undermine the importance of culture in shaping people s perceptions and preferences, instead it aims to prove that as a result of people s exposure to many cultures, companies of today can be successful if they design standardized messages rather than adapting them across cultures. This will also help them develop a strong and consistent brand identity that will easily be recognized and remembered. The second main purpose of the proposed study is to suggest a way as to how companies can actually use standardized messages and still be effective and persuasive in their communications. The key of effective standardized messages is suggested to be emotions. Emotional advertising goes beyond the traditional goal of advertising- to sell products rather emphasizes on the importance of creating an emotional connection with the customers. This will ultimately assist the companies in not only selling their products to the desired audience but most importantly making sure that they establish a strong, long-lasting and loyal relationship with their customers. In today s competitive world, specifically strong brand identity, meaningful and enduring relationships with brands are believed to be the decisive elements for success. Bearing in mind that advertising is the mean of communication with customers, in the proposed study, it is suggested that the only way companies can achieve this success is through designing standardized emotional messages. 1.1 Research topic The way companies communicate with their customers has an impact on how they perceive them, what the attitude towards the brand and the product is and whether they can establish a connection with them. There are many opinions and arguments as to whether companies should adapt their messages across cultures or can communicate globally by standardizing their advertising messages. 8

9 Considering the opposing opinions for both perspectives, the main goal of the research will be to compare and evaluate the effectiveness of the two types of advertisements, standardized and culturally adapted. What would make this research unique is that it will make a combination between these two types with other general classifications of advertising, more specifically emotional and rational. Therefore, the study will strive to evaluate which one of the four types of advertising messages would yield the most positive reactions in customers by taking into consideration the type of product (low and high involvement). The effectiveness would be judged according to customers feelings towards the advertisement, attitude and involvement which are considered to be on the level of individual to message interaction. The study will also aim to go a step further and discover whether by using specifically standardized emotional messages companies are able to establish a stronger brand identity, which would lead to a stronger relationship and connection between the company and the customers. The brand identity aspect is considered to be on the level of the individual to brand interaction. It is crucial to note that the proposed study is not a replication or a continuation of an existing research. Consequently, the following research question will aim to illustrate the main purpose of the current study, as well as its contribution to the existing literature: Which one of the four types of advertising messages: standardized emotional, standardized rational, adapted emotional or adapted rational is the most effective for both types of products, low and high involvement? By considering the aspects, which will help evaluate the effectiveness of the advertisements, the following sub- questions will be answered: 1. What are the main effects of the type of advertisement (standardized vs. adapted, emotional vs. rational, standardized emotional vs. adapted emotional, standardized rational vs. adapted rational) and type of product (low vs. high) and their interaction effect on feelings towards the advertisement? 2. What are the main effects of the type of advertisement (standardized vs. adapted, emotional vs. rational, standardized emotional vs. adapted emotional, standardized rational vs. adapted rational) and type of product (low vs. high) and their interaction effect on involvement? 3. What are the main effects of the type of advertisement (standardized vs. adapted, emotional vs. rational, standardized emotional vs. adapted emotional, standardized rational vs. adapted rational) and type of product (low vs. high) and their interaction effect on attitude towards the advertisement? 4. What are the main effects of the type of advertisement (standardized vs. adapted, emotional vs. rational, standardized emotional vs. adapted emotional, standardized rational 9

10 vs. adapted rational) and type of product (low vs. high) and their interaction effect on brand identity? 1.2 Research method This study will first start with reviewing relevant literature. Afterwards, based on this literature review, the hypotheses aiming to give answer to the main research question will be presented and illustrated in a conceptual model. In order to test these hypotheses, 2 x 2 x 2 between-subject experimental design will be applied. There will be eight manipulations in this research: standardized emotional low, standardized emotional high, standardized rational low, standardized rational high, adapted emotional low, adapted emotional high, adapted rational low and adapted rational high. An online questionnaire will be used to measure the dependent variables where different groups of people will be randomly assigned to one of the above-mentioned conditions. Additionally, the researcher will collect advertisements (visual materials) according to the criteria based on the independent variables, from companies listed on the Forbes most valuable brands for The reason for choosing this particular list is because as a result of their inclusion in one list, the brands can be more reliably compared. In order to increase the validity and reduce the bias of the researcher, a focus group will be organized to select the final visual materials used for each of the eight groups of the research. Furthermore, the questionnaire, which will be mainly designed on a Likert scale, will be discussed with a group of young professionals. This will assist the researcher in distributing a clear and concise questionnaire. In order to collect enough respondents from each group and be able to draw conclusions the researcher will aim to collect a minimum of 50 people per group, which means that in total there should be at least 400 respondents. This will also make the sample size of the conducted study reliable bearing in mind that 100 respondents are considered as insufficient and 1000 as outstanding (Comrey & Lee, 1992). The data obtained from the online experiment will be analyzed with the help of SPSS Statistics. Reliability tests will be performed on the components constructing each of the dependent variables with the intention to make sure that they indeed measure the distinct variable. Afterwards, Factorial ANOVAs will be conducted to observe the existence and the size of the main effects and interactions between the dependent and the independent variables. 1.3 Structure of the report This report consists of eight main chapters, each focusing on a different topic and stage from this research. The report begins with an introduction aiming to introduce the topic to the reader, describe the purposes and the idea behind the proposed study. Furthermore, it includes the main research question and the sub-questions that need to be answered. 10

11 Afterwards, literature and existing studies related to the topic are discussed. This leads to the formulation of a number of hypotheses. The report continues with the methodology where the way the research is designed, the scales and the tools used as well as the pre-testing activities are all described. The fourth chapter focuses on the collected data after conducting the online experiment where the amount of participants, their distribution amongst the different groups and the cleaning process are all explained. Logically, the next chapter presents the results, discussing the tests performed, the respective results from each one of the hypotheses and some additional findings. This section is followed by discussion where the researcher looks back at the literature discussed previously and aims to find explanation of the obtained results. Finally, conclusions as well as managerial implications, limitations of the research and suggestions for future research are all part of the final chapter of this report. A number of appendices are also included in order to provide more details and visuals when necessary. 11

12 Chapter 2. Theoretical Background This chapter deals with culture, cultural differences and the essential element for this study, namely standardization and emotions in advertising. This literature review will serve as the backbone of the proposed study and will lead to the later formulation of a number of specific hypotheses. 2.1 Culture and Individuals There have been many attempts to define culture and many of them underestimate the role of the individual. As a result, for the purposes of this research these individual differences will be taken into consideration. Ralph Linton defines culture as the configuration of learned behavior and results of behavior whose component elements are shared and transmitted by the members of a particular society (Usunier & Lee, 2005). Regardless of how intensive the efforts of certain societies are to train their people to accept and obey the rules and norms established, the individual remains a distinct organism able of producing own thoughts, feelings and behavior. On the other hand, Goodenough (Usunier & Lee, 2005) claims that culture can be defined as a set of beliefs or standards which are largely shared by a group of people and guide the individual towards deciding what is right and wrong, how to feel, what to do and how to do it. Bearing this in mind, Goodenough claims that there is no reason to believe that the individual is only influenced by one particular culture and that he cannot share the values and norms of different cultures. This concept is defined by the so-called operational culture which presumes that individuals can choose for themselves the culture they interact with depending on the time and situation. Operational culture highlights the influence of multiple cultures on one s behavior and development, which results in the formation of a multicultural individual. Consequently, throughout this research, the role of the individual and his own norms, beliefs, feelings and thoughts will be stressed upon rather than the cultural group he belongs to originally. 2.2 Cultural differences Despite the claims of multiculturalism many categorizations of cultures have been identified on the basis of various differences. One of the most discussed and even criticized models is the one by Geert Hofstede who distinguishes five different dimensions of organizational cultures which have however been applied in many other domains. According to Hofstede (1994), differences can be made between power distance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance and long term/short term orientations. Power distance is about the degree of inequality present in a given society (Wiles, Wiles & Tjernlund, 1995), where it is believed that all societies are unequal, but some are more unequal (Hofstede, 1994). The second dimension categorizes 12

13 societies depending on the degree to which people behave and think as separate individuals versus more group and collective mindsets. Masculinity is concerned about the extent to which values such as performance, achievement, independence and male dominance are appreciated versus more feminine values like sympathy, interdependence and caring (Wiles, Wiles & Tjernlund, 1995). Uncertainty avoidance reflects the desire of certain societies to have extremely structured and predictable environment versus a more flexible and challenging one. Finally, cultures which put emphasis on short term values are those who respect traditions and social obligations whereas long term cultures are more future oriented, valuing persistence and providence (Samovar, Porter & McDaniel, 2012). Another difference that has been identified is related to the way people communicate in regards to the importance they put on the context. Hall and Hall (1987) define context as the information that surrounds an event and is inextricably bound up with the meaning of that event. As a result of the two elements, which determine the meaning, namely the event and the context, culture is said to play a decisive role. Therefore, when communication is concerned Hall and Hall (1987) categorize cultures into two groups, high and low context. High context cultures are more implicit and indirect in their communications. People from a high context culture tend to embed the real meaning in the information rather than explicitly mention it (Nishimura, Nevgi & Tella, 2009). In the contrary, people from low context cultures are considerably direct, precise and unambiguous. Communications are characterized by high level of openness where the individual is likely to reveal a lot of information about himself and where messages are consistent with one s feelings and emotions (Gudykunst, Ting-Tommey & Nishida, 1996). 2.3 Standardization of advertising Based on the cultural differences and the abovementioned dimensions and many others, one perspective on advertising is that it strongly reflects the cultural norms and it is a mirror of the existing values and traits of a culture (Wiles, Wiles & Tjernlund, 1995). Therefore, it is suggested that companies should adjust their messages according to the culture they offer their products in. However, a contrasting view on international advertising puts a light on a different strategy, namely standardization. This concept is defined as using the same or identical advertising messages on an international level, as a result of the increasing homogeneity of the market place (Wang & Yang, 2011). The main rational behind this new advertising strategy is the belief that regardless of their country of origin, consumers share common needs and wants and consequently can be addressed and persuaded by using the same universal advertising messages (Wang & Yang, 2011). Additionally, standardization looks at similarities in the different cultures rather than differences (Sirisagul, 2008). Furthermore, Levitt (1984) argues that as a result of technology the world s 13

