MSc. Business Administration - Marketing Track
MASTER THESIS
The moderation effect of brand personality on the effectiveness of different
types of humorous advertisements
Author: Jing Cui Student number: 11084960
Supervisor: Mr. Toon Meulemans
2 Note
In writing this thesis, I decided to adopt the "we" form. However, it is important to note that I am the sole author of this report and that this research is exclusively conducted by me.
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Statement of Originality
This document is written by Student Jing Cui who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document are original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I have reached the final step in attaining my Master‘s degree in Business Administration at the University of Amsterdam, with the completion of this thesis. This was my first time writing a thesis of this nature. I treated this learning process as an exciting exploring experience. I directly knew from the first moment of choosing a subject that the effectiveness of humorous ads was a topic that wanted to study, and I am now even more interested in this field.
I would firstly like to take this opportunity to thank my supervisor Mr. Toon Meulemans for all of his support and guidance that has helped to build the conceptual model and determine the framework of this thesis. Furthermore, I shall extend my thanks to Ms. Eloisa Federici for her valuable suggestion of data statistical analysis. Last but not least, I am very grateful to my family and friends who have given help in the improvement of the manuscript and who have never given up their faith in me.
I sincerely hope you enjoy reading this thesis. Kind regards,
Jing Cui
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ABSTRACT
Using humor to communicate various brand personalities in advertising can often be observed in practice, but scholars seldom investigated its effects. Humorous ads implied positive effects on brand equity and purchasing propensity. Recent findings in advertising research contradict the assumption of brand personality specific humor effectiveness. This study predicts and finds the moderate effect of brand personality on the relationships among different humorous ads, building brand equity, and boosting purchasing intention. An online survey with 164 respondents examines how brand personality moderates the effectiveness of various types of print ads. The study reveals that using humorous advertisements does capture better ad attitudes than non-humorous ads. Comic wit is more efficient for sincere brands than exciting brands and competent brands. Sentimental comedy is more effective for competent brands than sincere brands and exciting brands. There is no significant difference among the three types of ads when it comes to exciting brand personality. Not all attitudes toward humorous ads within different kinds of brand personality can contribute to positive brand equity, and sentimental comedy performs better than comic wit in building brand equity. If a brand has a sincere brand personality or a competent brand personality, launching ads is not enough; companies should pay more attention to building brand equity because brand equity weighs more in the contribution to purchase intention. Based on the results, managerial implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.
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CATALOGUE
1. INTRODUCTION ... 9
2. LITERATURE REVIEW ... 12
2.1 Brand Personality ... 14
2.1.1 The measure of Brand Personality ... 14
2.1.2 The role of Brand Personality ... 15
2.2 Brand Equity and Advertising ... 16
2.2.1 The Role of Advertising in Brand Equity ... 17
2.2.2 Different kinds of humor in humorous ads ... 18
2.3 Combine humor with different kinds of brands ... 23
2.3.1 Moderate effect ... 23
2.3.2 Mediate effect ... 24
2.3.3 Pitfalls of using humorous ads ... 25
3. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND RESEARCH DESIGN ... 26
3.1 Conceptual Framework ... 26
3.2 Hypotheses ... 27
3.3 Research Design and Methodology ... 29
3.3.1 Ads Development ... 29
3.3.2 Pretests ... 30
3.3.3 Sample ... 31
3.3.4 Main Study ... 32
4. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS ... 33
4.1 Recoding ... 33
4.2 Reliability and Scale means ... 33
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4.4 Moderation effect on Attitude toward ad ... 39
4.5 Purchase and Promotion intention ... 42
4.6 Mediation effect on Purchase Intention ... 44
5. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION ... 48
5.1 Moderate effects of Brand Personality ... 49
5.2 The relationships among Ad Attitude, Brand Equty, and Purchase Intention ... 50
6. EXPECTED CONTRIBUTIONS TO THEORY AND PRACTICE ... 52
7. LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH ... 54
8. REFERENCES ... 56
9. APPENDICES ... 62
I. Pretest Survey ... 62
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TABLE OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Figure 1 Model of Consumer Behavior ... 12
Figure 2 Dimensions of Brand Knowledge ... 18
Figure 3 Framework of Moderation ... 24
Figure 4 Hypotheses framework ... 27
Figure 5 Post-hoc multiple comparisons ... 38
Figure 6 Purchases and Promotion Intention ... 42
Table 1 Dimensions of Brand Personality ... 15
Table 2 Types of Humor ... 19
Table 3 Cronbach‘s Alpha ... 34
Table 4 Mean and Standard deviation and Correlations of Attitude toward ad ... 35
Table 5 Descriptive analysis of Ad Attitude, Brand Equity and Purchase Intention ... 36
Table 6 Factorial ANOVA of Ad Attitude, Brand Equity and Purchase Intention ... 36
Table 7 Descriptive statistics factorial ANOVA ... 38
Table 8 Moderation analysis of Attitude toward ad ... 39
Table 9 Statistics of direct and total effect of Brand personality on Attitude toward ad ... 40
Table 10 Mediation analyses ... 44
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1. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, advertising is still one of the primary methods that merchants use to reach and convince consumers. There are approximately 3,000 advertising messages surround customers per day (Schwarz, Hoffmann, and Hutter, 2015; Kim, Bhargava, and Ramaswami, 2001). Too much information leads to overload selections; hence, the advertisements transfer the main essence of a brand or a product inefficiently. Marketers try to improve the efficiency and make their ads impressive and outstanding. One of the most extraordinary ways is to enhance the sense of humor in advertisements. Well-integrated humor with brand essence is associated with a hit with audiences (Schwarz, Hoffmann, and Hutter, 2015), enhanced the attractiveness and increased purchase intention (Alden, Mukherjee, and Hoyer, 2000; Zhang and Zinkhan, 1991). The use of humorous ads, however, is a two-edged sword. Some researchers argue that there are limitations in humorous ads (Weinberger and Leland, 1991), and some underlying mechanisms even postulate contradictory results (Eisend, 2011). The erosion of traditional advertising might lead to an ambiguous description of the products‘ characteristics (Alden, Mukherjee, and Hoyer, 2000).
Ad humor is an active topic; many researchers have devoted to this theme for a long time. In previous research, some mechanisms have been found to underpin the function of humorous advertising. Some researchers illustrate that the distraction effect and the principle of the elaboration likelihood model can contribute to the influence of comic wit, emotion transfer effect and arousal-safety processes can support the analysis of sentimental comedy (Eisend, 2011; MacKenzie, Lutz, and Belch, 1986). Based on these mechanisms, considerable studies conducted cross-culture (Leonidas, Boutsouki, and Zotos, 2009) and gender-specific (Schwarz, Hoffmann, and Hutter, 2015) analysis to focus on the responding stage and target consumers. The prior brand evaluation effect (Chattopadhyay and Basu, 1990) and levels of
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involvement (Zhang and Zinkhan, 2006) were also elaborated as moderators on attitude toward humorous ads, brand equity, and purchase intention. According to Speck (1991), the congruence between humor types and the message factors is a significant prerequisite. Since scant findings examined the moderation effect of different kinds of brands, providing new insight into the influence of humor types at the level of brand personality specific is necessary.
