Investigating the persuasiveness of using narratives in sponsored blogs on consumers’ brand attitude and purchase intention : -- integrating the mediating effects of transportation and persuasion knowledge

UNIVERSITEITVANAMSTERDAM

Investigating the persuasiveness of using

narratives in sponsored blogs on consumers’

brand attitude and purchase intention

-- integrating the mediating effects of transportation and persuasion knowledge

Jingyi Shi 11368462 Master’s Thesis

Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Communication Science

Thesis supervisor: Marieke Fransen 01-02-2018

2

Investigating the persuasiveness of using narratives in

sponsored blogs on consumers’ brand attitude and purchase

intention

- integrating the mediating effects of transportation and persuasion

knowledge

ABSTRACT: Narratives have been considered as an approach to persuading consumers and

overcoming resistance (Dal Cin, Zanna, & Fong, 2004). Nowadays, marketers are also embedding narratives in blogs to promote brands and products covertly. The experiment in this paper examines the direct effect of blog format (narrative vs. non-narrative) on brand attitude and purchase intention. Also, the mediating effects of persuasion knowledge and narrative transportation on the relationship between blog format and brand attitude and purchase intention. 143 people were recruited to participate in this study. The results showed that there is an indirect effect of narrative transportation between blog format and brand attitude and purchase intention, although there is no significant direct effect of blog format on brand attitude and purchase intention. Therefore, to make narratives in sponsored blogs effective in persuading consumers, marketers may need to create attention-grabbing content that can get consumers transported.

Introduction

Nowadays, blogs have become a prevailing way to express opinions or tell stories online. People who read blogs usually have their favorite bloggers and follow their updates. Over

3 500,000 new blog posts and 400,000 blog comments are produced every day, reported by Blogging.org (2012). Among all the blogs, many of them are talking about products and brands. And bloggers can post a negative, positive, or neutral critique of a certain product or service. So marketers see blogging as an opportunity to promote brands and products. Also, according to Becker-Olsen (2003), sponsored content can effectively engender customers’ positive response toward the advertiser. Then brands start to sponsor famous bloggers to endorse their products in their blogs and write positive comments about them, expecting that viewers might have more positive thoughts towards the brands or products mentioned in the blog than after exposure to a commercial. As this sponsoring approach is adopted by more and more brands, consumers could have got used to sponsored content and may be harder to persuade. Besides, people following the bloggers usually want to get informed with helpful information or be entertained by the content instead of being persuaded (Dal Cin, Zanna, & Fong, 2004), so they may experience negative feelings when they see brand-related content in those blogs. In this situation, if the viewers notice the brand-related content and recognize the persuasive intent of the blog, it means that the persuasion knowledge of the viewer is activated (Friestad & Wright, 1994). The activation of persuasion knowledge can subsequently negatively affect consumers’ evaluations of brands and cause viewers’ resistance to persuasion (Wei, Fischer & Main, 2008), which means viewers can in turn have a more negative attitude towards the brand mentioned in the blog.

To avoid generating viewers’ negative attitudes, bloggers started to embed narratives into their blogs to help hide brands’ intention to persuade viewers. Narratives are messages that present information in a story format as opposed to an abstract format and contain emotionally appealing information, which is designed to engage the audience (Dahlstrom, 2014). They can

4 present the benefits of products in a meaningful way and get audience transported (Edson Escalas, 2004). According to Adaval and Wyer (1998), consumers arrived at more positive evaluations of vacations described in a narrative than of vacations described by a list of attributes. On the one hand, argued by Dal Cin, Zanna, and Fong (2004), narratives can overcome viewers’ resistance in two ways, reducing the amount of counterarguing and increasing involvement with narrative. However, on the other hand, viewers exposed to the blog content may still recognize the persuasive intent of those sponsored blogs and in turn have a negative attitude towards the brand mentioned in the blog. Therefore, the effectiveness of narratives in sponsored blogs may be influenced by people’s persuasion knowledge activated by the content.

The persuasiveness of narratives also depends on viewers’ transportation with the narratives. According to Chang (2009), a narrative advertisement can generate more cognitive and emotional engagement, which will lead to more favorable attitudes toward ads and brands in situations of enough cognitive capacity to process. However, in situations where consumers reading a non-narrative content are less transported, they can cognitively process the brand-related content more critically. Thus, using narratives in sponsored content could be stronger in reducing negative responses. However, this may have negative impact on brand evaluations if the consumer gets too transported with the story and does not realize that there is any brand-related information in the narrative content.