14 needs and desires have been irrevocably homogenized which allows companies to approach consumers globally as a result of a good combination between price, quality and reliability (De Mooij, 2010). Because of the lack of any empirical evidences Levitt s theory of globalization of the market has been continuously criticized and questioned. Some researchers claim that the success of standardizing will highly depend on the type of products (Boddewyn, Soehl & Picard, 1986). For instance, consumer nondurables goods or low involvement products (food and drinks) are regarded as highly culture-bounded (Hermeking, 2006) and therefore considerably more difficult to standardize. On the other hand, consumer durables or high involvement products are considered culture-free which allows for an easy standardization across cultures. Most importantly, an interesting research of Mueller (1991) investigated the level of information cues used in highly standardized and highly specialized messages. In her study, Mueller found that highly standardized messages used significantly less information in comparison to highly specialized messages, regardless of the type of product whether it is a low or a high involvement. Throughout the years, many researchers have emphasized the importance of adapting the company s messages to the culture and that instead of increasing efficiency in communication, standardization has caused many companies to experience decreasing profitability (de Mooij, 2003). Nonetheless, despite the criticism, standardized advertising brings many advantages to companies that choose to adapt this strategy. The development of universal messages results in cost savings, the exploitation of ideas which are not to be found elsewhere in the world, ease of coordination and planning and most importantly the establishment of a consistent, uniform and highly recognizable brand, corporate image and identity (Sirisagoul, 2008). In the recent years more research has proven that more multinational companies use standardized advertising strategies specifically to insure a strong brand image (Taylor, 2005). Furthermore, there have been three main approaches identified which can guarantee successful standardization: identifying clusters of countries where the brand s standing and cultural attitudes are similar; finding an idea that represents the brand s unique perspective on a human truth ; creating a brand space (Millward Brown, 2006). Finding own brand space is crucial for effective standardization since it is about creating own environment which is not related to any particular time or location but it is rather the possession of the brand itself. This is what would make the distinction between the brand having the control over the message communicated and being controlled by the location or culture of the particular market. Overall, it is believed that more research is required in order to evaluate the influence of culture in advertising by identifying the fundamental similarities and differences between cultures (Taylor, 2005). Despite the largely used Hofstede cultural dimensions, the study was based on the cultural values of a company, which does not provide sufficient amount of evidence and information about how exactly these dimensions are related to advertising. A different perspective of de Mooij states 14

15 that there is a significant distinction between what is possibly desirable according to social norms and values and what is actually desired by the individual (Taylor, 2005). Bearing this in mind the next sections will discuss not only advertising from customer s perspective but will first begin with defining the concept looking at it from a company s point of view and what it means to it. The reason why, it is important to define advertising first from companies prospective is because this is the starting point of advertising, what companies want to communicate, how they do it, what the steps are and how they can formulate a message which will reach their customers in the most effective, meaningful and influential way possible. 2.4 Mind-share and emotional branding Advertising is a way through which companies can make sure that they build and maintain strong brand identity. The conventional branding models focus mainly on the instrumental perspective of brand communication. According to these models, the single most important purpose of advertising is to influence the perception of the consumer about the brand (Holt, 2004). Advertisers would utilize whatever informational rhetoric in order to persuade the customers. However, the drawback of these models is the fact that once the consumers realize the only purpose of this communication, namely to persuade them, they consequently dismiss these messages. A model that makes the exact opposite assumptions is the cultural branding model. According to Halt (2004), this model considers communication as the key of creating customer value. The main goal of advertising of this model is to communicate to the customers that the product is the only conduit through which they can experience the story told by the brand. The success of this cultural advertising strategy is creating a storied product (Holt, 2004) which is a product possessing distinctive branded features which allow the customer to experience the brand s identity myths. Nonetheless, there is another approach of branding, which focuses on the cognitive aspect of branding, namely mind-share. This approach is about communicating certain abstract associations, which are usually attached to the products benefits, and attributes (Holt, 2004). Nevertheless, this approach is believed to ignore the emotional aspect of branding and the concept of building a relationship with the customers. That is why, one of the newest approaches, also considered to be an extension of the mind-share approach is the emotional branding. Similarly to mind-share model, emotional branding also emphasizes the importance of communicating the main attributes of a product but it also goes a step further by suggesting how they should be communicated. In order to be successful, companies need to build emotional appeals in their messages, so that emotional relationship can be established with the customers, or as Rossiter and Bellman (2012) claim emotional branding is the successful attachment of a specific emotion to a brand. 15

16 In their study Rossiter and Bellman (2012) investigated the emotions of trust, companionship, love and bonding to prove that by exuding these emotions, companies experience a significant increase of frequency and volume of purchase, specifically for low involvement products. This new approach of emotional branding or Brand Emotional Attachment was compared to the traditional Brand Attitude approach and was found significantly more successful for the so called utilitarian products and equally successful for the hedonic products. Nonetheless, what remained unanswered is whether advertising can be used in order to stimulate emotional attachment to products or this is exclusively the result of the positive experiences after using the product. Moreover, some research concerning the effect of emotions in advertising on the attitude towards the advertisement, the brand and the product have been conducted and will be discussed later on. 2.5 Customer and brands: Brand love Numerous academic studies have argued that not only do people consume and interact with certain brands but they also engage in a meaningful relationship with them (Halloran, 2014). Halloran (2014) has identified eight phases of how people and brands establish and maintain their relationship, however only six of them will be discussed considering their relevance. Halloran compares this process with what people experience with their loved ones, companies first need to know themselves. The relationship starts with the brand, before knowing the customer. It is essential that brands identify what makes them different and potentially special for a customer. Only by knowing the exact benefits of the products can companies set the beginning of a more intimate and emotional bond with the customer. Halloran (2014) points out that specifically these emotional bonds will form the basis of a lasting consumer relationship. The second phase of this process is knowing your customers. In order to make the perfect match between the customer who would feel as this brand is meant for him and what the brand can offer, companies need to find out who exactly this person is, his emotional and social values and norms. The third phase is to meet memorably. The first impression that a brand gives to a customer determines whether there will be future interactions or whether it will remain on the surface of a pure acquaintance interaction. At this stage, it is crucial that brands establish connections that are forever remembered and meaningful, which push the customer to continuously seek and desire more. By providing an unforgettable experience, brands will make sure that customers will share their experiences with other people, and make the relationship mutual. Only by being consistent can brands stimulate this word-of-month effect. The fifth phase identified by Halloran (2014) is to make the connection even stronger. The relationship becomes so important that people consider the particular brand as it was made for them, it reflects who they are and what they want to be. It is about the brand never disappointing the customer and he on the other hand remaining loyal to it. 16

17 Keeping this feeling is crucial, and it is the responsibility of the brand to continuously surprise and excite its customers in order to make sure that a long lasting and alive relationship will be preserved. In the next section, an element that is considered to be crucial in establishing this longlasting and meaningful relationship will be discussed in details, namely the role of emotions as well as their contribution in advertising. 2.6 Emotions As mentioned in the previous section, researchers have not as closely investigated the concept of emotions when advertising is concerned. Nevertheless, in the recent years its increasing importance when customers are concerned and their attitudes towards advertising have continuously been pointed out. According to de Mooij (2011), in psychology emotions can be described as a process that involves interaction between cognition and physiology suggesting a two-way interaction between the body and the soul. Emotions evoke both changes of the physiological as well as from a mental point of view. Researchers consider emotions to be related to concepts such as beauty and poetry while opposing it to thinking, which is related to calculations, science and logical arguments (de Mooij, 2011). Some researchers claim that affect only occurs after a certain amount of cognitive activities (Zajonc, 1980), whereas others regard emotions as integrated with thinking, attitude and behavior. Nevertheless, in some occasions affect is considered to be absolutely independent and come before any perceptual or cognitive activities that are generally believed to be the starting point and the base of any affect (Zajonc, 1980). For years researchers have been arguing whether specifically facial expressions of emotions are innate and therefore universal or culturally bounded where culture determines not only the importance of different emotions but the level of display, intensity, ability to recognize and the behavioral consequences (de Mooij, 2011). On the other hand, the groundbreaking research of Ekman et al. (1987) using the six basic emotions (happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, anger and disgust) has proven some important cross-cultural similarities when emotions are concerned. They found that regardless of their culture, people were able to agree on the kind of emotions they were exposed when limited to only one choice. Furthermore, there was a cross-cultural agreement on the most intensive emotion shown when given the choice between seven emotions as well as on the first and the second strongest emotions. Finally, Ekman et al. (1987) found that culturally different people are able to equally judge the strength of the exuded emotion. All these findings allowed Ekman and his colleagues to claim the existence of universality of emotions regardless of the culture. 17

18 As a result of these universalities and the importance of emotions in people s lives, international advertisers have pointed out the greater effectiveness of emotional or feel in comparison to think advertisements (de Mooij, 2011). A clear distinction has been made between rational and emotional advertisements. Rational mainly focus on communicating the features and the benefits of the product whereas everything else that is not rational is classified as emotional advertisements. These distinctions also connect with the direct versus indirect approach, low context versus high context or verbal versus visually oriented advertisements. For instance, advertising in Asia is considered to be more visual and indirect and therefore emotional advertisements are said to be more appropriate and influential. On the contrary, American advertisements are more verbally and directly communicated which suggests for a more rational approach (de Mooij, 2011). However, the question remains whether these distinctions suggest for an only rational versus only emotional approach of advertising? If emotions are universal can advertisers design universal communication worldwide based on the so-called feel approach? Furthermore, based on Mueller s (1991) findings regarding the less rational cues usage in standardized messages, can it be that the emotional cues are stronger and more influential? Emotional Continuum Before an answer to the above question can be provided a more general division of emotions should be discussed. Emotions are considered to be extremely subjective which makes them difficult to measure. As a result of the numerous evidences about their importance in human behavior and decision-making, significant progress has been made (Poels & Dewitt, 2006). As a consequence of these views, emotions have been found to dominate cognition and need to be considered as the most crucial factor in the advertising process (Poels & Dewitt, 2006). With the purpose of measuring emotions, a clear distinction should be made between two types of emotions operating on a continuum, depending on the cognitive activities required before it is composed. The first type of emotions are categorized as spontaneous and those which the individual has considerably less control over. This type of emotions is called type 1 or lower-order emotions (Poels & Dewitt, 2006). There are two main emotions that have been identified as such, specifically, arousal and pleasure. The main reason why these emotions are important to be measured is because when they are successfully stimulated as a result of an advertisement, this will result in an increase of attention. Subsequently, more attention will lead to focus and interest in discovering more about the brand s benefits and increase the possibility of accepting the message (Poels & Dewitt, 2006). The other more complex type of emotions is the one which requires more cognitive activities and are labeled as type 2 or higher-order emotions (Poels & Dewitt, 2006). This type differs from type 1 emotions mainly because they are required to be identified and categorized as particular 18