The brand personality affects the effectiveness of ad humor through several different channels. More specifically, we need to know which kinds of brand personalities can benefit more from humorous ads than non-humorous ads. This thesis mainly focuses on three types of brand personalities: sincerity, excitement and competence. For example, if the brand is classified to sincerity, the elements of the ads should highlight honest, happy, etc.. Exciting brand products are primarily consumed for sensory gratification such as daring, spirited and imaginative; many symbolic products belong to this category (Ang and Lim, 2006). Brands with competent brand personality tend to fare better on practical purposes. Ang and Lim (2006) suggested that utilitarian products are more likely to have properties such as sincerity and competence; hedonic products are more sophisticating and exciting. Product color matrix (PCM) makes the product categories distinguishable. Based on the partition criteria (function and risk), the article suggests that function tools: ―big tools‖ and ―little tools‖ are most appropriate to employ arousal-safety based humor (Spotts, Weinberger, and Parsons, 1997). Besides enhanced brand attitudes and purchase intentions, a substantial series of literatures indicated that companies can gain more benefits from a pleasing brand personality, such as capture more real loyalty consumer (Traci, Jody, and David, 2011). Therefore, when marketers tend to show the brand or product in an amusing way, they should ensure the humorous elements do not harm the original brand personality.
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This thesis aims to identify the moderate effect of brand personality on the relationships among different types of humorous ad attitude, brand equity, and purchase intention. Unraveling the best match between humor type and brand personality, marketers can design appropriate and efficient humorous ad for their products. Further, understand why sometimes consumers only remember the content of the ads instead of the brand or having little purchase intention. This thesis builds a survey on 164 people to measure the influences of the humorous advertisings and brand personalities on the persuasive effect of advertising. First, we got attitudes toward various humorous ads incorporate with different brand personalities to analyze the moderation effect; then we tried to illustrate the mediating effect of ad attitude, brand equity, and purchase intention. In this thesis, we aim to match the two types of humor (comic wit and sentimental comedy) to three brand personalities (sincerity, excitement, and competence) and try to find the best fit.
We structure this research in the following chapters. In the next section a review of the literature on the key characteristics about distinctive brand personalities and various humorous ads, and the principles of moderation effect and mediation effect are discussed. Furthermore, to solve the research question, based on these theories, the conceptual framework is exhibited, and hypotheses are explained and formulated. We also describe the research design and methodology in this chapter. The results of the study are then clarified and analyzed in chapter four. Moreover, this thesis indicates the empirical findings and contributions to the theory and practice in the following two sections (in page 50). We also stressed limitations and suggestions for further research in the last part.
RQ: Moderated by various brand personalities, how do different humorous ads relate to ad
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2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Kotler and Keller (2009, p.184) show a model of consumer behavior (see Figure 1), as the first part of this procedure in the whole process, acting as a reaching and communicating point, marketing stimuli have an important function. Many elements can influence the purchase decision-making process such as customer culture, customer characteristics, etc.. The ―wheel of consumer analysis‖ also illustrates that there are interactive effects between either two of consumer behaviors, consumer environment and consumer affect and cognition (Peter and Olson, 2010, p. 26-27).
Figure 1 Model of Consumer Behavior
As a communication method, advertising is an important way for marketers to promote their products and brands. Humor is a popular element in advertising, although some authors question the effect of humorous ads that people only attracted by the ads instead of perceiving the essence of the content, sometimes even cannot remember the brands. Humorous ads do have a strong social identity and are widely used today. In the propagation process, humorous advertising alone only has limited influence on buying decision process, because most
Marketing Stimuli Other Stimuli Products & Services Price Distribution Communication Economic Technological Political Culture Consumer Psychology Motivation Perception Learning Memory Consumer Characteristics Cultural Social Personal Buying Decision Process Problem recognition Information search Evaluation of alternatives Purchase decision Post-purchase behavior Purchase Decision Product choice Brand choice Dealer choice Purchase amount Purchase timing payment method
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consumers engaged in low-involvement. Further, in the most situations consumer perceived advertising as a peripheral cue (Zhang and Zinkhan, 2006).
There are many kinds of humor in advertising, their function based on two ways: cognitive approach and affective method (Eisend, 2011). If ads are based on the congruence, humorous advertising can lead the consumers process the information in a positive way, so the preference arises from cognitive factors. Even when a preference is developed out of cognitive material, the preferred way eventually becomes functionally autonomous and loses its original cognitive justification, so choice arises by affect is called affect-based preference (Zajonc and Markus, 1982). Since marketing stimuli influence consumers‘ views of the brand, marketers must pay more attention to studying consumer psychology, such as making the express of the brand features more congruent with the image of users‘ personalities. The way brands set and express themselves play a constructive role in facilitating brand trust and purchase intentions (Traci, Jody, and David, 2011). A brand‘s personality must be accessible and recognizable to transfer their meaning to target consumers (Freling, Crosno, and Henard, 2011). Different brands create different personalities to make their name more meaningful and unique, which in turn can underpin the continuous of a brand‘s perceived personality during various promotional stages (Traci, Jody, and David, 2011). If a particular humorous type can communicate the characteristics of a brand with a clear brand personality correctly, this brand personality may appeal to customers. This thesis uses different types of brand personalities to moderate the effectiveness of various kinds of humorous advertising, aiming to find out the
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results of influencing advertising attitude, further brand equity (consumer brand awareness and brand image) and purchase intention.
2.1 Brand Personality
2.1.1 The measure of Brand Personality
A brand‘s personality is the way a brand expresses and represents itself (Aaker, 1997). Because remembering the products and the brands according to product features and attributes is tough, shaping the product brand personality is becoming more and more important (Govers and Schoormans, 2005), such as Pepsi focuses on energy and young, Coca-Cola is reliable and trustworthy. Some types of human personality may be mirrored in the brand. Aaker (1997) demonstrates that the typical use of brands is possible, and she has explained that brands can be exhibited regarding personality characteristics, similar to the big-five categoriess of human personality traits that she identified: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness (see Table 1). Sincere brand personality shows wholesomeness, honesty, and being down-to-earth. For example, McDonald uses innocent child and fantasy cartoon roles to communicate a clear and cheerful idea. In one print ad, there are two advertising boards that both have the brand of McDonald and a yellow arrow pointing to the right direction. The brand on the left read 200m and the brand on the right read 197m, which shows that the restaurant is 197m away from the place. The ads want to show McDonald‘s products and services are sincere just like the ads. The excitement dimension includes being daring, spirited, and up-to-date. A television advertising from Heineken shows a scene that when men see a house of Heineken beers, they are as excited as women see a room of new clothes, so they cannot help yelling up. The ads want to convey that Heineken can bring you an exciting life. The competence dimension includes being reliable, intelligent, and successful. For example, a print ad from Insecticide Company shows a frog holding a sign with a slogan:
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―Work for food.‖ That means the brand is so reliable that can kill all pests. Utilitarian products are often considered to be related to sincerity and competence, and using humor elements may dilute such attributes to a lower degree than the case for hedonic products (Ang and Lim, 2006). The sophistication express brand personality like being upper class and charming; outdoorsy and tough are often included in the ruggedness dimension (Aaker, 1997).