So, the research question of this study is, to what extent using narratives in sponsored blogs influence people’s brand attitudes and purchase intention, and to what extent this effect is mediated by persuasion knowledge and narrative transportation. This study may help to

5 improve the effectiveness of sponsored content and give insights to marketers, such as whether to use and how to use narratives in sponsored content to better persuade consumers. Also, researchers can get inspirations from the present study for research topics or to furtherly advance the study.

Theoretical framework

Narratives in a blog context

Narratives are messages that present information in a story format as opposed to an abstract format, which is designed to engage the audience and contains emotionally appealing information (Dahlstrom, 2014). In some cases, storylines are embedded with the intent of influencing behavior (Moyer‐ Gusé, 2008). In other cases, the storylines are added for their dramatic appeal but nonetheless may incidentally promote products or behaviors. For example, narratives can be used in blog context to promote products and brands, especially in sponsored blogs.

Sponsored blog posts are blog articles written by bloggers who receive benefits from sponsoring marketers to review and promote products on their personal blog (Lu, Chang, & Chang, 2014). Sponsored blogs have become a prevailing approach to persuading consumers because the blogs with positive comments on brands commonly lead to positive brand attitudes and stronger purchase intention (Ballantine & Au Yeung, 2015). The results of a study done by Lu, Chang, and Chang (2014) also showed that consumers have highly positive attitudes toward sponsored blogs, which improves purchase intention. But sponsored blogs with different characteristics

6 may differ in the effectiveness in persuasion. For instance, in the blog context, it is common that bloggers present a personal narrative, which means they tell their personal stories in their blogs. So if they need to promote a product, they can write their blog embedded with a narrative, which tells a story with the product or brand in it based on their own or someone else’s experience. It is easier in this way to hide their persuasive attempt and convince consumers this product “they used” or brand “they had an experience with”.

Narrative messages have been tested by several studies to be more effective than non-narrative messages in persuading consumers (Lu,2013; Lane, Miller, Brown, & Vilar, 2013). According to Hinyard & Kreuter (2007), narrative refers to a story with an identifiable beginning, middle and end providing information about characters, scenes and plots. For years, narratives are used on television, radio and other media to promote certain behaviours, which is commonly used as a strategy in entertainment education. Researches also have shown positive relations between using narratives in television shows or films and customer responses (Boush et al. 1994; Derbaix and Pecheux 2003; Lawlor and Prothero 2008).

The use of narrative messages as a persuasion tool is referred as narrative persuasion. Based on an extensive review on narrative persuasion by Dal Cin, Zanna and Fong (2004), narratives can overcome resistance by reducing the amount and effectiveness of counterarguing or critical thinking of the persuasive message and increasing involvement with the story. As they said, “ it is much more difficult to argue against people’s ‘real experience’ as conveyed in a narrative.” So consumers become less skeptical of the message. Besides, based on the study done by Edson Escalas (2004), narrative processing in response to a narratively structured advertisement is positively related to consumers’ brand attitudes and purchase intention.

7 So the first two hypotheses are proposed as follow.

H1: Consumers exposed to narrative blogs will have a more positive brand attitude than consumers exposed to non-narrative blogs.

H2: Consumers exposed to narrative blogs will have a stronger purchase intention than consumers exposed to non-narrative blogs.

Narrative transportation

Dal Cin, Zanna and Fong (2004) suggested that the effect of narrative messages on readers’ attitudes is dependent on the extent to which a reader is involved with the narrative message itself, which is being referred to as transportation (Green & Brock, 2000). According to Green and Brock (2000), transportation refers to a convergent process, where all mental systems and capacities become focused on the narrative message. When consumers are reading a story, especially with a clear storyline, they respond to the characters and picture the events as they unfold. According to Deighton et al. (1989), a higher degree of dramatization in a commercial leads to greater absorption and transportation into the commercial. Similarly, in the blog context, narratives in the blog creates a story that viewers will follow and get transported, while non-narrative blog which does not include a story cannot get viewers transported.

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H3: Consumers exposed to narrative blogs will get more transported than consumers exposed to non-narrative blogs.