19 emotions, whereas emotions from the first type are not necessarily labeled. Nonetheless, emotions cannot be divided into two extremes, which is why in the center of the emotional continuum the authors place the basic emotions. The main reason for this is the fact that basic emotions can either be evoked spontaneously or after certain amount of cognitive processing. Lower-order emotions: Pleasure and Arousal Basic emotions: Happiness, fear, anger etc. Higher-order emotions: Complex emotions Automatic Processing Cognitive Processing Figure 1. The Emotional Continuum was adapted from Poels and Dewitt (2006) Emotions in advertising and the attitude towards the advertisement Numerous models on advertising claim that persuasion is dependent on the ability of the communication message to modify consumers beliefs (Yoo & MacInnis, 2005). Nevertheless, this cannot be considered as the only influencer on the brand attitude, since when low involvement products are concerned the attitude towards the advertisements is believed to play an even more essential role. According to Yoo and MacInnis (2005) when the advertisement has an emotional format, it is most likely that an exposure to it will result in an emotional response by the consumer. Feelings that are provoked as a result of an emotional advertising can and will have an impact on the attitude towards the advertising in two major ways. First of all, the direct impact is related to the affective transfer mechanism (Yoo & MacInnis, 2005), which suggests that there will be a congruity between the current affect state of the individual and the affect message of the advertisement. The second and more significant for the purposes of this research is the fact that the effect of feelings on the attitude towards the advertisements is believed to be mediated by the thoughts about the credibility of the advertisements. Emotional advertising draws the consumer into the advertisement and provides him with the chance to experience vicariously the experiences of the actor (Yoo & MacInnis, 2005). As a result of the opportunity to relate to the message the chance of the consumers considering the advertisement as more convincing drastically increases. Consequently, advertisements that are more convincing are also considered to be more liked, which is certainly the aim of the advertisers. 19

20 Previous research has found that there is a strong relationship between attitude towards the advertisement and attitude towards the brand. This allows for the assumption that the degree of positive attitude towards the brand will be greatly influenced by the positive thoughts about the advertisement. Additionally, when an emotional advertisement succeeds in establishing a strong relationship with the viewer and generates positive thoughts about its credibility and meaningfulness, the consumer feels as the particular brand is meant for them regardless of the attribute-oriented beliefs (Yoo & MacInnis, 2005). It is crucial to note that if an advertisement is regarded with high relevance and meaning for the consumer, this results in the formation of stronger beliefs that the product will indeed deliver as promised. In their researches Edell and Burke (1987) and Burke and Edell (1989) investigated the role of feelings in advertisings by focusing on unknown products (Burke & Edell, 1989). They found out that feelings are elicited by advertisements. Furthermore, their most important finding which has a significant importance for the current research was that emotions contribute exclusively to the attitude towards the advertisement, the beliefs about the brand s attribute and finally the general attitude towards the brand. Similarly, using the cognitive response approach, Batra and Ray (1986) have provided empirical evidences suggesting a chain-like correlation between affective acceptance response, attitude towards the advertisement, attitude towards the brand and purchasing intention. Their study confirms the claim of Edell and Burke (1987) about the emotions that can be extracted by an advertisement which consequently have an influence on its effectiveness Emotions, brand equity, memory Brand equity can be defined as the added value with which a given brand endows a product (Farguhar, 1989). According to Aaker (1991) brand equity can be considered as the most essential asset, which any brand can possess. Advertising is said to influence brand equity in two major ways. First of all, as mentioned previously advertising can influence brand attitude that is considered to be an important element of brand equity. Most importantly, advertising can influence brand equity by influencing the consumer s memory structure for a brand (Aaker & Biel, 1993). As far as emotions are concerned, it has been found that emotions reinforce the memory trace for an advertisement, which makes the retrieval of the brand s name considerably easier (Page, Thorson & Heiden, 1990). However, what had not been investigated is whether the feelings induced by the advertisement are also stored in the memory trace for the brand (Edell & Moore, 1993). Edell and Moore (1993) examined specifically (a) whether ad-induced feelings are stored in the memory, (b) whether those feelings have a different effect when they are retrieved from memory three days after the initial exposure to the ad (Edell & Moore, 1993). They aimed to illustrate the link between feelings and brand equity by proving that feelings can be stored in the memory, can be retrieved and certainly have an effect once retrieved. Bearing these findings in 20

21 mind and the claims that attitude towards the advertisement and the brand are the same regardless of the time of measurement: immediately after the exposure or after certain period of time (3 days), the proposed study will aim to investigate whether advertising which exudes emotions are remembered better than those which do not. The above-discussed studies are considered to explain the doubt posited by Rossiter and Bellman (2012) whether advertising can provoke emotional attachment to a product or whether this is entirely the result of positive experiences after using it. If emotional advertisements are able to influence the consumer s attitude towards the advertisement, the perception about the relevance, the meaningfulness and the delivery capabilities of a product, the brand attitude and the purchasing intention, there is no reason to believe that designing emotional advertisements cannot influence the emotional attachment to a product even when it is already familiar. In contrary, it will be expected that specifically after having used the product and having experienced it positively, an emotional advertisement will make the connection between the product and the consumer even stronger. 2.7 Conclusion In the theoretical framework various literature was discussed concerning the standardization or adaptation of advertising messages depending on the culture the companies operate in. The section began with some general definitions of culture where a number of well-known and largely applied models for categorization of cultures were paid attention. However, what would be the focus of the proposed study is exactly the non-specialized or the standardized advertising messages. Considerable attention was devoted to discuss what it means for companies to standardize, what the benefits are as well as the concerns, which this strategy raises. The reviewed literature was afterwards focused on advertising, its main goals, functions and essential contributions when it comes to fundamental concepts such as brand identity, loyalty and love. Having defined and discussed the two major types of advertising, namely emotional and rational, the focus narrowed down to emotional. Because of the complexity and the increasing importance of emotions, they were carefully defined and most importantly examined in the context of advertising. How emotions are utilized and how they increase the effectiveness of the advertisement and consequently how they benefit the brand are all topics that would be of an essence for this study and were therefore discussed and described thoroughly. From the reviewed literature, it became clear that researchers discuss standardized and specialized advertising messages separately from the two types of advertising, emotional and rational. The purpose and the main focus of the study would be, first of all on standardized advertising messages that are preferred over culturally adapted messages. Second of all, by taking into account the two 21

22 types of advertising, the researcher would aim to prove that not only are standardized messages more effective than adapted but the key for success would be emotional advertising. The figure below illustrates the transition from and the connection to the discussed literature. Adapted advertising messages Standardized advertising messages Emotional advertising messages Rational advertising messages Adapted emotional advertising messages Standardized emotional advertising messages Standardized rational advertising messages Adapted rational advertising messages High and low involvement products Figure 2. Literature and research question formulation 22

23 Chapter 3. Hypotheses After having discussed literature concerning both the standardization and adaptation of messages, as well as emotional and rational advertising, a number of hypotheses could be formulated. Each of them addresses a different aspect through which the effectiveness of advertisements can be evaluated. To make sure that the each of the dependent variables and the corresponding hypotheses are examined, in the questionnaire discussed in the next section there will be separate questions focusing on each one of them. For clarity, the hypotheses are divided into two categories; one which evaluates the individual to message relationship and the second individual to brand. This separation allows establishing the logical and natural process through which customers go through when exposed to advertisements. First, they form an opinion about the advertisements and through this they evaluate the brand and form their attitudes towards the brand. Additionally, a conceptual model is proposed (Figure 3. Conceptual model). Individual to messages H1: Standardized advertisement will stimulate stronger feelings compared to adapted advertisement. H1a: Standardized emotional advertisements will stimulate stronger feelings compared to adapted emotional advertisements. H1b: Standardized emotional advertisements will stimulate stronger feelings compared to adapted emotional advertisements for both high involvement and low involvement products. H2: Standardized advertising will stimulate a higher involvement in viewers, compared to adapted. H2a: Standardized emotional advertising will stimulate a higher involvement in viewers, compared to adapted emotional. H2b: Standardized emotional advertising will stimulate higher involvement in viewers compared to adapted emotional for both high involvement and low involvement products. H3: Standardized advertising will result in a more positive attitude towards the advertisement than adapted advertising. H3a: Standardized emotional advertising will result in a more positive attitude towards the advertisement than adapted emotional. H3b: Standardized emotional advertising will result in a more positive attitude towards the advertisement than adapted emotional for both high involvement and low involvement products. 23

24 Individual to brand H4: Companies that design standardized messages will be able to establish stronger brand identity than adapted messages. H4a: Companies that design standardized emotional messages will be able to establish stronger brand identity than those which design adapted emotional. H4b: Companies that design standardized emotional messages will be able to establish stronger brand identity than those which design adapted emotional for both high involvement and low involvement products. H1: Feelings Standardized emotional messages H3: Attitude towards the advertisement Standardized rational messages Adapted emotional messages H2: Involvement Adapted rational messages Figure 3. Conceptual model 24

25 Chapter 4. Methodology This section aims to provide information about how the researcher will test the designed hypotheses, the type and design of the research, the measurements applied, and pre-testing activities performed in order to increase the validity and reliability of the research. 4.1 Type of research As a result of the quantitative nature of the proposed study, the most appropriate tool for collecting the necessary data is considered to be the structured questionnaire. According to Creswell (2003), when a researcher desires to collect a large amount of responses, in a limited amount of time, the best option is specifically structured survey. Two methods have been identified for measuring emotions: self report measures and autonomic measures. Even though, these two methods are fundamentally different, advertisers have used them both to evaluate the emotions as a result of advertising stimuli. However, for the purposes of this research only the self-report measures will be discussed and applied. The main focus of selfreport measure is evaluating the introspective reflections about the emotions felt with respect to an advertising stimulus (Poels & Dewitte, 2006). Furthermore this method is the most repeatedly used for measuring consumer behavior (Sørensen, 2008). The scales of emotions can be measured in two ways, verbally or visually. The verbal self reported emotions usually require the participants to report in their own words or choose from emotional very often Likert scales. The most important advantages of this method are its simplicity, possibility to report specific and discrete emotions and its applicability in questionnaires (Sørensen, 2008). Bearing these advantages in mind, for the proposed study, verbal method of measuring not only emotions but also the other dependent variables will be applied by using Likert scales. 4.2 Measurement scales Before discussing a number of relevant for the proposed study measurement scales, it will be interesting to clarify some general concepts concerning consumer s comprehension of advertisements, their effects as well as methods allowing for the measurements of the dependent variables Motivation and Knowledge The two main effects of marketing planning have been identified as knowledge and motivation (Collins, 1998). Knowledge has been defined as a consumer s meanings or beliefs about products, brands, services etc. that are stored in the memory, combined with the ability to recognize and recall this information from the memory (Collins, 1998). The other effect is motivation, which on 25