Table 1 Dimensions of Brand Personality
Name Traits with Highest Item-to-Total Correlation
1.Sincerity
Domestic, honest, genuine cheerful, beneficial
Tend to have great impact on the level of brand trust than brand affect Utilitarian products are more likely to be classified to this category
2.Excitement
Daring, spirited, imaginative, up-to-date, energetic
Tend to have great impact on the level of brand affect than brand trust Hedonic products were more likely to be classified to this category
3.Competence Reliable, responsible, dependable, efficient, safe
Utilitarian products are more apt to be classified into this category
4.Sophistication
Glamorous, pretentious, charming, romantic
Tend to have great impact on the level of brand affect than brand trust Hedonic products were more likely to be classified to this category
5.Ruggedness Tough, strong, outdoorsy, rugged
Tend to have great impact on the level of brand trust than brand affect Source: Aaker 1997, Sung and Kim 2013, Ang and Lim 2006.
2.1.2 The role of Brand Personality
Brand personalities reflect the preference of consumers and ideal characteristics of consuming products, which can express users‘ personalities. Brand personality is based on brand position and tries to make customers use an associative process to make products lively (Strick, Holland, van Baaren, van Knippenberg, and Dijksterhuis, 2013). Brand personality perception of the attractiveness has an impact on the target consumers‘ purchase decisions and helps maintain promotion processes (Traci, Jody, and David, 2011), for instance, Starbucks is not just offering standard coffee, they provide experience; Kodak is not just a cinema, they create
16 memories. Brand personality also affords favorable benefits in successful brand choice and
consumers can elicit strong affection, trust, and loyalty (Ang and Lim, 2006). There are many
elements influencing brand personality, such as consumer characteristics, consumer
psychology, brand name, brand image and so on. If we want to use humorous to enhance
consumers‘ evaluation of a particular brand personality, we must know the features of different dimensions of brand personalities.
The different brand personality dimensions also have different effects. Sung and Kim (2013) find that sincerity and durability often affect the level of brand trust and excitement and complexity influence more on the brand effect. Yoganarasimhan (2012) also demonstrates that symbolic product usually present sophisticated and exciting. It is evident that brand personality plays 6a significant role in advertising design, capitalizing on the features of brand personality is a premise of the effectiveness of humorous ads in avoiding of conflicts between the humor and the brand image.
2.2 Brand Equity and Advertising
Brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations and brand loyalty are the first four core brand equity dimensions (Aaker, 1997). Baalbaki and Guzmán (2016) explore the scale of brand equity in a new way, quality, preference, social influence and sustainability. One goal of building brand equity is to boost marketing productivity (Keller, 1993). To create customer-based brand equity, marketers need to create a familiar brand that can elicit favorable, strong and unique brand associations (Keller, 1993). Brand name, logo, and the symbol can also contribute to building brand equity; the integration of various marketing supporting publicities, which can increase the brand identity, can also manipulate brand
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equity. Customers have their standard about the performance, reliability and consistency of a brand, which can be treated as the quality of the brand. The high-quality brand can lead to brand preference; this also means strong brand recall (Aaker, 1997). Also, the society plays a significant role in building positive brand equity; some brands are so popular that using these brands can become a social trend (Yoganarasimhan, 2012). When a brand has generated enough customers and influence, the state of the brand is stable and sustainable.
2.2.1 The Role of Advertising in Brand Equity
Karen and Olson (1994) believe that the consumer behavior is influenced by consumer environment and consumer affect and cognition. Kotler and Keller (2009, p.184) find that there are many variables affect their decision-making processes, such as marketing stimuli, user characteristics, consumer psychology and other stimuli, brand awareness and brand recall are the most crucial points (see in Figure 2). Ads can be classified into marketing communications. Researchers show that advertising is successful in building consumer-based brand equity (Wang, Zhang, and Ouyang, 2009). Advertising can be an effective way of communication because marketers design ads and they can express whatever they want to consumers. To more apt to show the brand or product features, advertising design must be closely integrated product personality characteristics, only in this way can consumers produce good brand awareness, better combine advertising with brands. (Buil, Chernatony, and Martínez, 2013).
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Source: Kevin Lane Keller 1993
Figure 2 Dimensions of Brand Knowledge
2.2.2 Different kinds of humor in humorous ads
Scholars use two separate approaches to classifying humorous types. Technical-oriented categorizations (e.g., Patrick and Solomon, 1975, p. 31-35) distinguish humorous based on the techniques used in designing an ad, such as puns or slapstick. Theoretical-oriented categorizations, according to Speck (1991), include three central mechanisms that trigger the sense of humorous: arousal-safety, incongruity-resolution, and humorous-disparagement. Catanescu and Tom (2001) find seven reasons to laugh exaggeration, pun, put-down, surprise, comparison, and personification. Humorous message taxonomy (HMT) (Speck, 1991), as the most approved compartmentalization of humor types in advertisement, classifies humor into comic wit, satire, sentimental comedy, sentimental humor and full comedy (see Table 2), mechanisms of arousal-safety and incongruity-resolution are also included. Incongruity-resolution is most often employed by advertisers (Speck, 1991; Alden and Hoyer,
Brand Knowledge Brand Awareness Brand Image Brand Recall Brand Recognition Types of Brand Association Favorability of Brand Association Strength of Brand Association Uniqueness of Brand Associations Attributions Benefits Attitudes
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1993; Spotts, Weinberger, and Parsons, 1997); it constitutes a creative cognitive mechanism to make the brand information expressed in a unique way to increase the audience‘s attention to the ad (Heckler and Childers, 1992). The arousal-safety process, instead, use a warm and step-by-step approach to express humorous (Speck, 1991), which can not only share pleasure but also build affective bonds with the audience. Humorous-disparagement creates humor by building a hostile situation. The characters and personified creatures generate the most entertainment (Leonidas, Boutsouki, and Zotos, 2009).
Table 2 Types of Humor
Incongruity-Resolution Arousal-Safety Humorous-Disparagement
1.Comic wit 2.Sentimental humor 3.Satire 4.Sentimental comedy 5.Full comedy Source: Speck 1990
The research will choose two types to devote to humorous ad design: comic wit and sentimental comedy. First, according to the feature of the five types, we exclude the sentimental humor, which does not solve the incongruent information. Alden and Hoyer (1993) demonstrate that incongruity-resolution especially contributes to the comprehension of humor forming process, so that ―incongruity from expectations‖ is widely used to generate humor. Meanwhile, the full comedy has a substantial limitation in advertising, and three kinds of humorous types are sufficient to fit different brand personalities. Therefore, we focus on the two types of humor. Theorists indicate that satire has a place in humorous ads because individuals enjoy seeing others victimized, disparaged, or laughed at (Hobden and Olso, 1994). Adding satirical elements can increase awareness of bigotry, many audients take issue
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with its apparent glibness, so this kind of humor does not fit the mass market to a certain extent. Most satirical employ to public service advertising to disseminate truth or virtue, for instance, a non-profit advertising shows that mother and daughter are sitting on a sofa, and they are separated by a big mobile phone. Because the mother is addicted to playing mobile phone, she does not care her daughter, even does not know what her daughter is doing. The advertising is trying to suggest people to care and communicate more to their family instead of playing telephone. Some satire advertising also use in commercial focus, Coca-Cola used an ad to irony Pepsi, LG used a satirical ad to ridicule Apple; the satire advertising is not usually used purely for promotion. This research just chooses the two most popular humorous types: comic wit and sentimental comedy.