Persuasion of narrative structure occurs through transportation, a mental process in which people become absorbed in a story and thus transported into a narrative world where they temporarily lose access to real-world facts (Green & Brock, 2002). They also conducted studies supporting their assumption that the more transported respondents are, the more they intended to adopt beliefs conveyed in the narratives. Because if narratives induce consumer transportation, they are absorbed into the story so that they also create the sense of a real experience, strongly identify with the story characters and then reduce negative responses towards the brand mentioned in the content (Green & Brock, 2000).

Besides, this is supported by the information processing model ( Lang,1995;2000). There are two basic assumptions based on this model. First, people are information processors. Second, a person’s capability to process information is limited. Processing information needs mental resources, and people only have limited amount of mental resources. People can be processing a few pieces of information at the same time. However, if all your mental resources are used to process the messages, you have no capacity left to process one more piece of information (Lang, 2000). Likewise, if the sponsored blog contains a narrative, readers will get transported and allocate their mental resources into processing the narrative, with limited mental resources left to process the information about products or brands. For sponsored blogs without narratives, people can allocate all their cognition resource to produce arguments and will rely on

9 the arguments to make evaluations of the brand. In this way, consumers come up with fewer counterarguments and more positive attitudes toward the product via stories versus abstract blog posts, which only presents the attributes of the product.

The study of Escalas (2004) indicated that transportation includes strong emotional responses and low levels of critical thought, which, in turn, affect ad attitudes and brand evaluations. Also, a study done by Edson Escalas (2004) showed that narrative processing in response to a narratively structured ad is positively related to SBCs (self-brand connections), which in turn have a positive relationship with brand attitudes and behavioral intentions.

Therefore, the hypotheses are proposed as followed.

H4a: Transportation of the message has a positive relationship with brand attitudes.

H4b: Transportation of the message has a positive relationship with respondents’ purchase intention.

In addition, we hypothesize:

H4c: The effects of blog format on brand attitude and purchase intention are mediated by transportation.

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Persuasion knowledge model

Persuasion Knowledge Model (Friestad & Wright,1994) describes how people’s knowledge of the marketer’s goals impacts their response to persuasion attempts. Campbell & Kirmani (2000) further explained that persuasion knowledge refers to consumers’ knowledge about persuasion and their beliefs regarding marketers’ motives, strategies, and tactics and ways of coping with persuasion attempts. The main assumption of persuasion knowledge is that the more persuasion knowledge you have, the less susceptible you will feel towards the persuasive messages. In a way, you have more knowledge about how to deal with persuasive attempts. Friestad & Wright (1994) also conclude that there is a marked difference between the acceptance of information given in a non-persuasive atmosphere and when the consumer recognizes the persuasive intent. Indeed, many of the new media advertising formats used today intend to ‘hide the truth’ at least partially from consumers and pretend that integrated commercial materials are just a natural part of the content.

One of the aims of the present study is to investigate how persuasion knowledge plays a role in the effects of sponsored blogs on customers’ brand attitudes and purchase intention. Most online advertising formats nowadays are trying to hide their persuasive intent through developing pleasant and less intrusive formats, such as sponsored content (Cauberghe & de Pelsmacker 2010). Likewise, the main aim of embedding narratives in sponsored blogs is to persuade consumers more covertly. In previous studies, According to Tutaj & van Reijmersdal (2012), recognition of advertising format, understanding about persuasive content and ad skepticism are higher for banner ads than for sponsored content. This finding indicates that the more covert persuasive intent will lead to less persuasion knowledge. Besides, the persuasive intent of narrative blogs seems more covert than that of non-narrative sponsored blogs,

11 considering that non-narrative sponsored blogs present the attributes of the products more directly.

Therefore, the hypothesis is proposed as follow.

H5: Sponsored blogs using narratives will lead to less activation of persuasion knowledge than sponsored blogs without narratives.

According to Persuasion Knowledge Model (Friestad & Wright, 1994), there is a marked difference between the acceptance of message given in a non-persuasive atmosphere and when the viewer realizes the persuasive intent. Usually, people do not want to get persuaded (Brehm, 1966). So people tend to resist persuasive attempts when they recognize them (Sagarin, Cialdini, Rice, & Serna, 2002; Wei, Fischer, & Main, 2008). That is, when sponsored content activates persuasion knowledge and causes more critical attitudes, this may lead to resistance to the persuasive message. The study done by Wei, Fischer, & Main ( 2008) showed that activation of persuasion knowledge can negatively affect consumers’ evaluations of embedded brands in covert marketing.