26 the other hand is defined as the positive or negative goals, desires and forces that drive the individual towards or away from certain actions (Collins, 1998). Additionally, motivation is also concerned with the needs and wants of the individual and determines the behavior of the consumer. Taking into consideration the importance of these effects a number of scales concerning them will be provided Knowledge: Attitude towards the advertisement scale Lacsniak and Muehling (1993) scale concerning the attitude towards the advertisements measures the perceived relevance of the message (Collins, 1998). This scale consist of 10 items: (1) might be important to me, (2) might be meaningful to me, (3) might be for me, (4) might be worth remembering, (5) might be of value to me, (6) might be relevant to my needs, (7) might be useful to me, (8) might be worth paying attention to, (9) might be interesting to me and (10) might give me new ideas. This scale utilizes a 7-point rating where 1 indicates strong agreement and 7 strong disagreement Knowledge: Intrinsic Involvement with the advertisement scale The intrinsic involvement scale measures the involvement of the consumer with the particular advertisement. The main rational behind this scale is that it attracts consumer s attention regarding the relevance of the information in regards to their needs. This scale consists of 4 items rated on a 7-point Likert scale: importance/unimportance, relevance/irrelevance, meaningfulness/meaninglessness and needed/not needed (Lord & Burnkrant, 1993) Knowledge: Feelings towards the advertisement scale The feelings towards the advertisement scale developed by Edell and Burke (Collins, 1998) is composed by both positive and negative feelings towards the advertisement. Edell and Burke (1987) have developed three categories of feelings that are believed to have two main influences, namely attitude towards the advertisement and attitude towards the brand. In order to evaluate the advertisements participants are asked: We would like you to tell us how the ad you just saw made you feel. We are interested in your reactions to the ad, not how you would describe it? (Edell & Burke, 1987). The scale uses 5-point Likert scale measurement varying from 5 (very strongly) to 1 (not at all). The table below (Table 1. Feelings scale) includes the different dimensions and the respective feelings. 26

27 Table 1 Feelings scale adapted from Edell and Burke (1987) Upbeat (UF) Negative (NF) Warm (WF) Active Angry Affectionate Adventurous Annoyed Calm Alive Bad Concerned Amused Bored Contemplative Attentive Critical Emotional Attractive Defiant Hopeful Carefree Depressed Kind Cheerful Disgusted Moved Confident Disinterested Peaceful Creative Dubious Pensive Delighted Dull Sentimental Elated Fed-up Touched Energetic Insulted Warm-hearted Enthusiastic Irritated Excited Lonely Exhilarated Offended Good Regretful Happy Sad Humorous Skeptical Independent Suspicious Industrious Inspired Interested Joyful Light-hearted Lively Playful Pleased Proud Satisfied Stimulated Strong Measuring involvement Zaichkowsky (1985) has developed the Personal Involvement Inventory scale (PII), which aims to measure personal involvement with a product. As a result of his findings Zaichkowsky (1985) also discovered that the level of involvement was positively related to a number of other constructs such as brand preferences, perceived differences between brands, willingness for further information seeking and lastly product attributes comparison amongst various brands. The scale is illustrated below and as the author suggests, the instructions will be formulated with reference to advertisements rather than products and will be presented as follow: 27

28 Table 2 Degree of involvement adapted from Zaichkowsky (1985) Low involvement High involvement important unimportant* of no concern to me of concern irrelevant relevant means a lot to me means nothing to me* useless useful valuable worthless* trivial fundamental beneficial not beneficial* matters to me doesn't matter* uninterested interested significant insignificant* vital superfluous* boring interesting unexciting exciting appealing unappealing* mundane fascinating essential nonessential* undesirable desirable wanted unwanted* needed not needed * Items are reversed coded Brand identity and level of connection scale In order to measure the brand identity and the level of connection with it, a scale, which was applied, by Rossiter and Bellman (2012) in their research about emotional branding will be adopted in the proposed study. There will be four factors that will be investigated and compared in relation to the eight sets of independent variables: standardized emotional high and low; standardized rational high and low; adapted emotional high and low and adapted rational high and low messages. These factors and the respective questions have been directly extracted from the research of Rossiter and Bellman (2012) and include: Trust: I trust this brand Bonding: I regard it as my brand Companionship: It is like a companion to me Love: I would say I feel deep affection, like love, for this brand and would be really upset if I could not have it? 4.3 Design The design chosen for this study is a two by two by two (2x2x2) between-subject experimental design. Participants, willing to take part of the survey will be randomly assigned to one of the eight groups to evaluate the different types of advertisements (standardized emotional/high involvement, 28

29 standardized emotional/low involvement, standardized rational/high involvement, standardized rational/low involvement, adapted emotional/low involvement, adapted emotional/high involvement, adapted rational/low involvement, adapted rational/high involvement). Below a table (Table 3. Design of the proposed study), illustrating the design is presented. Table 3 Design of the proposed study Emotional messages Rational messages Standardized messages Low/High involvement Low/High involvement Adapted messages Low/High involvement Low/High involvement Materials Visual advertising messages collected from various companies will be utilized for this research. Initially, the researcher had collected 32 visual materials from the standardized condition and 29 from the culturally adapted condition. The chosen images were selected from companies listed on Forbes list of the most valuable brands for After the focus group session the amount was narrowed down to 16 visual materials in total. The final selection of images can be found in Appendix A (Appendix A. Materials) of this report. For each of the eight conditions the respective participants were shown an advertisement and were asked to evaluate it by answering the questions discussed in the next section. The two visuals within each condition also differed, namely one product corresponded to high involvement and the other one to low involvement category. Eight of the sixteen images were selected in order to test the memorability of the advertisement Focus group A focus group session with eight international master students was organized in order to select the necessary amount of visuals and evaluate their quality in relation to the two independent variables (low/high involvement, emotional/rational). The heterogeneity in the nationalities of the participants namely Brazilian, Bulgarian, Greek, Hungarians, Italian, Indonesian and Dutch enabled the researcher to have the materials selected and evaluated from very different cultural perspectives. As suggested by Morgan (1988), the session began with fifteen minutes general conversation in order to comfort and put the participants at ease. The session then officially started with clearly defining the two types of products, namely high and low involvement. Afterwards, the participants were shown the chosen advertisements and were asked to classify them accordingly. The evaluation continued with the second independent variable in this study, namely emotional and rational messages. In order to make sure that the audience identifies the selected emotional and rational advertisements as such, the participants were simply asked whether or not they see any 29

30 emotional connotations in the images. The same procedure was repeated for the adapted advertising messages. Additionally, the scale concerning the feelings towards the advertisement was shown and the participants were asked to choose the ones, which they thought, were the most important for the selected advertisements. In this way the long list of emotions was reduced and made more relevant for the materials at hand which allowed for the collection of more specific and informative data later on. By conducting this session, the researcher was certain that the pre selection of the images was of the necessary quality in relation to the eight groups of advertisements, and the lengthy list was narrowed down and made more relevant for the particular study Pre-test With the purposes of distributing a clear and easy to understand and fill in questionnaire, the researcher discussed the questions and their formulations with three young professionals. This small discussion aimed to identify any unclear or complex items in the questionnaire, which might cause confusions, and/or misunderstandings in the participants. The recommendations and opinions of the participants were taken into consideration and the questionnaire was revised accordingly. 4.4 Sampling and procedure The questionnaire was created by using the online service ThesisTools.com because of the numerous customization possibilities such as multiple questionnaires and random distribution, all crucial for the purposes of this study. In order to distribute the questionnaire and collect as many participants as possible social media and snowball method were used. The questionnaire began with a short explanation of the purpose of the study, which also aimed to prime the participants and encourage them to honestly and thoughtfully answer each and every one of the questions. Furthermore, with the purpose of engaging the participants and making them feel that their opinions and the time they take to fill in this questionnaire matter and are appreciated the questionnaire was designed in the form, which resembled more an interview rather than simply questions and answers. This would mean that the questions were formulated in a more personal and conversation like way such as: I am curious to know, can you tell me, and etc. In order to orientate the participants about the length of the questionnaire, the amount of questions were mentioned in the beginning. This is believed to decrease the level of irritations and urge to finish the questions as fast as possible without careful consideration of the answers. By designing the survey in such a way, the researcher hoped to increase the quality of the data and consequently the final outcomes of the research. The complete questionnaire can be found in Appendix B (Appendix B. Questionnaire). 30

31 4.5 Construct measurement With the intention of increasing the validity and the accuracy of the questionnaire, the dependent variables were measured by using existing constructs measurements from the literature discussed in the previous sections. The questionnaire consisted of ten questions, six of which targeted a specific element from the hypotheses and only four of them aimed to find some demographic information about the participants such as nationality, age and gender and whether or not they were familiar with the product at hand. By collecting information about the nationality, the researcher was able to evaluate the cultural diversity in the sample. Additionally, the familiarity of the product helped to control for the time factor of emotions. Age and gender were simply collected so that a more complete profile of the respondents could be made. The separate hypotheses, the measurement scales, and their incorporation in the questionnaire are discussed next Hypothesis 1: Feelings towards the advertisements The first hypothesis was a part of question 8, which used Edell and Burke s measurement scale about (1987) feelings towards the advertisement. For this scale important modifications were made in order to make it relevant and increase the focus on the main research question. For this reason, the items concerning negative feelings were entirely removed since the proposed study focuses on positive emotions and evaluation rather than negative. The study aims to find ways in which companies can improve the effectiveness of their communications and by using material exuding negative feelings, there will be no real positive evaluation rather judgment. Furthermore, words like industrious and pensive were removed as well since they add little or no value to the question. In order to have informative data, instead of showing the list of words to the participants, the focus group session held in advance helped to select the most appropriate words for the used material. Afterwards, to measure the strength of the emotions, as Edell and Burke (18987) suggest a 5-point Likert scale was utilized where 5 indicates very strong feelings and 1 not at all Hypothesis 2: Involvement In order to assess which of the eight conditions would yield the highest involvement, two scales were applied in question 9. The involvement scale of Zaichkowsky (1985) and the intrinsic involvement scale of Lord and Burnkrant (1993) were however combined since the later consisted of the exact same items, which are also part of the former. With the intention not to be repetitive and assess the same element multiple times these two scales were combined Hypothesis 3: Attitude towards the advertisement The 10-item scale of Lacsniak and Muehling (1993) was also included in the questionnaire under question number 7. Similarly to the previous question, this scale was also used as the researchers have intended. The only difference was that instead of 7-point Likert scale, in the proposed study 31

32 only yes/no answers were required. This made the questionnaire more concise and less repetitive in terms of design, and consequently more engaging for the participants Hypothesis 4: Brand identity and connection Question number 6 aimed to assess how people evaluate the brand, its identity and their overall connection with it as a result of the advertisement. The scale designed by Rossiter and Bellman (2012) was taken in its original form. However, since this scale is very essential for the study instead of asking the participants to pick only one of the components, as the authors did, they were required to evaluate the advertisements on each one of them, based on a 5-point Likert scale. It is also believed that one of the items might cause confusions and might not be as accessible to nonnative English speakers so instead of companion the researcher used a more day-to-day synonym- buddy. This was a more commonly used term and was more understandable and relatable for various groups of people, regardless of their linguistic capabilities of the English language Additional testing. Memorability An additional element that was not included as a hypotheses but the researcher still wanted to test was which type of advertising messages were more memorable. For this, the questionnaire began with an advertisement and the participants were asked to take a moment and look at it. Afterwards, the other questions proceeded. What and how much they remembered, were tested at the end of the questionnaire by utilizing the scale of Edell and Moore (1993). In their research Edell and Moore (1993) ask the participants to indicate which of the six claims were actually made in the advertisement by asking: Some of the claims were mentioned in the ad, some of them were not. How certain are you that each of the claims was made in the ad you saw?. The participants were required to specify how certain they are that the given claims were indeed made with a 7-point Likert scale. To be consistent with the other scales, for the purposes of this study the options were reduced to five (1-very certain the ad did not mention the claim, 2-certain the ad did not mention the claim, 3-uncertain, 4-certain the ad mention the claim, 5-very certain the ad mention the claim) as well the amount of claims were reduced from six to four in order to shorten the time required for filling in. As Alvarez and Cavanagh (2004) note the capacity of our visual short-term memory is limited depending on the information load as well as the amount of objects detected. Finally, in order to make sure that people did not remember the products because they were familiar with the brand, if the logo was visible it was removed. 32