Comic wit
Comic wit only focuses on the simple and creative incongruity-resolution process such as surprise elements that is unexpected (Meyer, 2000). According to the schema theory, the number of elaborations increases with incongruence, which means people tend to process the information in a more detailed way (Rifon, Choi, Trimble, and Li, 2004). This humorous will lead people to think and understand more rationally and make the content easier to remember. For example, a print ad for Leapp, a brand sell refreshed Apple product, applies the incongruent process. In the poster, a beautiful girl is labeled with a Leapp Logo on her body. There is a message saying, ―You know you are not the first, but who cares.‖ The slogan aims to use the humorous analogy type to convince people. A print ad for dentures also uses a humorous ad to show the competence and reliable ability of the brand. In the picture, the inside of a bite open apple is kiwi fruit. Wearing dentures, biting an apple is as easy as eating
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a kiwi. As for most products, humor is not a natural characteristic of them, people usually engaged in low involvement (Zhang and George, 2006), so this humor can encourage the audience to process message actively.
There are some theories can contribute to the cognitive process. Since humor can attract more attention, basing on the incongruent process, the information-processing model demonstrates that positive cognitions outweigh negative perceptions (Eisend, 2011). The explanations of the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) suggest that if the possibility of issue-relevant thought occurring is high, central processing assumed a dominant position (MacKenzie, Lutz, and Belch, 1986), however, in the low-level involvement people will not process the information about ads actively. Meanwhile, the distraction effect illustrates that humor can make the consumer pay less attention to the adverse parts of brands. Therefore, beginning with the counterargument phases, the comic wit advertising persuasive users in cognitive level and make them actively process the positive and ignore negative elements of the products.
Sentimental comedy
Sentimental comedy is based on the incongruity-resolution and the arousal-safety processes. Barry (2013) illustrates that in the first stage of arousal-safety, emotions are aroused with sentiments, empathy or some form of negative anxiety. Consumers buy products in the pursuit of a kind of emotional satisfaction, enjoying this sort of purchase process. Meeting the demands of the emotional can complete inherent characteristics of the goods. Barry (2013) illustrates that the contents may include little children, inner secret or melodramas. From
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physiological and emotional perspectives, people prefer to put themselves in a comfortable and steady state. The affective homeostasis position also can use to explain the relief theory: humorous stems from setting free from tension. (Beard, 2008, p. 49-50). The humor tries to make people have the same feeling like the protagonist in the ads. For instance, a TV ad for the bronchitis syrup applies the arousal-safety process. At first, a shabbiness girl is running because a tiger is chasing her. She is screaming, ―Why you chase me?‖ The tiger says, ―I want bronchitis syrup.‖ Then the girl gives the bronchitis syrup to the tiger and the tiger very grateful to her. As the storyline develops, we see this heightened arousal state as safe, cute or unnecessary, so this kind of humor primary focus on the emotion and affect levels.
There are some theories can contribute to the efficient process. Congruency effect emphasizes that positive feeling may recall positive experiences. In low-level involvement, people always persuaded by advertising cues such as pictures and songs, if these cues are mood-consistent elements in memory, people will easy to have deeper memory, and the positive emotion about the cues can transfer into products (Eisend, 2011). In reality, when the audience see advertisements, they will have emotions, such as nostalgia, guilt, and other emotional reflection. When the emotional appeal of the brand advertising and advertising content is repeatedly and stably presented to the audience, the audience will have a similar emotional response to brands and products, which are called classical conditioning (Till, Stanley, and Priluck, 2008).
23 2.3 Combine humor with different kinds of brands
2.3.1 Moderate effect
Marketers use ―3M‖ (Measurement, Moderators, and Mediators) to influence the attitude-behavior relationship. Moderators control the relation between A and B, make it stronger, weaker, opposite, etc. (Armitage and Christian, 2003). Humorous advertising creates graphics for different advertising products (see Figure 3), but not any product is suitable for humorous advertising. In general, humorous sensibility characteristics suitable for little risk capital product categories such as soft drinks, food, snacks, candy, catering, tourism, entertainment, toys, sports products (Spotts, Weinberger, and Parson, 1997). The high rational products such as the life, property, assets, vehicles and other related products are not suitable for humorous advertising creative graphics. Shimp (2007) demonstrates that humor can also be used more appropriately for feeling-oriented or experiential products. Thomas and James (2007) find that the higher relevance between the information of the product and the humor the easier customers remember the brand and product. Under most circumstances, humorous advertisements are used only for inferior goods, the wording of humorous ads should make a common theme to get a new life. The use of humor brushwork effectively puts a simple content speaks vivid and easy to remember. It is reasonable for researchers to exclude the luxury products that always have their specific target groups; most of them even do not advertise their products through mass social media. The brands such as Tunberland, aiming to show their high-brow, masculinity, the west and a rude dude features, classified into ruggedness brand personality, and products have features like charming, charismatic, noble
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and sophisticated such as Chanel, Rolex, and Mercedes-Benz is merely using humorous elements.
Figure 3 Framework of moderation
2.3.2 Mediate effect
Advertising affects the level of brand awareness and brand trust, both directly and indirectly through a change in the degree of advertising attitudes, such as perceived humor and favorability of the advertising. People who engaged in peripheral route (low involvement) will first process of advertising cues, positive response towards the ad and then transfer of affect to brand without analysis of brand information or message arguments (MacKenzie, Lutz and Belch, 1986). If the advertising is more interesting or is easy to have an emotional resonance, the audience will leave a deeper impression on it and will have a positive attitude of the advertising, further; will have strong brand awareness. Brand awareness means that customers have the ability to identify the brand under different conditions. A successful brand
Brand Equity Brand awareness Brand trust Promotion Intention Purchase Intention Brand Personalities
Brand personalities here as: Sincerity Excitement Competence Sophisticated Ruggedness Humorous Ad Types of humor: Comic wit Sentimental humor Satire Sentimental comedy Full comedy Non-humorous Ad Advertising Attitude Perceived humor Favorability
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also has a good brand image which reflected by the uniqueness, strengthen and favorability of brand associations (Aaker and Joachimsthale, 2000). In general, if the humorous advertising can make customers have a positive attitude to the ads, for instance consumer think the ad is interesting or likable; consumer may further have a positive attitude to the brand, which can contribute to building strong brand equity. Simultaneously, ads attitude and brand equity both have direct or indirect influence on purchase intention; the survey can also test the strength of the relation between them.