Furthermore, persuasion knowledge activated from an ad has an impact on people’s attitude towards the ad, which in turn has an impact on people’s attitude towards the brand in the ad.

When resistance to a persuasive message occurs, it is unlikely to induce more favorable attitudes (Tormala & Petty, 2002). Supporting this assumption, several studies have shown that

12 the activation of persuasion knowledge leads to a less favorable brand attitude (Wei et al., 2008; Lee, 2010). Also, people evoke negative persuasion knowledge when presented with cues that make persuasive intent highly salient. And their brand evaluations and purchase decisions are likely to be more favorable when the persuasive intent of the content is less salient according to Kirmani & Zhu (2007). In other words, if the content showed less overt persuasive intent, consumers would evoke less persuasion knowledge, which leads to more positive brand attitudes and stronger purchase intention.

Therefore, the hypotheses are proposed as follow.

H6a: The activation of persuasion knowledge has a negative relationship with brand attitude. H6b: The activation of persuasion knowledge has a negative relationship with purchase intention.

In addition, we hypothesize:

H6c: The effects of blog format on brand attitude and purchase intention are mediated by persuasion knowledge.

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Diagram 1 Conceptual Model

Method

Participants and design

This experiment had a between-subject design and was conducted online. The factor was blog format (narrative vs. non-narrative). Excluding that 48 people stopped participating in the middle of the experiment, other 95 respondents (70 female, 25 male, mean age = 24.33 years, SD =3.29) volunteered to participate in this study and finished the experiment. 48.4% of the participants have obtained a Master’s degree, and 45.3% have obtained a Bachelor’s degree.

Procedure

The experiment consisted of two parts. The first part required participants to finish reading a blog about the shoes of Dr. Martens. Participants enrolled in the study by clicking the link that was sent by the experimenter. The participants themselves did not know that they were randomly assigned to either the narrative blog or the non-narrative blog, which is the manipulation part of this experiment. After finishing reading the blog, participants were required

Blog format (narrative vs. non-narrative) Brand attitude Purchase Intention Persuasion Knowledge Narrative transportation

14 to finish a questionnaire measuring their brand attitude, purchase intention, narrative transportation, activation of persuasion knowledge and then demographic information such as age and gender, which was also the sequence in which the variables measured.

Independent variable

The stimulus blog consisted of a one-page blog for Dr. Martens’ boots. In both non-narrative blog and narrative blog, the same pictures showing the shoes on male and female models were included. In the non-narrative blog, only the attributes of Dr. Martens’ boots were presented, such as “Waterproof” and “Long durable”. In the narrative blog, the same attributes presented in the non-narrative condition were all mentioned, except that it had a storyline. The story told that the blogger struggled deciding which shoes to buy for the coming winter and ended with finding a lot of benefits after she bought one pair of winter boots from Dr. Martens (see the Appendix). The only difference is the narrative embedded in the narrative blog. The boots of Dr. Martens’ were chosen as the stimulus product due to the reasons that they are used in a repeated fashion and relevant for daily wear.

Mediators

Persuasion knowledge. Respondents’ persuasion knowledge invoked by the blog were

measured by seven items that were adjusted and based on the compositions proposed by Wright, Friestad & Boush (2005), which measured participants’ activated persuasion knowledge. Three items were deleted from the scale due to low reliability. Four items were used in this scale. Two items of them were: “While I was reading the story, I thought it was pretty obvious that the blog was trying to persuade me to buy the products mentioned in the blog.” The blog is

15 about products and brands”. The items were measured using a 7-point scale, where 1 means strongly disagree, and 7 means strongly agree. Reliability of the scale was satisfactory (Cronbach’s α = .75). Responses to the items were averaged (M = 4.40, SD = 1.13).

Transportation. The transportation was measured using a ten-item scale. They were adjusted

and based on Green and Brock’s (2000) transportation scale, which measured participants’ degree of narrative transportation. Two items in the scale were: “While I was reading the narrative, I could easily picture the events in it taking place”; “While I was reading the narrative, activity going on in the room around me was on my mind ”. Each item was answered using a 7-point scale, where 1 means strongly agree and 7 means strongly disagree. Some items were reversed so that 1 means strongly disagree, 7 means strongly agree. Reliability of the scale was satisfactory (Cronbach’s α = .96). Responses to the items were averaged (M = 4.84, SD = 1.08).