33 Chapter 5. Data This chapter aims to provide the first results from the empirical study. The section will begin with general information about the distribution process, data cleaning, and respondents profile followed by detailed presentation of the results. 5.1 Questionnaire. Distribution and duration The questionnaire was published online on 8 th May 2014 and the collection of data was completed on 14 th June During this period of thirty-seven days, the researcher was extensively using social media (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) as well as sending out direct messages to potential respondents in order to collect in total of 434 respondents. In the table below, the distribution amongst the eight morphs is presented. Table 4 Distribution of the respondents Standardized messages Adapted messages Emotional messages 56 Low involvement 51 High involvement 55 Low involvement 55 High involvement Rational messages 53 Low involvement 52 High involvement 60 Low involvement 52 High involvement 5.2 Data cleaning As mentioned previously, in total of 434 participants took part in the survey. However, since not all respondents completed the entire questionnaire those who had only replied on the first one or two questions were removed from the sample. This process resulted in the reduction of the sample to 408 respondents, which means that only 26 participants (5.9%) were removed. The final distribution amongst the eight groups is illustrated below. Table 5 Distribution of the respondents after the cleaning Standardized messages Adapted messages Emotional messages 54 Low involvement 48 High involvement 54 Low involvement 53 High involvement Rational messages 47 Low involvement 48 High involvement 55 Low involvement 49 High involvement 33

34 5.3 Participants profile The first analyses provide demographic information about the respondents such as age, gender and nationality. Among the 408 participants, 243 were female (59.6%) and 165 were male (40%). The age distribution of the sample was mainly between (46.8%) followed by (36.3%). As far as variety in nationality is concern, in total there were participants with 56 different nationalities. The majority of the sample was from the Netherlands (32.1%), Bulgaria (15.7), Italy (8.1%), Indonesia (6.4%) and Greece (6.4%). More details on the distribution can be found in Appendix C (Appendix C. Nationality). Table 6 Demographics Description Frequency Percentage (%) Gender Female Male Age < >= Furthermore, one of the questions aimed to discover whether or not participants were familiar with the product they have been shown depending on the group they have been randomly assigned to. At the end, the results showed that 166 respondents (40.8%) were familiar with the product they have been assigned to and 241 respondents (59.2%) were not. Table.7 Familiarity with the product Familiarity with the product Frequency Percentage (%) Yes No Validity and reliability of constructs With the intention to analyze the collected data, IBM SPSS Statistics 22 for Mac and Windows were utilized. Since there were numerous items composing the dependent variables, reliability tests were first performed in order to evaluate the internal consistency. Afterwards, four Factorial Univariate analyses of variance were performed in order to test the hypotheses. For the purposes of this research, before performing further analyses the internal consistency of all items composing the five different dependent variables was assessed by using the Cronbach s alpha 34

35 as an indicator. This was done in order to make sure that the included items can reliably measure the intended distinctive variables also allowing to measure whether the items will demonstrate the same results if the research was to be replicated. According to Kline (2000), alpha should be α>.07 in order for the items included to have internal consistency. Additionally, the sample size of the conducted study is also reliable bearing in mind that 100 respondents are considered as insufficient and 1000 as outstanding (Comrey & Lee, 1992). 5.5 Reliability analysis Feelings towards the advertisement The variable feelings towards the advertisement consisted of twenty-one items (Edell & Burke, 1987) (Appendix B. Questionnaire. Question 8). The Reliability test (Appendix D1. Reliability tests) performed on these items showed extremely high internal consistency (α=.946) that allowed the research to use these items as an indicator of feelings elicited by advertisements. The grand mean of this variable was also calculated to be M= 2.65 and was utilized as a dependent variable for the Univariate ANOVA tests. The results are discussed in the next section Involvement As a result of some overlapping and the variable involvement incorporated two scales: the first one was taken from Lord and Burnkrant (1993) and the second one from Zaichkowsky (1985). These two scales had in total twenty items, eleven of which had to be reversed because they were negatively defined (Appendix B. Questionnaire. Question 9). The Reliability test (Appendix D2. Reliability tests) performed on these items illustrated exceptionally high internal consistency (α=. 938), allowing the researcher to proceed with further analyses. The mean value of these items was calculated to be M=3.46 and was considered as a dependent variable for the Univariate ANOVA tests. The results are discussed in the next section Attitude towards the advertisement The variable attitude towards the advertisement consisted of ten items (Appendix B. Questionnaire. Question 7): might be important to me, might be meaningful to me, might be for me, might be worth remembering, might be of value to me, might be relevant to my needs, might be useful to me, might be worth paying attention to, might be interesting to me and might inspire me (Lacsniak & Muehling, 1993). The Reliability test (Appendix D3. Reliability tests) indicated high internal consistency of these items (α=. 865), which again allowed the researcher to continue with further analyses. The mean value of these items was calculated and found to be M=1.62 and was utilized as a dependent variable for the Univariate ANOVA tests. The results are discussed in the next section. 35

36 5.5.4 Brand Identity The variable brand identity consisted of four items (Appendix B. Questionnaire. Question 6), namely trust, my brand, my buddy, and love and affection (Rossiter & Bellman, 2012), which were evaluated by the participants on a 5-point Likert scale. The Reliability test (Appendix D4. Reliability tests) showed high internal consistency (α=. 824) of these items, which allowed the researcher to proceed with further analyses. The mean value of these items was calculated to be M=2.41, and was utilized as a dependent variable for the Univariate ANOVA tests. The results are discussed in the next section. 36

37 Chapter 6. Results This chapter will provide the main results of the current study by discussing each one of the hypotheses separately. First, the type of analyses is introduced and its choice is justified with the help of literature. 6.1 Univariate Factorial Analysis of Variance The univariate Factorial ANOVA was chosen as the most appropriate analysis for this study since there were three sets of independent variables or fixed factors (standardized/adapted, emotional/rational, low/high involvement) and different participants took part in each condition (Field, 2009). Furthermore, ANOVA is a statistical test used to compare means between groups of people and most importantly it allows evaluating the main effect and interaction effect of the particular independent variables on the dependent variables (Field, 2009). Since the groups were not equal, the main effect will be reported with Partial Eta Squared (η 2 p), rather than Omega (ω 2 ) (Field, 2009). The results described next are only focused on testing the designed hypotheses. Some of the findings were not within their scope but were however briefly discussed in a separate section. The reason for this is because they were statistically significant and were still providing a more complete and elaborate explanation of the main results Hypothesis 1. Feelings towards the advertisement The first Factorial ANOVA investigated whether there are interactions and main effects between the independent variables and feelings, which is treated as dependent variable. The table below illustrates the exact interactions that were considered in testing the first hypothesis and its various parts. Table 8 Results. Feelings towards the advertisement df F Sig. η 2 p Standardized /Adapted Standardized Emotional * Adapted Emotional Standardized Emotional Low/High*Adapted Emotional Low/High Total 407 As far as the dependent variable, feelings is concerned, there was a highly significant main effect of whether participants were exposed to standardized or adapted advertisements (F(1,407)= , 37

38 p<.001, η 2 p=.033). This demonstrates that people were affected differently by standardized and adapted messages as far as feelings were concerned. More specifically, people who saw standardized advertisements (M= 2.79, SE=.075) showed stronger feelings than those who saw adapted advertisements (M= 2.51, SE=.075). On the other hand, there was a marginally significant interaction between standardized emotional and adapted emotional advertising messages (F(1,407)= 2.935, p=.087, η 2 p=.007) regardless of the kind of product. This suggests that there was a slight difference between the strength of the feelings when standardized emotional and adapted emotional messages were considered. More specifically, people who saw standardized emotional messages (M= 2.87, SE=.075) demonstrated stronger feelings than those who saw adapted emotional (M=2.72, SE=.073). When the interaction between the three independent variables is examined, there was no significant results (F(1,407)=1.822, p=.178, η 2 p=.005). This suggests that whether participants were exposed to standardized emotional low (M= 2.64, SE=.103), standardized emotional high (M= 3.10, SE=.109), adapted emotional low (M= 2.83, SE=.103), or adapted emotional high (M= 2.61, SE=.104) stimuli, this did not affect the strength of their feelings towards the advertisement. These results allow the researcher to support the first main hypothesis H1, marginally support the hypothesis H1a, and reject H1b Additional results What was interesting to notice is that there was a significant interaction between standardized and adapted messages and the type of product, whether low or high involvement (F(1, 408)= , p=.001, η 2 p=.026). More specifically, standardized advertising messages for low involvement products provoked stronger feelings (M= 2.70, SE=.075) than adapted messages for low involvement products (M= 2.67, SE=.072). Additionally, standardized messages for high involvement products were also found to stimulate stronger feelings (M= 2.88, SE=.077) than adapted messages for high involvement products (M= 2.35, SE=.075). However, when emotional and rational were compared, it appeared that emotional advertising messages stimulate stronger feelings for high involvement products (M= 2.86, SE=.075) and rational for low involvement (M= 2.64, SE=.075) Hypothesis 2. Involvement The second Factorial ANOVA aimed to discover whether there are any interactions and main effects between the independent variables and involvement, which is treated as dependent variable. The table below illustrates the exact interactions that were considered in testing the second hypothesis and its various parts. 38

39 Table 9 Results. Involvement df F Sig. η 2 p Standardized /Adapted Standardized Emotional * Adapted Emotional Standardized Emotional Low/High*Adapted Emotional Low/High Total 408 The analyses illustrate that there was no significant main effect of the type of advertising message, whether standardized or adapted on how involved with the brand the participants were (F(1,408)= 1.967, p=.162, η 2 p=.005). This non-significant main effect suggests that people who were exposed to the standardized advertisement (M=3.53, SE=.074) did not feel more involved in comparison to those exposed to the adapted advertisement (M= 3.39, SE=.072). Furthermore, there was no significant interaction between standardized emotional and adapted emotional advertisements when involvement was considered (F(1,408)=.784, p=.784, η 2 p=.000). More specifically, people who saw the standardized emotional (M= 3.69, SE=.103) did not feel less involved than those who saw the adapted emotional advertisement (M= 4.52, SE=.102). Finally, there was also no significant interaction between the three independent variables and the involvement felt (F(2, 407)= 2.286, p=.103, η 2 p=.011). This finding suggests that people who saw standardized emotional low involvement (M=3.32, SE=.142), standardized emotional high involvement (M= 4.06, SE=.150), adapted emotional low involvement (M= 3.34, SE=.142) and adapted emotional high involvement (M= 3.69, SE=.143) did not demonstrate higher or lower involvement. These insignificant main effects and interactions lead to the rejection of the main hypothesis H2 and subsequently hypotheses H2a and H2b Additional results As far as involvement is concerned, it was interesting to observe that there was also a highly significant interaction between emotional and rational advertising messages and the type of product, whether low or high involvement (F(1,408)= , p<.001, η 2 p=.042). These findings also confirmed that emotional advertisements are considered more effect for high involvement products (M= 3.88, SE=.104) and rational for low involvement (M= 3.48, SE=.103). Additionally, regardless of the type of product there was also a significant main effect of emotional and rational advertising (F(1,408)= 7.546, p=.006, η 2 p=.019), where emotional messages resulted in a higher involvement (M=3.60, SE=.072) than rational (M= 3.32, SE=.074). 39