2.3.3 Pitfalls of using humorous ads
Meanwhile, the dialogue, narration, plot, and the choice of spokesperson in humorous advertising creative graphic should all serve advertising goods, to strengthen the setting of the advertising product name, location, interests‘ efficacy, safety, etc. Humor is secondary, and the product that advertises wants to promote is the core essence. During humorous advertising creation, we should adhere to the principle form of quality consistent, taking into account the relevance of humorous effect between products and services, and this association is natural, real, and not far-fetched. Otherwise, it may be self-defeating and become a mere comedy. In this situation, consumers may merely remember the content of the humor with little awareness of the brand or intention to buy.
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3. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND RESEARCH DESIGN
3.1 Conceptual Framework
The function of brands for a company is critical; a brand is the entity for relationship creation and development and can be a platform for extending activities. Companies need to focus on both internal and external markets to create more brand value. Customer-based brand equity is an important part that can strengthen the brand equity. Keller and Lehmann (2006) find that part of the attraction to a particular product from a particular company generated not by the product attributes per se, marketers must focus on developing brand knowledge, more specifically, building strong brand awareness and brand image to reinforce brand equity.
This thesis uses a deductive method to test seven hypotheses. Figure 4 provides an overview conceptual framework of this research. The study uses three types of advertising to test the moderate effect of three kinds of brand personalities. This theoretical framework function based on the schema theory, information-processing model, distraction effect, relief theory, congruency effect and etc.. The research will conduct surveys to view the utility of different types of ads on the reflection of consumers‘ responds to the print ads, such as degree of advertising favorability, advertising attraction, perceived humor, perceived brand image, brand awareness, and intention to purchase. The collection and analysis method are explained below.
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Figure 4 Hypotheses framework 3.2 Hypotheses
Advertising is the main way for customers to know information about brands, build and boost needs of products. Every advertising and promotion should contribute to building brand equity, further impelling purchase intention. Brand should have an accurate position, defining brand personality and using advertising to complete the emotional part is essential because consumers are increasingly paying attention to psychological satisfaction and pleasure. Humor as an emotional appeal can attract more attention and increase positive attitude to advertising and branding.
Comic wit intends to create a situation that differs from the expected occasion, individuals should solve the problem by themselves (Shultz, 1972). Incongruity involves the juxtaposition of discrepancies that require an ability to reconcile (Spotts, Weinberger, and Parsons, 1997). This stimulus most comes from the surprise part and can active the
Brand Equity Brand awareness Brand trust Comic wit Sentimental comedy Sincerity Excitement Competence Non-humorous Ad Advertising Attitude Perceived humor Favorability Purchase Intention Promotion Intention H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6 H7
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information process, so individuals can join the imagination situation (Alden, Mukherjee, and Hoyer, 2000).
H1a: Comic wit (compared to sentimental comedy and non-humorous ad) increases the favorability of attitudes toward the ad, and this effect is stronger for sincere brands than
exciting brands.
H1b: Comic wit (compared to sentimental comedy and non-humorous ad) increases the favorability of attitudes toward the ad, and this effect is stronger for exciting brands than
competent brands.
Since sentimental comedy is mainly based on the arousal-safety processes, more emotion empathy is involved in the information process. The combination of the slogan, voice-over and image more intend pretend to tell consumer a story with a quirky twist. Play cues and safety judgments naturally take users out of an uncomfortable environment, and the mood will come back to peace at the end of the story (Schwarz, Hoffmann, and Hutter, 2015). People are contorted by the created emotion in the ads, and the function of positive attitude will last for a long time.
H2a: Sentimental comedy (compared to comic wit and non-humorous ad) is more effective for competent brands than sincere brands in creating positive attitudes toward the
ad.
H2b: Sentimental comedy (compared to comic wit and non-humorous ad) is more effective for sincere brands than exciting brands in creating positive attitudes toward the ad.
Some authors claimed that humor significantly reduces source credibility, considering consumer comprehension ability; complicated or inappropriate humorous ads may make it difficult for consumers to catch the meaning of the ads (Eisend, 2008). It is still unknown
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whether humorous ads can improve brand recall. Meanwhile, consumers become more sophisticated and experienced, which also decreases the persuasive effect of advertising, they may hold the skeptical position about ads.
H3: There is no brand personality specific of non-humorous advertisements (compared with humorous ad) on the perceived level of ad attitude.
H4
:
Non-humorous ads create more brand equity.Thomas and James (2007) found the higher relevance between the information of the product and the humor; the easier consumers remember the brand and product. Meanwhile, previous research shows that attitude towards the advertising has a significant influence on the brand advertised by the ad (Alden, Mukherjee, and Hoyer, 2000). The perceived humor also play a mediate role in the process; the transfer effect shows that if the consumer likes the advertising, they will further like the brand. Humorous elements effectively perk up an otherwise boring statement or product; hence enhance the reader's memory.
H5: Positive attitudes toward the advertisements undertaken for a brand can increase brand equity.
H6: Individuals' favorable attitudes of a brand's advertising have a positive influence on promotion and purchase intention.
H7: High level of brand equity can increase promotion and purchase intention.
3.3 Research Design and Methodology
3.3.1 Ads Development
Print ads as a carrier of humorous performance and function are easier to show advertising progress. On one hand, a designer does not have chances to integrate so many elements in
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print ads, so the expression ability is limited, only message and image. On the other hand, print ads can just rely on good ideas and unique expression to attract consumers. Since slogans and pictures are easier to manipulate, the research chooses print ads as survey materials.
The research will deploy nine advertisements, representing three different of brand personalities (sincerity, excitement, competence). In the pretest, there are total 27 advertisings of nine brands for research, including non-humorous ads, comic wit, and sentimental comedy. At the main survey, for every chosen brand personality, there are three ads, including three kinds of adverting, comic wit, sentiment comedy and non-humorous ads.
3.3.2 Pretests
First, we conducted a qualitative pretest to define the main feature of comic wit ads and sentimental comedy ads, and the characteristics of different brand personalities. We invited 6 people (3 women, 3 men) to a group discussion to design the pretest questionnaire. The analysis also helped the test to fix proper test materials (27 advertisements) that contained relevant humorous elements to ensure that the respondents perceive the ads as realistic and as humorous advertising.
During next phase, the pretest aims to confirm the different humor types and personality‘s types are manipulated as expected (Schwarz, Hoffmann, and Hutter, 2015). A total of 80 subjects (50% men and 50% women) participated in an online survey via e-mail. The participants were randomly recruited from a pool of consumers who agreed to participate in market surveys (Appendix I). The recipients were told the typical features of the two kinds of
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humorous. Comic wit is the straightforward and creative ad with unexpected and surprise elements. Sentimental comedy captures story line and plots that easy to form emotional resonance. The characteristics of brand personality are also different. The survey used words like ‗domestic, honest, genuine cheerful and beneficial‘ to describe sincerity brand personality, quite different from exciting brand personality (daring, spirited, imaginative, up-to-date, energetic) and competence brand personality (reliable, responsible, dependable, efficient, safe). Then the recipients saw nine groups of advertisings; each group contains two humorous ads of a brand. After the recipients had watched all the advertisements, they finished a survey questionnaire that about their perceived type of each group of advertising and ―What brand personality do you think this advertising shows？‖. If the validity of the advertising is ambiguous, the advertising needs to be changed or omit. The six most representative ads employed to the further test, they capture the following requests: the two ads belong to different types of humorous ads and represent the same brand personality. According to their choice, we ranked the commercials based on the three brand personalities and the two humor types (Leonidas, Boutsouki, and Zotos, 2009). The brands of Bramhuts, Carlsberg and Ridsect, fitted both the requests and got the most supports.