Dependent variables

Brand attitude. Participants indicated their attitude towards Dr Martens on five 7-point semantic

differential scales (bad - good; unlikeable - likeable; unfavorable - favorable; worthless - valuable and very unappealing - appealing; cf. Faircloth, Capella & Alford, 2001). The five items were averaged into one brand attitude measure (Cronbach’s α = 0.97; M = 5.19, SD = 1.32).

Purchase intention. One item measured participants’ intention to buy the target brand (cf.

Tessitore & Geuens, 2013). Specifically, participants indicated the likelihood of buying products from Dr Martens (1 = extremely likely; 7=extremely unlikely). The variable was recoded to a new

16 variable by reversing the scale ( 1 = extremely unlikely, 7=extremely likely) (M = 4.91, SD = 1.59).

Results

Randomization Check

A check of the success of randomization of participants revealed no significant differences in demographic items including age , gender and education level indicating that random assignment of participants was effective (see Table 1).

Table 1 Demographic and Background Characteristics for Experimental and Control Conditions

Control group (non-narrative) Experiment group (narrative) Variables n M or % n M or % p Age (years) 47 24.98 48 23.69 Ns Education level 47 4.38 48 4.46 Ns Gender (%) Ns Female 36 76.60 34 70.83 Male 11 23.40 14 29.17

17 Test of hypotheses

To test the first hypothesis that narrative blogs will lead to a more positive brand attitude than non-narrative blogs, a t-test was conducted. The results showed that this hypothesis (H1) was not supported. The brand attitudes after reading narrative blogs (M = 5.14 , SD = 1.63 ) and non-narrative blogs (M = 4.66 ,SD = 1.53) did not differ significantly. t(95)= -1.55, p = 0.13. So, narrative blogs do not lead to a more positive brand attitude than non-narrative blogs. H1 was rejected.

The second hypothesis stating that narrative blogs will lead to a stronger purchase intention than non-narrative blogs was also tested by a t-test. According to the results of the analysis, respondents’ purchase intention after reading narrative blogs (M =5.00 , SD =1.57) did not differ significantly from respondents’ purchase intention after reading non-narrative blogs (M=4.53 ,SD=1.40), t(95)= -1.53, p = 0.13. So, narrative blogs do not lead to a stronger purchase intention than non-narrative blogs. H2 was rejected.

To test the third hypotheses that exposure to sponsored blogs with narratives will lead to more transportation in respondents than sponsored blogs without narratives, a t-test was conducted. There is a significant difference in the degree of respondents’ transportation between exposure to narrative blogs (M=4.80 ,SD=0.98) and exposure to non-narrative blogs (M=3.99 ,SD=1.14); t(95) = -3.75 , p < .001. So, narrative blogs lead to a significantly higher degree of transportation in consumers than non-narrative blogs. Therefore, H3 was supported.

18 For hypothesis 4a, to test the relationship between the degree of transportation and brand attitude, a regression analysis was conducted. In this analysis, the independent variable is Transportation and the dependent variable is Brand Attitude. The multiple regression showed that the regression model as a whole is significant, F(1, 94) = 56.09, p < .001. The degree of transportation predicted 37.6% of the variance in consumers’ brand attitudes (adj.R2 _{= .37, b =} .72, b* = .61, t = 7.49, p< .001). So, if consumers gets more transported, they have a stronger purchase intention. Thus, hypothesis 4a is accepted.

For hypothesis 4b, a multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the relationship between the degree of transportation and purchase intention. In this analysis, the independent variable is Transportation and the dependent variable is Purchase Intention. The multiple regression shows that the regression model as a whole is significant, F(1, 94) = 41.70, p < .001. The degree of transportation predicted 31.0% of the variance in consumers’ purchase intention (adj.R2 = .30, b = .74, b* = .56, t = 6.46, p< .001). So, if consumers gets more transported, they have a stronger purchase intention . Thus, hypothesis 4b is supported.