40 6.1.3 Hypothesis 3. Attitude towards the advertisement The third Factorial ANOVA tested whether there are main effects or interactions between the independent variables and attitude towards the advertisements, which was treated as dependent variable. The table below illustrates the exact interactions that were considered in testing the third hypothesis and its various parts. Table 10 Results. Attitude towards the advertisement df F Sig. η 2 p Standardized /Adapted Standardized Emotional * Adapted Emotional Standardized Emotional Low/High*Adapted Emotional Low/High Total 408 The Factorial analyses demonstrated that there is highly significant main effect of the type of advertising message, whether standardized or adapted, on the attitude of the participants towards the advertisement (F(1, 408)= , p<.001, η 2 p=.032). More specifically, people who saw standardized advertisement (M= 1.56, SE=.020) felt slightly more positive attitude in comparison to those who saw adapted advertisement (M= 1.67, SE=.021), bearing in mind that yes=1, no=2 in the scale. On the other hand, there was no significant interaction between standardized emotional and adapted emotional advertising message (F(1, 407)=.107, p=.744, η 2 p=.000), suggesting that the attitude towards the advertisement did not change depending on the type of advertising message, whether it was standardized emotional (M= 1.50, SE=.029) or adapted emotional (M= 1.60, SE=.029). However, the analyses verified that there was a significant interaction between the three independent variables and the particular dependent variable (F(1, 408)= 6.598, p=.011, η 2 p=.016). This significant interaction suggests that people who saw standardized emotional low involvement (M= 1.65, SE=.040) demonstrated slightly more positive attitude in comparison to those who saw adapted emotional low involvement (M= 1.66, SE=.040). Furthermore, participants who saw standardized emotional high involvement (M= 1.35, SE=.043) also demonstrated more positive attitude when compared to the group that was exposed to the adapted emotional high involvement advertising message (M= 1.53, SE=.041). These findings lead to the support of the main hypothesis H3 and H3b but rejection of H3a. 40

41 Additional results Similarly to involvement, for attitude towards the advertisement there was also a highly significant interaction between emotional and rational advertising messages (F(1,408)= , p<.001, η 2 p=.053). There results showed, higher level of positivity for emotional (M= 1.55, SE=.021) than rational (M=1.69, SE=.021) Hypothesis 4. Brand Identity The last Factorial ANOVA tested whether there are main effects or interactions between the independent variables and the established brand identity that was treated as dependent variable. The table below illustrates the exact interactions that were considered in testing the fourth hypothesis and its various parts. Table 11 Results. Brand Identity df F Sig. η 2 p Standardized /Adapted Standardized Emotional * Adapted Emotional Standardized Emotional Low/High*Adapted Emotional Low/High Total 408 The results showed that there is a significant main effect of the type of advertising message, whether standardized or adapted on the brand identity (F(1,408)= 4.486, p=.035, η 2 p=.011). More specifically, people who saw standardized advertisements considered the brand identity as less strong (M= 2.34, SE=.050) in comparison to those who saw the adapted (M= 2.48, SE=.048). On the other hand, there was no significant interaction between brand identity and the type of advertising message, whether it was standardized emotional or adapted emotional (F(1,408)=.556, p=.456, η 2 p=.001). The insignificant interaction suggests that the evaluation of the brand identity did not demonstrate any change when considering the people who saw the standardized emotional and those who saw the adapted emotional advertising message. Moreover, there was also no significant interaction between the three independent variables and brand identity (F(1, 408)=.896, p=.344, η 2 p=.002). This finding suggests that regardless of the type of message they saw whether standardized emotional low (M= 2.40, SE=.095), standardized emotional high (M= 2.50, SE=.101), adapted emotional low (M= 2.45, SE=.095) or adapted emotional high (M= 2.64, SE=.096), people did not evaluate the brand identity differently. These results lead to the rejection of the main hypothesis H4 as well as hypothesis H4a and H4b. 41

42 Additional results Similarly to feelings towards the advertisement, for brand identity there was also a significant interaction between emotional and rational and the type of product whether low or high involvement (F(1, 408)= 6.235, p=.013, η 2 p=.015) The results also confirmed that emotional advertising messages for high involvement products were evaluated with stronger brand identity (M= 2.57, SE=.070) whereas rational advertising messages were more effective for low involvement products (M=2.43, SE=.070) Additional finding. Memorability Besides the main hypotheses and findings, the researcher also aimed to find out which of the four types of advertising messages was remembered the most. Simply, Crosstabs analyses were performed to get some insights as to which one yield the better results at the end of the questionnaire. The table below illustrates how many people were very certain or certain that the true or false statement was or was not mentioned. To simplify these results only the very certain (VC) answers are mentioned and highlighted in colors. For the first false statement (FS1) 33 of the participants in the adapted/ emotional/ high condition (AEH) were very certain that it was not mentioned, and equally 31 of the participants from both standardized/emotional/low (SEL) and adapted/rational/low (ARL). On the other hand, 10 of the participants in the standardized/rational/low (SRL) condition thought that the false statement was mentioned as well as 9 of the participants from the adapted/emotional/low (AEL) condition. For the second false statement (FS2), 30 of the participants in the adapted/emotional/low (AEL) condition were very certain that the statement was not mentioned, and 16 of the participants from the standardized/rational/low (SRL) were also very certain. On the other hand, 26 of the respondents from the standardized/rational/high (SRH) condition thought that the false statement was mentioned as well as 19 participants from the standardized/emotional/low (SEL) and 18 from the adapted/emotional/high (AEH). As far the first true statement (TS1) is concerned, 26 people from both standardized/emotional/low (SEL) and adapted/emotional/low (AEL) were very certain it was not mentioned. On the other hand, 18 people from both standardized/emotional/high (SEH) and adapted/emotional/high (AEH) thought that the true statement was mentioned. Finally, for the second true statement (TS2), 30 people from adapted/emotional/low (AEL) condition were very certain that it was not mentioned. On the other hand, 43 people from the adapted/rational/low (ARL) condition and 26 from standardized/rational/high (SRH) condition were very certain that the true statement was mentioned. No actual conclusions can be drawn from these results but it seems, as there is a difference between the types of advertisements and how well people remember them. What is interesting to 42

43 notice that there are clear differences between rational and emotional as well as low and high involvement. However, more research is needed in order to evaluate which one of the four types of advertisement and for which product is the most memorable one. Table 12 Frequency table for memorability VC FS1 was not C FS1 was not C FS1 was VC FS1 was VC FS2 was not C FS2 was not C FS2 was VC FS2 was VC TS1 was not C TS1 was not C TS1 was VC TS1 was VC TS2 was not C TS2 was not C TS2 was VC TS2 was SRL SRH SEL SEH ARL ARH AEL AEH Summary The main purpose of this chapter is to present and provide interpretation to the results from the data acquired for this research. In order to test the consistency of the items and make sure that each one of them explains the underlying distinct variable, four Reliability tests were performed for each of the dependent variables, namely feelings, attitude, involvement and brand identity. Afterwards, the mean values were computed and four new variables were created. Four Univariate Factorial ANOVAs were conducted in order to test the relationship between the three independent variables and the four dependent variables. From the four main research hypotheses and the eight sub-hypotheses, three of them were supported, one was marginally supported and eight were not supported due to the insignificant interactions. A summary of the hypotheses and the final results is provided below. 43

44 Table 12 Summary of the hypotheses and the test results H1: Standardized advertisement will stimulate stronger feelings compared to adapted advertisement. H1a: Standardized emotional advertisements will stimulate stronger feelings compared to adapted emotional advertisements. H1b: Standardized emotional advertisements will stimulate stronger feelings compared to adapted emotional advertisements for both high involvement and low involvement products. H2: Standardized advertising will stimulate a higher involvement in viewers, compared to adapted. H2a: Standardized emotional advertising will stimulate a higher involvement in viewers, compared to adapted emotional. H2b: Standardized emotional advertising will stimulate higher involvement in viewers compared to adapted emotional for both high involvement and low involvement products. H3: Standardized advertising will result in a more positive attitude towards the advertisement than adapted advertising. H3a: Standardized emotional advertising will result in a more positive attitude towards the advertisement than adapted emotional. H3b: Standardized emotional advertising will result in a more positive attitude towards the advertisement than adapted emotional for both high involvement and low involvement products. H4: Companies that design standardized messages will be able to establish stronger brand identity than adapted messages. H4a: Companies that design standardized emotional messages will be able to establish stronger brand identity than those which design adapted emotional. H4b: Companies that design standardized emotional messages will be able to establish stronger brand identity than those which design adapted emotional for both high involvement and low involvement products. Supported Marginally supported Not supported Not supported Not supported Not supported Supported Not supported Supported Not supported Not supported Not supported 44

45 Chapter 7. Discussion This section will provide further discussion and evaluation of the results examined in the previous chapter. For this reason, each of the dependent variables will be discussed individually. It is crucial to notice that this research made complex combinations between various types of advertisements, more specifically standardized and adapted and emotional and rational by also considering the type of product, whether low or high involvement. Therefore, this study is not a replication or a continuation of already existing researches but one that considers various aspects of advertising and aims to find the most effective one on the basis of different criteria. 7.1 Feelings towards the advertisement According to Batra and Ray (1986) and Edell and Burke (1987), feelings are elicited by ads and impact advertising effectiveness. Bearing this in mind, the researcher aimed to find out which types of advertisements will provoke stronger feelings and can be considered as more effective. The results of the current study verified that standardized advertising messages do stimulate stronger feelings when compared to adapted advertising messages. It can be concluded that on the basis of the criterion feelings and its connection to effectiveness, standardized advertising messages are more effective than adapted advertising messages. Furthermore, in accordance to what was expected, standardized emotional messages were also found to be more effective than adapted emotional advertising messages. Contrarily to the expectations of the researcher, when the type of product was considered whether low or high involvement, there was no significant interaction. However, contrarily to Hermeking s (2006) claim that consumer nondurables goods or low involvement products are regarded as highly culture-bounded and therefore difficult to standardize and that consumer durables or high involvement products are considered culture-free which allows for an easy standardization across cultures (Hermeking, 2006) was proven wrong. The results of the current study illustrate that not only for high involvement but also for low involvement products standardized messages stimulated stronger feelings. The only interesting difference observed is that emotional messages seemed more effective for high involvement whereas rational messages for low involvement. This can possibly be explained with the frequency, the emotional attachment and the complexity of purchasing more durable products. 45