3.3.3 Sample
In order to avoid the effects of culture differences (Alden, Mukherjee, and Hoyer, 2000), we invited 200 Chinese respondents via e-mail to participate in an online survey. The participants were randomly recruited from a pool of consumers who agreed to take part in market surveys (Schwarz, Hoffmann, and Hutter, 2015). In total 192 questionnaires have been filled in, later 28 of these have been deleted due to incomplete questions. Thus, questionnaires from 164 respondents (50% Chinese men and 50% Chinese women were chosen as control variables) were used during the analysis (response rate = 82%). The proportion of female participants
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was 50 percent; hence, the influence of gender differences should be comparatively small. There were 71.14 percent of respondents never saw these brands before the survey, which, to some extent, reduced the impact of prior brand evaluation (Chattopadhyay and Basu, 1990). The average age of respondents was 26.7 years old. The youngest participates was 22 years old and the oldest participant was 55.
3.3.4 Main Study
The main survey (Appendix II) followed the pretests. In the second phases, using the three chosen brand Bramhuts, Carlsberg and Ridsect, the participates saw all nine advertisings and then gave grades about the independent variables ： Degree of advertising favorability, advertising attraction, perceived humor, perceived brand image, brand awareness and intention to purchase. Then, according to the results, the research can find out the best kind of advertising to strengthen and enhance brand image and brand awareness. The measures for the independent variables: the perceived brand personality by reviewers was measured with three items sincerity, excitement and competence. The recognized types of humorous were measured with sentimental comedy and comic wit. The dependent variables were operationalized on multiple items with 5-point rating scales (1 = completely disagree, 5 = completely agree) (Schwarz, Hoffmann, and Hutter, 2015). There are six questions about the perceived ad attitude: perceived level of humorous, favorability, attraction of ad, persuasiveness of ad, the degree of comprehension and association between ad and brand (MacKenzie, Lutz, and Belch, 1986). Further, the research got the responses of the results of brand awareness, brand trust and brand image (Traci, Jody, and David, 2011) to test if the ad can create positive brand equity, in this part three standards were also measured with 5-point
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rating scales. After the brand equity generated in the previous step, respondents chose their activities from doing nothing, just promoting, only purchasing, promoting and purchasing, and strong willing to promote and purchase. At last, the research also tried to figure out other essential elements that may influence customers‘ attitude to ads.
4. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
In this chapter, primary analysis was done to test the reliability of the scale items and the hypotheses developed were tested by doing further analyses in SPSS (Field, 2013).
4.1 Recoding
All variables under investigation were checked for missing data. Since all questions are force issues, there was no missing data. The recoding of counter-indicative items applied to items of ad attitude, brand attitude, and purchase intention. For the analysis of the hypothesis, one dummy variable was created. Brand personality with the values ―sincerity‖, ―excitement‖ and ―competence‖ needed to adapt to ―sincerity‖ (0 0), ―excitement‖ (1 0) and ―competence‖ (0 1).
4.2 Reliability and Scale means
Reliability enables to examine the consistency of measurements. Reliability checks were run for ad attitudes, brand attitude and purchase intention. The Cronbach‘s alpha, which represents the estimator of the internal consistency, has been tested to verify if all the items in one scale measure the same, or if some questions should not be used for analysis. As exhibited in Table 3, all variables have a Cronbach‘s alpha > 0.7, which indicates a high level of internal consistency. As variables were created for hypothesis testing, research calculated
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the mean of perceived level of humor, favorability, attraction of ad, persuasiveness of ad, the degree of comprehension and association between ad and brand (MacKenzie, Lutz, and Belch, 1986) to describe attitude toward ad. The mean of three items (brand awareness, brand trust and brand image) that was used to describe brand equity.
Table 3 Cronbach’s Alpha
Variable Cronbach’s Alpha
Comic Wit Ad Attitude 0.708
Non-humorous Ad Attitude 0.731
Sentimental Comedy Ad Attitude 0.715
Comic Wit Brand Equity 0.701
Sentimental Comedy Brand Equity 0.704
Non-humorous Brand Equity 0.734
Purchase intention (Comic Wit) 0.710
Purchase intention (Sentimental Comedy) 0.733 Purchase intention (Non-humorous) 0.700
4.3 Descriptive and Comparisons
In Table 4, the research used correlation coefficients for all the combinations of variables. From the correlation carried on, sincerity showed a tendency to positive influence the effectiveness of comic wit (r = 0.215, p < 0.01). Exciting brand personality was also positively related to attitudes toward comic wit (r = 0.143, p < 0.05). The level of competence was the stronger predictor of the attitudes toward sentimental comedy with a Pearson correlation coefficient of r=0.327 and the significance value less than 0.01.
35 T ab le 4 M ean an d S tan d ar d d eviation an d Cor re lation s of A tt itud e to war d a d
36 Table 5 Descriptive analysis of Ad Attitude, Brand Equity and Purchase Intention
Ad Attitude Brand Equity Purchase Intention
DF F Sig DF F Sig DF F Sig
Comic Wit 2 17.35 0.000 2 2.52 0.081 2 139.39 0.000
Sentimental
Comedy 2 5.92 0.003 2 6.81 0.001 2 55.98 0.000 Non-humorous 2 0.32 0.726 2 0.533 0.587 2 63.16 0.000
According to Table 5 and Table 6, there was a statistically significant effect of brand personalities on the ad attitude of different types of ads, comic with F (2, 489) = 17.347, p < 0.05, sentimental comedy F (2, 489) = 5.93, p < 0.05. Since F (2, 489) = 0.32, p > 0.05, different types of brand personality do not have a significant influence on non-humorous ads, the findings support hypothesis H3. Tukey post-hoc tests revealed that, for comic wit, the perceived positive ad attitude was significantly higher in the sincere brand personality group (M = 4.496) compared to the other two groups (p < 0.01). The attitude toward the exciting brand group (M = 4.127) was more positive than the attitude toward the competent brand group (M = 4.052). Thus, hypothesis H1a and hypothesis H1b are supported. For sentimental comedy, the perceived positive ad attitude was significantly higher for the group of competent brand personality (M = 4.165) than the other two groups (p < 0.01). There was no statistically significant difference between the group of the exciting brand (M = 3.866) and the group of the sincerity brand (M = 3.878), the hypothesis H2a is accepted while hypothesis H2b is rejected.
37 Table 6 Factorial ANOVA of Ad Attitude, Brand Equity, and Purchase Intention
Type of Ad Brand personality
Ad Attitude Brand Equity Purchase Intention
Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
Comic Wit Sincerity 4.496 0.662 4.297 0.831 3.451 0.999 Exciting 4.127 0.771 4.130 0.877 2.140 0.725 Competence 4.052 0.755 4.106 0.807 2.128 0.719 Total 4.225 0.755 4.178 0.841 2.573 1.031 Sentimental Comedy Sincerity 3.878 0.885 3.740 0.925 3.402 1.020 Exciting 3.866 0.904 3.911 0.956 2.390 0.903 Competence 4.165 0.881 4.106 0.807 2.567 0.845 Total 3.970 0.899 3.919 0.909 2.787 1.024 Non-humorous Sincerity 3.112 0.605 3.029 0.630 3.281 1.088 Exciting 3.127 0.718 3.065 0.703 2.994 1.143 Competence 3.072 0.592 2.990 0.642 2.073 0.780 Total 3.104 0.640 3.028 0.659 3.451 0.999
In Table 6, mean attitudes toward ad were all more than 4.0, which mean that respondents hold positive ad attitudes toward all kinds of ads. Table 6 and Table 5 also show the result of brand equity; there was significant brand personality specific of sentimental comedy F (2, 489) = 6.81, p < 0.05 on the level of brand equity. Various types of brand personality do not have significant influences on comic wit (p = 0.81) and non-humorous ads (p = 0.587). Tukey post-hoc tests revealed that, for sentimental comedy, the perceived positive ad attitude was significantly influenced the brand equity compared to the other two groups (p < 0.01), the findings support hypothesis H5. Moreover, non-humorous ads reported the worst brand equity (M = 3.104) compared with Comic wit (M = 4.225) and sentimental comedy (M = 3.970), which reject hypothesis H4. For the result of purchase intention, all groups‘ data show significant differences. Comic wit F (2, 489) = 55.98, sentimental comedy F (2, 489) = 139.39, non-humorous ads F (2, 489) = 63.16, p < 0.05. Tukey post-hoc tests revealed that, for sincere brand personality, the perceived positive ad attitude was significantly influenced the purchase intention compared to the other two groups (p < 0.01).
38 Table 7 Descriptive statistics factorial ANOVA
Source SS DF MS F Sig. η² Ad Type 339.840 2 169.920 286.086 0.000 0.280 Brand Personality 3.666 2 1.833 3.086 0.046 0.004 Ad Type*Brand Personality 24.506 4 6.126 10.584 0.000 0.028 Error 873.698 1471 0.594 Total 22151.333 1476
Significant at the p<0.05 level
Sincerity Exciting Competence
Comic With 4.496 4.127 4.0518
Sentimental
Comedy 3.878 3.866 4.165
Non-humorous 3.112 3.125 3.072
Figure 5 Post-hoc multiple comparisons
The research used ANOVA tests to know whether the model is significantly good at predicting the outcome. In Table 7 and Figure 5, there was a significant main effect of ad types on ad attitudes, F (2, 1471) = 286.086, p < 0.05, η² = 0.28. The Tukey post-hoc tests revealed that the positive ad attitude showed a tendency to be significantly higher in the comic wit group compared to the other two groups (p = 0.00). There was a significant main effect of brand personality on ad attitude F (2, 1471) = 3.086, p < 0.05, η² = 0.004. There was also a
39
significant interaction effect between ad types and brand personality on ad attitude F (4, 1471) = 10.584, p =0.00, η² = 0.028. The Tukey post-hoc test revealed that the positive ad attitude showed a tendency to be significantly higher for the group of sincere brand personality compared to other two groups (p = 0.00).
According to Figure 5, applying comic wit to sincere brand personality and using sentimental comedy to express competence are more likely to obtain positive ad attitude, which can be substantial evidence to prove hypothesis H1a and H2a. However, the highest ad attitude of an exciting brand is from the comic wit category. Humorous ads attitude is more positive than non-humorous ads attitudes.
4.4 Moderation effect on Attitude toward ad
Table 8 Moderation analysis of Attitude toward ad
Coefficient SE t p Comic Wit R2=0.1045,F(5,486)=11.341,P<0.001 Intercept i1 4.144 0.295 14.069 0.000 Non-humorous Ad Attitude(X) b1 0.113 0.093 1.216 0.225 Brand Personality(D1) b2 -1.076 0.387 -2.779 0.006 Brand Personality(D2) b3 -0.315 0.418 -0.753 0.452 Brand Personality(D1)x Non-humorous Ad
Attitude(X) b4 0.226 0.122 1.856 0.044
Brand Personality(D2)x Non-humorous Ad
Attitude(X) b5 -0.041 0.133 -0.305 0.760 Sentimental Comedy R2=0.0656,F(5,486)= 6.819 ,P<0.001 Intercept i2 4.161 0.358 11.615 0.000 Non-humorous Ad Attitude(X) b6 -0.091 0.113 -0.805 0.421 Brand Personality(D3) b7 -0.850 0.471 -1.805 0.072 Brand Personality(D4) b8 -1.489 0.509 -2.926 0.004 Brand Personality(D3)x Non-humorous Ad
Attitude(X) b9 0.268 0.148 1.815 0.070
Brand Personality(D4)x Non-humorous Ad
40 Table 9 Statistics of direct and total effect of Brand personality on Attitude toward ad
Brand Personality Unstandardized
Boot Effects Boot SE
Boot LLCI
Boot
ULCI p
Conditional effect at levels of Brand Personality (Comic Wit Ad Attitude)
Sincerity 0.113 0.093 -0.070 0.296 0.225
Excitement 0.338 0.078 0.185 0.492 0.000
Competence 0.072 0.095 -0.114 0.259 0.446
Conditional effect at levels of Brand Personality ( Sentimental Comedy Ad Attitude)
Sincerity -0.091 0.113 -0.313 0.131 0.421
Excitement 0.177 0.095 -0.010 0.364 0.063
Competence 0.486 0.116 0.259 0.713 0.000
Table 8 and 9 show a further inspection; the research proceeded toward a moderation analysis to inspect the responses of the audience, when employing comic wit and sentimental comedy to various commercials with different brand personalities. Data illustrates that the effect of humorous elements on the attitude to non-humorous ad depends on the kind of brand personality but not all types of brand personalities. For the conditional effect on levels of brand personality of the relationship between non-humorous ad attitude and comic wit attitude, the regression coefficient for XD1 is b4 = 0.226 and is statistically different from zero, p < 0.05, for XD2, p > 0.05, t (486) = -0.305. A closer inspection of the conditional effects indicates the relationship between the attitude towards comic wit and the attitude towards non-humorous ad as significant only within the group of exciting brand personality (effect = 0.338, SE = 0.078, CI: 0.185 to 0.492), compared to the group of sincerity (effect= 0.113, SE = 0.093, CI: -0.070 to 0.296) and group of competence (effect = 0.072, SE = 0.095, CI: -0.114 to 0.259). However, as it can be seen from probing the interactions, the slope linking non-humorous ad attitude and comic wit attitude is positive among all groups of brand personalities. The results support hypotheses H5.