46 7.2 Involvement Unlike what was expected, the results showed that there were no significant interactions or main effects of the independent variables over involvement with the product. Bearing in mind the research of Zaichkowsky (1985), where an individual s involvement with regularly purchased or purchased in the past product was examined, the insignificant results can be explained. In the current study, 59% of the participants were not familiar with the product, which therefore makes it considerably difficult to measure their level of involvement. Nevertheless, as many researchers claim and as it was confirmed by the previous criterion (feelings), the effectiveness of emotional over rational advertising was again demonstrated when involvement with the product was concerned. 7.3 Attitude towards the advertisement As expected, standardized emotional advertising messages were found to result in a more positive attitude towards the advertisement. As mentioned before, Yoo and MacInnis (2005) have found that there is a strong relationship between attitude towards the advertisement and attitude towards the brand. This allows for the assumption that the degree of positive attitude towards the brand will be greatly influenced by the positive thoughts about the advertisement, its credibility and meaningfulness. This therefore, suggests that standardized messages can result in a more positive attitude towards the brand, increase credibility and meaningfulness. It was also found that standardized emotional messages for both high and low involvement led to a more positive attitude. This again results in a more positive attitude towards the brand, increased credibility and meaningfulness when compared to adapted emotional messages for either low or high involvement products. 7.4 Brand Identity Contrarily to what was expected, adapted advertising messages resulted in a stronger brand identity evaluation than standardized messages. These findings also do not confirm the claim of Sirisagoul (2008) and Taylor (2005) that standardization leads to the establishment of a consistent, uniform and highly recognizable brand, corporate image and most importantly brand identity. However, as previously confirmed, for brand identity emotional advertisings were also found to be more effective for high involvement and rational advertising for low involvement. This can again be explained with the frequency, the emotional attachment and the complexity of purchasing more durable products. 46

47 Chapter 8. Conclusions 8.1 General conclusions and findings The main purpose of the current study was to compare and evaluate the effectiveness of standardized and adapted advertising messages according to given criteria, namely: feelings towards the advertisement, involvement with the product, attitude towards the advertisement and brand identity. Furthermore, these main types of advertising were combined with two, more specific types, namely emotional and rational with regards to the type of product whether low or high involvement. After having discussed and analyzed various literatures in chapter 2 of this report, the researcher was able to design a new study, which was neither a replication nor a continuation of an already exciting research. Bearing in mind the reviewed literature, a conceptual model was developed where the hypotheses intended to be tested during this research were presented. In this study, the researcher tried to prove that standardized emotional messages would be the most effective advertising by evaluating the effectiveness on the basis of the abovementioned criteria. These were also the expectations when considering the type of products, namely low and high involvement. The main findings suggested that as far as feelings are concerned standardized messages are indeed more effective than adapted advertising messages. The additional results illustrated that this is confirmed even when considering the type of product. Furthermore, it was also interesting to notice that there was a difference between emotional and rational messages and the type of product. Advertisements for low involvement products were found to exude stronger feelings and therefore are more effective with rational messages whereas high involvement with emotional messages. Unfortunately, the expectations of the researcher were not confirmed when involvement and brand identity were investigated. However, for both characteristics, emotional advertising messages were found to stimulate stronger involvement and brand identity than rational messages. What is important to notice is that the previous finding considering emotional and rational advertising and the type of product were once again confirmed. This suggests that, when both involvement and brand identity are observed, emotional advertising was more effective for high involvement products whereas rational advertising for low involvement. An extremely important finding for this research was the evaluation of the attitude towards the advertisement. The reason why this is an essential criterion of the effectiveness was because 47

48 literature has shown that there is a direct, chain-like relationship between attitude towards the advertisements, attitude towards the brand, credibility and meaningfulness. The findings of the study demonstrated that standardized advertising messages resulted in a more positive attitude towards the brand than adapted messages. Furthermore, standardized emotional messages for both high and low involvement products were also found to lead to a more positive attitude towards the advertisement. This crucial confirmation of the researcher s expectation and the relationship between the abovementioned elements, allow the researcher to make an important conclusion that standardized emotional advertising for both high and low involvement leads to positive attitude towards the advertisement, positive attitude towards the brand, increased credibility and meaningfulness. Bearing these important elements for companies in mind, to a great extent, the researcher is allowed to confirm that this specific advertising can be considered as the most effective. Finally, even though not all postulations were verified, on the basis of the strength of feelings, attitude towards the brand and its positive correlations with other crucial aspects, there is enough ground allowing the researcher to conclude that to a great extent, standardized and standardized emotional advertising were found to be more effective than adapted or adapted emotional advertising respectively. Additionally, on the basis of all criteria investigated in this research, emotional advertising was evaluated as more effective than rational advertising. 8.2 Managerial implications The conducted research has essential managerial implications, bearing in mind its relevance and importance for both companies and consumers. Advertising allows companies to communicate, differentiate and establish relationships with their customers. This study aimed to discover how companies could most effectively realize specifically these elements of connection. Throughout this research, culture was seen as a restraint, a filter which could easily be removed and allow companies to communicate without restrictions, while establishing a long lasting and meaningful relationship for both parties. The main findings and observations obtained from the current study aim to contribute to the exiting academic literature and increase the knowledge and interest for this topic and its importance in our daily lives. As a result of the findings, the researcher can provide a vital advice to companies as to how, through their advertising, they can communicate and connect with their customers in the most effective way. Based on the results obtained with this study, to a great extent the advice would be to design standardized messages rather than adapting them according to the culture they operate in. 48

49 In addition to the standardization strategy, their messages should contain and exude emotions in order to increase the feelings and develop a more positive attitude towards the advertisement, which will subsequently lead to a positive attitude towards the brand itself, its credibility and meaningfulness to the customer. All these aspects can assure a successful communication that will not only benefit the companies but also the customers by being meaningful, transparent and influential to their needs. 8.3 Limitations of the study and future research This study and its results can be subjects to a number of limitations that are discussed next and should be considered when interpreting the main findings. Additionally, based on these limitations, suggestions for future research can be provided. The main pitfall of the current study is the fact that the visual materials did not exclusively and exhaustively represent the combination of the three independent variables. There were different companies involved for some of the conditions and consequently different products. This can make the comparison and evaluation slightly different. Even though, by organizing the focus group session and removing the brand name, the researcher tried to reduce the subjectivity in relation to some aspects (emotional/rational; low/high), it is believed that there can be some improvements. One suggestion can be to use two companies (low and high involvement products) and adjust their messages according to the conditions. This will give clearer and more objective findings as to which one of the four versions of an advertising message would yield the highest results. A second limitation of the current study would be the limited amount of representatives from the 56 nationalities that took part in the research. It would be interesting to either have respondents from one nationality and compare their results or have a larger sample size allowing for a more informative and conclusive findings for the particular culture. Nevertheless, bearing in mind the scale of this study and the time available, the researcher was pleased with the collected data and its diversity. Future and more detailed research will be needed in order to test specific aspects from the advertising messages that make a difference in how companies communicate with their customers, establish a relationship with them and successfully create a strong and recognizable brand identity across and within cultures. 49

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53 Appendices EMOTIONAL ADVERTISING. THE CONNECTING ELEMENT FOR A GLOBAL, CULTURE-FREE ADVERTISING Appendix A. Materials 1. Standardized/emotional/ high involvement condition 2. Standardized/emotional/low involvement condition 3. Standardized/rational/high involvement condition 53

54 4. Standardized/ rational/ low involvement condition 5. Adapted/emotional/high involvement condition 6. Adapted/emotional/low involvement condition 7. Adapted/rational/high involvement condition 54

55 8. Adapted/rational/low involvement condition Appendix B. Questionnaire This questionnaire consists of very few questions. Please take your time and answer each one of them with some thought and a lot of honesty. Your answers can make a huge difference, and your contribution is highly appreciated and valued. Please do not just choose neutral because we all have opinions, we are never neutral and we care. This is the beauty of being humans. Do not forget that the main purpose of the research is to evaluate the advertising message NOT the product. 1. Please take a few seconds and look at the advertisements below. When you are ready click next to proceed. 2. Just out of curiosity, the standard question! Are you a female or a male? Female Male 3. How old are you? < >40 4. What is your nationality? 5. Are you familiar with the particular product you see below? Yes No 6. Please tell me how you evaluate the brand based on the advertisements you see below on each of the elements by choosing one of the 4 options. I trust this brand: 1-strongly agree 2- agree 3- neutral 4- disagree 5-strongly disagree I can consider this as my brand 1-strongly agree 2- agree 3- neutral 4- disagree 5-strongly disagree 55

56 I can consider this brand as my buddy 1-strongly agree 2- agree 3- neutral 4- disagree 5-strongly disagree I would say I feel deep affection, like love, for this brand and would be really upset if I could not have it 1-strongly agree 2- agree 3- neutral 4- disagree 5-strongly disagree 7. What would be your opinion about this advertisement? Simple Yes or No would be sufficient. might be important to me yes no might be meaningful to me yes no might be for me yes no might be worth remembering yes no might be of value to me yes no might be relevant to my needs yes no might be useful to me yes no might be worth paying attention to yes no might be interesting to me yes no might inspire me yes no 8. How does the advertisement you see make you feel? I am interested in your reactions to the advertisement, not how you would describe it or the product itself. Active Adventurous Good Happy Warm-hearted Attractive Inspired Interested Confident Creative Lively Energetic Proud Satisfied Affectionate Joyful Peaceful 1-not at all 5-very strongly 56

57 Calm Emotional Hopeful Moved 9. Please, tell me how you would evaluate the advertisement you see. Example: If the advertisement is extremely important for you choose 1 (left), if it is extremely unimportant choose 7 (right). Important Unimportant Of no concern to me Of concern Irrelevant Relevant Means a lot to me Means nothing to me Useless Useful Valuable Worthless Trivial Fundamental Beneficial Not beneficial Matters to me Doesn't matter Uninterested Interested Significant Insignificant Vital Superfluous Boring Interesting Unexciting Exciting Appealing Unappealing Ordinary Fascinating Essential Nonessential Undesirable Desirable Wanted Unwanted Needed Not needed 10. You remember the advertisement you saw in the beginning of the questionnaire? Below you see four claims; some of the claims were mentioned in the ad, some of them were not. How certain are you that each of the claims was made or not in the ad you saw? 1- Very certain that the claim was NOT made in the ad 2- Certain that the claim was NOT made in the ad 3- Uncertain 4- Certain that the claim WAS made in the ad 5- Very certain that the claim WAS made in the ad 57