For the conditional effect on levels of brand personality of the relationship between the attitude towards non-humorous ad and the attitude towards sentimental comedy, the regression coefficient for XD4 is b10 = 0.577 and is statistically different from zero, p < 0.05,
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for XD3, p > 0.05, t (486) = 0.268. The result also indicates the relationship between the attitude towards non-humorous ad and the attitude towards sentimental comedy as significant only within the group of competence (effect = 0.486, S = 0.116, CI: 0.259 to 0.713), compared to the group of sincerity (effect = -0.091, SE=0.113, CI: -0.313 to 0.131) and group of excitement (effect = 0.177, SE = 0.095, CI: -0.01 to 0.364).
Although the influence of brand personality on non-humorous ad attitude was not significant, the performance of exciting brand personality (M = 3.13) was still better than others. Combine with the outcomes in Table 5 and 6; the data show that the positive attitude increases more when the form of comic wit manipulated by exciting brand personality. Since competent brand personality acted the worst preference on non-humorous attitude (M = 3.07), on the opposite, owned the highest score on sentimental comedy ad attitude (M = 4.165), it was obviously to find that sentimental comedy form is the best fit for brands with competent personality.
42 4.5 Purchase and Promotion intention
Figure 6 Purchases and Promotion Intention
Figure 6 is the results of purchase and promotion intention. According to data from Figure 6 and Table 6, for comic wit, the sincere brand personality has the best performanceon the positive ad attitude. 71% people want to buy products; nearly half of them (38%) are trapped loyalty customers who only want to buy the products instead of promoting them. Usually, these kinds of customers show the willingness to continue the business, but they are not very
43
happy about it. If trapped customers find a better option, they might change their choice (Tanford and Seyhmus, 2012), so this process may cannot during a long time, and the ads can attract customers at the first time, but the products also should be improved later.
For sentimental comedy, 43% of sincere brand recipients and 37% exciting brand recipients preferred only to promote the product after they saw the ad, the attitude of this kind of customers may be positive, but they are not willing to continue their relationship with the company. Since this is a rather odd combination, they might just like the ad and like to talk about it instead of trying the products by themselves. These data also explains why people interested in the ad but do not want to buy the products. However, these fake loyalty customers are often good advocates and typically speak highly of company (Tanford and Seyhmus, 2012). In particular, the data of competent personality corresponding to the data in Table 6, more than 80% respondents shows their high loyalty to the product after seeing the ad.
Figure 6 also represents that people without high positive ad attitude are still willing to buy the products in the ads, especially the exciting brand personality combined with non-humorous ads. They always treated as truly loyal customers. No matter how attractive your ads are, they just do not care. These clients intend to continue to do business with you, and they have a positive attitude toward your company (Tanford and Seyhmus, 2012). In conclusion, it is evident that no matter how interesting the ad is, there still cannot persuade all the respondents.
44 4.6 Mediation effect on Purchase Intention
We conducted a mediation analysis to test the relationship among humorous ad attitude, brand equity and purchase intention under different brand personality. The mediation model shows that brand equity plays a mediation role between ad attitude and purchase intention.
Table 10 Mediation analyses Consequent(Sincerity-Comic Wit)
Antecedent M(Brand Equity) Y(Purchase Intention)
Coeff. SE p Coeff. SE p X(Ad Attitude) a 0.86 0.07 <0.001 c‘ 0.25 0.113 <0.001 M(Brand Equity) - - - b 0.74 0.09 <0.001 constant i1 0.42 0.33 <0.05 i2 0.18 0.37 <0.05 R1=0.47,F(1,162)=144.83,p<0.001 R2=0.54,F(2,161)=94.12,p <0.001 Consequent(Sincerity-Sentimental Comedy) X(Ad Attitude) a 0.579 0.07 <0.001 c‘ -0.048 0.082 >0.05 M(Brand Equity) - - - b 0.688 0.085 <0.001 constant i1 1.496 0.27 <0.001 i2 0.85 0.38 <0.05 R1=0.31,F(1,162)=71.39,p<0.001 R2=0.37,F(2,161)=47.65,p <0.001 Consequent(Exciting-Comic Wit) X(Ad Attitude) a 0.97 0.05 <0.001 c‘ 0.32 0.145 <0.001 M(Brand Equity) - - - b 0.623 0.123 <0.001 constant i1 0.189 0.208 <0.001 i2 0.549 0.328 <0.05 R1=0.69,F(1,162)=373.249,p<0.001 R2=0.503,F(2,161)=81.776,p <0.001 Consequent(Exciting-Sentimental Comedy) X(Ad Attitude) a 0.814 0.053 <0.001 c‘ 0.428 0.125 <0.001 M(Brand Equity) - - - b 0.300 0.116 <0.05 constant i1 0.763 0.210 <0.001 i2 0.596 0.323 <0.05 R1=0.593,F(1,162)=235.87,p<0.001 R2=0.37,F(2,161)=40.316,p <0.05 Consequent(Competence-Comic Wit) X(Ad Attitude) a 0.758 0.059 <0.001 c‘ 0.734 0.149 <0.001 M(Brand Equity) - - - b 0.535 0.140 <0.001 constant i1 1.036 0.244 <0.001 i2 -1.069 0.457 <0.05 R1=0.503,F(1,162)=164.00,p<0.001 R2=0.450,F(2,161)=65.894,p <0.001 Bramhuts commercials that incorporate comic wit to express sincerity indicate a higher level of brand equity and purchase intention, which supports H5, H6, and H7. The indirect effect of 0.64 reportes that two people who differ by one unit in their ad attitude estimated to vary by
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0.64 units in their purchase intention because of the tendency for those who perceived brand equity has been increased, which further translates into greater purchase intention. This indirect effect is statistically different from zero, as revealed by a 95% BC bootstrap confidence interval that was entirely above zero (0.31 to 0.92). The direct effect of ad attitude, c′ = 0.25, is the estimated difference in purchase intentions between two customers under the same brand equity but who differ by one unit in their reported ad attitude, meaning that the person feeling more positive ad attitude but who is equally committed is estimated to be 0.25 units higher in his/her purchase intention. This direct effect w statistically different from zero, t = 2.25, p = 0.000, with a 95% confidence interval from 0.03 to 0.47. The total effect of ad attitude is c = 0.89, meaning two customers who differ by one unit in ad attitude estimated to differ by 0.89 units in their reported purchase intentions. The positive sign means the person showing more positive ad attitude reports higher intentions to buy. This effect is statistically different from zero, t = 9.19, p = 0.000, or between 0.70 and 0.981 with 95% confidence..
For the consequences of sentimental comedy to show the feature of sincerity, the direct effect of ad intention was not significant (p > 0.05), which means only high brand equity can support purchase intention. The standardized link between ad attitude and purchase intention is 0.58 when the link is direct and 0.398 when brand equity is included as a mediator, a difference of 0.182. This indirect effect is statistically different from zero, as revealed by a 95% BC bootstrap confidence interval that is entirely above zero (0.277 to 0.538). The results only support H5 and H7.