58 Appendix C. Nationality Nationality Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent Valid Albanian American Antillien Australian Austrian Belgian Benin Bosnian Brazilian British British / Turkish British/Italian Bulgarian Bulgarian/America n Cypriot Czech Danish Dutch Dutch / Haitian Dutch and German Ecuadorian French Gabonese German German/New Zealander Greek Hungarian Indian Indonesian Irish- Dutch Italian Japanese Jordanian Kazakhstan Lithuanian Malagasy Mexican Moroccan Dutch New Zealander Pakistani Persian Polish Portuguese

59 Romanian Russian Senegalese Sierra Leonean Slovak Spanish Swedish Togolese Turkish Turkish and dutch Ukrainian Usbekisch Vietnamese Total Appendix D. Reliability tests 1. Feelings towards the advertisement Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Alpha Based on Cronbach's Alpha Standardized Items N of Items,946, Involvement Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Alpha Based on Cronbach's Alpha Standardized Items N of Items,938, Attitude towards the advertisement Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Alpha Based on Cronbach's Alpha Standardized Items N of Items,859,

60 4. Brand identity Reliability Statistics Cronbach's Alpha Based on Cronbach's Alpha Standardized Items N of Items,824,822 4 Appendix E. Univariate Factorial ANOVA 1. Feelings Tests of Between-Subjects Effects Dependent Variable: Mean Feelings Partial Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Eta Squared Corrected Model 28,520 a 7 4,074 7,132,000,111 Intercept 2855, , ,982,000,926 Standardized_Adapted 7, ,907 13,841,000,033 Emotional_Rational 8, ,548 14,964,000,036 Low_High_Involvement,509 1,509,890,346,002 Standardized_Adapted* 1, ,677 2,935,087,007 Emotional_Rational Emotional_Rational * 3, ,815 6,678,010,016 Low_High_Involvement Standardized_Adapted* 6, ,017 10,534,001,026 Low_High_Involvement Standardized_Aapted * Emotional_Rational * Low_High_Involvement 1, ,041 1,822,178,005 Error 228, ,571 Total 3117, Corrected Total 257, a. R Squared =,111 (Adjusted R Squared =,095) Estimates Dependent Variable: Mean Feelings 95% Confidence Interval Standardized_Adapted Mean Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound standardized 2,790,054 2,684 2,896 adapted 2,511,052 2,408 2,613 60

61 Dependent Variable: MEAN Feelings Emotional_Rational * Standardized_Adapted Emotional_Rational Standardized_Adapted Mean Std. Error 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound Upper Bound emotional standardized 2,870,075 2,723 3,018 adapted 2,720,073 2,576 2,864 rational standardized 2,709,078 2,556 2,861 adapted 2,301,074 2,156 2,447 Emotional_Rational* Low_High_Involvement Dependent Variable: MEAN_Feelings 95% Confidence Interval Lower Emotional_Rational Low_High_Involvement Mean Std. Error Bound Upper Bound emotional low involvement 2,734,073 2,591 2,877 high involvement 2,857,075 2,709 3,005 rational low involvement 2,637,075 2,490 2,785 high involvement 2,373,077 2,222 2,524 Emotional_Rational * Low_High_Involvement * Standardized_Adapted Dependent Variable: MEAN_Feelings 95% Confidence Interval Std. Emotional_Rational Low_High_Involvement Standardized_Adapted Mean Error Lower Bound Upper Bound emotional low involvement standardized 2,637,103 2,434 2,839 adapted 2,831,103 2,628 3,033 high involvement standardized 3,104,109 2,890 3,319 adapted 2,609,104 2,405 2,813 rational low involvement standardized 2,770,110 2,553 2,987 adapted 2,505,102 2,304 2,705 high involvement standardized 2,648,109 2,433 2,862 adapted 2,098,108 1,886 2,310 61

62 2. Attitude towards the advertisement Tests of Between-Subjects Effects Dependent Variable: MEAN Attitude Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Partial Eta Squared Corrected Model a Intercept Standardized_Adapted Emotional_Rational Low_High_Involvement Standardized_Adapted * Emotional_Rational Emotional_Rational * Low_High_Involvement Standardized_Adapted* Emotional_Rational* Low_High_Inovolvement Error Total Corrected Total a. R Squared =.151 (Adjusted R Squared =.137) 62

63 Estimates Dependent Variable: MEAN_Attitude 95% Confidence Interval Standardized_Adapted Mean Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound standardized adapted Emotional_Rational* Standardized_Adapted Dependent Variable: MEAN_Attitude 95% Confidence Interval Emotional_Rational Standardized_Adapted Std. Mean Error Lower Bound Upper Bound emotional standardized adapted rational standardized adapted Emotional_Rational * Low_High involvement Dependent Variable: MEAN_Attitude 95% Confidence Interval Emotional_Rational Low_High involvement Mean Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound emotional low involvement high involvement rational low involvement high involvement Emotional_Rational * Low_High_Involvement* Standardized_Adapted Dependent Variable: MEAN_Attitude 95% Confidence Interval Emotional_Rational Low_High_Involvement Standardized_Adapted Mean Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound emotional low involvement standardized adapted high involvement standardized adapted rational low involvement standardized adapted high involvement standardized adapted

64 3. Involvement Tests of Between-Subjects Effects Dependent Variable: MEAN_Involvement Type III Source Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Partial Eta Squared Corrected Model a Intercept Standardized_Adapted Emotional_Rational Low_High_Involvement Standardized_Adapted* Emotional_Rational *Low_High_Involvement Standardized_Adapted * Emotional_Rational Standardized_Adapted * Low_High_Involvement Emotional_Rational * Low_High_Involvement Error Total Corrected Total a. R Squared =.074 (Adjusted R Squared =.057) 64

65 Estimates Dependent Variable: MEAN_ Involvement Standardized or 95% Confidence Interval Adapted Mean Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound standardized adapted Estimates Dependent Variable: MEAN_Involvement Emotional or 95% Confidence Interval Rational Mean Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound emotional rational Emotional_Rational * Standardized_Adapted Dependent Variable: MEAN_ Involvement Standardized_Adapt 95% Confidence Interval Emotional_Rational ed Mean Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound emotional standardized adapted rational standardized adapted Emotional_Rational * Low_High involvement Dependent Variable: MEAN_Involvement Low _high 95% Confidence Interval Emotional_Rational involvement Mean Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound emotional low involvement high involvement rational low involvement high involvement Emotional_Rational * Low_High involvement * Standardized_Adapted Dependent Variable: MEAN_Involvement 95% Confidence Interval Emotional or Low or high Standardized or Lower Upper Rational involvement Adapted Mean Std. Error Bound Bound emotional low involvement standardized adapted high involvement standardized adapted rational low involvement standardized adapted high involvement standardized adapted

66 4. Brand Identity Tests of Between-Subjects Effects Dependent Variable: MEAN_brand identity Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Partial Eta Squared Corrected Model 9,134 a 7 1,305 2,657,011,044 Intercept 2362, , ,845,000,923 Standardized_Adapted 2, ,203 4,486,035,011 Emotional_Rational 3, ,067 6,244,013,015 Low_High_Involvement,103 1,103,210,647,001 Standardized_Adapted * Emotional_Rational,273 1,273,556,456,001 Emotional_Rational* Low_High_Involvement 3, ,062 6,235,013,015 Standardized_Adapted*,061 1,061,123,726,000 Low_High_Involvement Standardized_Adapted *,440 1,440,896,344,002 Emotional_Rational* Low_High_Involvement Error 196, ,491 Total 2588, Corrected Total 205, a. R Squared =,044 (Adjusted R Squared =,02 66

67 Estimates Dependent Variable: MEAN_brandidentity Standardized_A 95% Confidence Interval dapted Mean Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound standardized 2,337,050 2,239 2,435 adapted 2,484,048 2,389 2,579 Emotional or Rational * Standardized or Adapted Dependent Variable: MEAN_brandidentity Emotional_Rati Standardized_Ad 95% Confidence Interval onal apted Mean Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound emotional standardized 2,450,070 2,313 2,587 adapted 2,545,068 2,412 2,678 rational standardized 2,224,072 2,083 2,366 adapted 2,423,069 2,288 2,559 Emotional_Rational* Low_High_Involvement Dependent Variable: MEAN_brandidentity Emotional_Rati Low_High_Involvem 95% Confidence Interval onal ent Mean Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound emotional low involvement 2,427,067 2,294 2,559 high involvement 2,568,070 2,431 2,706 rational low involvement 2,427,070 2,290 2,563 high involvement 2,221,071 2,081 2,361 Emotional_Rational * Low_High_Involvement * Standardized_Adapted Dependent Variable: MEAN_brandidentity 95% Confidence Interval Std. Emotional_Rational Low_High_Involvement Standardized_Adapted Mean Error Lower Bound Upper Bound emotional low involvement standardized 2,400,095 2,212 2,587 adapted 2,454,095 2,266 2,641 high involvement standardized 2,500,101 2,301 2,699 adapted 2,637,096 2,448 2,826 rational low involvement standardized 2,282,102 2,081 2,483 adapted 2,571,094 2,385 2,757 high involvement standardized 2,167,101 1,968 2,366 adapted 2,276,100 2,079 2,472 67

68 EMOTIONAL ADVERTISING. THE CONNECTING ELEMENT FOR A GLOBAL, CULTURE-FREE ADVERTISING Appendix F. Memorability materials and statements 1. Standardized/emotional/high Statements The slogan : It doesn t just tell time it tells history was part of the advertisement The text began with the sentence: Why you should buy this watch. Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, and Rafael Nadal were all part of the advertisement Elvis Presley was part of the advertisement 68

69 2. Standardized/ emotional/ low Statements Thank you mom was written on the corner of the advertisement I love my mom was written on the corner of the advertisement The slogan stated: Here s to moms who wear evidence of their children, not under their clothing, but on it as well, and wouldn t trade it for anything? The slogan stated: We thank you moms for wearing evidence of us, not under your clothing, but on it as well, and wouldn t trade it for anything 3. Standardized/rational/high Statements Mr. BOLT was written on the number plate of the car The brand name was written on the number plate of the car The slogan stated: What if the world s fastest man went even faster The slogan stated: What if the world s fastest man was as fast as the car 69

70 4. Standardized/rational/low Statements Dare to smile was written at the bottom of the ad Dare to be tender was written at the bottom of the ad Three packages were shown. Only one package was shown 5. Adapted/emotional/high Statements The spirit of celebration was written on the advertisement The spirit of life was written on the advertisement A woman wearing a golden dress was shown A woman covered with gold liquid was shown 6. Adapted/emotional/low Statements Lunch looks better with... was written Lunch taste better with... was written Positive thinking was written Positive drinking was written 70

71 this ad 7. Adapted/rational/high Statements What s next was written What s new was written There were three products on There was only one product 8. Adapted/rational/low Statements The sign of quality was written The sigh of taste was written Corn was shown on one of the image Corn was shown on both images 71