For the mediation hypothesis 4c, PROCESS analysis was used to investigate the mediating effect of narrative transportation on the relationship between blog format and brand attitude. Results indicated that there was a significant effect of blog format on narrative transportation, b = .81, SE = .22, p < .001, and that narrative transportation was a significant predictor of brand attitude, b = .75, SE = .10 p < .001.Results showed that blog format was not a significant predictor of brand attitude after controlling for the mediator, narrative transportation, b = -.19, SE = .23, ns, consistent with full mediation. These results indicated the indirect coefficient was

19 significant, b = .61, SE = .171, 95% CI = [.3132, .9694]. Thus, there is a full indirect effect of narrative transportation on the relationship between blog format and brand attitude.

To test hypothesis 5 that sponsored blogs using narratives will lead to less activation of persuasion knowledge than sponsored blogs without narratives, a t-test analysis was conducted. According to the results, there is no significant difference in the activation of respondents’ persuasion knowledge between exposure to narrative blogs (M=4.80, SD=0.98) and exposure to non-narrative blogs (M =3.99, SD =1.14), t =1.40 , p = .17. So, narrative blogs do not lead to a significantly more activation of persuasion knowledge in consumers than non-narrative blogs. H5 was rejected.

For hypothesis 6a, a multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the relationship between persuasion knowledge and brand attitude. In this analysis, the independent variable is Persuasion Knowledge and the dependent variable is Brand Attitude. The multiple regression shows that the regression model is not significant, F(1, 94) = 1.79, p = .18. The activation of persuasion knowledge has a negative relationship with consumers’ brand attitude, but the effect of persuasion knowledge is not significant, b = -.17, b* = -.14, t= -1.34, p= .18. Thus, hypothesis 6a is not accepted.

For hypothesis 6b, the activation of persuasion knowledge has a negative relationship with purchase intention, a multiple regression analysis was conducted. In this analysis, the independent variable is Persuasion Knowledge and the dependent variable is Purchase Intention. The multiple regression shows that the regression model is not significant, F(1, 94) =

20 1.45, p = .23. The activation of persuasion knowledge has a negative relationship with purchase intention, but the effect was not significant, b = -.17, b* = -.12, t = -1.20, p= .23. have no significant effect on brand attitudes. Thus, hypothesis 6b is rejected.

Also, since there are no effects of blog format on persuasion knowledge and no effects of persuasion knowledge on brand attitude and purchase intention, there is no mediation. Hypothesis 6c is rejected.

Discussion

Conclusion

Previous studies have shown that narratives play an important role in persuading people to change their beliefs or behaviours (Slater & Rouner, 2002; Escalas, 2004; Dal Cin, Zanna, & Fong, 2004). But more often, narratives are seen to be used in video games, ads or tv episodes. Although it is also widely adopted by marketers and advertisers to sponsor bloggers to promote their brands or products embedded in a narrative, few researches have been done to investigate the effects of narratives in online media formats such as blogs. Importantly, it is necessary for marketers and sponsors to know if there are direct or indirect effects between blog format (narrative vs. non-narrative) and brand attitude/purchase intention. Therefore, it is essential and critical to investigate the effects of using narratives in sponsored blogs on consumers’ brand attitudes and purchase intention.

21 According to one study done by Tutaj and van Reijmersdal ( 2012) , sponsored content can invoke lower degree of consumers’ persuasion knowledge compared with direct banner ads. However, sponsored content has different formats such as narrative content and non-narrative content. Besides, researchers have not investigated that whether sponsored content with narratives causes less or more activated persuasion knowledge in consumers than sponsored content without narratives. So, the present study specifically explored the mediating effects of activated persuasion knowledge on the relationship between blog format and brand attitude/purchase intention. Furthermore, the present study tested the mediating effects of narrative transportation.

The present study showed that there is no direct effect of blog format on brand attitude and purchase intention. Also, there is no significant difference in activated persuasion knowledge between narrative sponsored blogs and non-narrative sponsored blogs. However, there is an indirect effect of narrative transportation on the relationship between blog format and brand attitude and purchase intention. Blog formats indirectly influence viewers’ transportation into the narrative, and then consumers’ degree of transportation positively influence their brand attitude and purchase intention towards the brand mentioned in the blog. This means, first, narrative blogs can lead to more transportation than non-narrative blogs. Then if a consumer gets more transported by the narrative blog, he/she will have a more positive attitude towards the brand and a stronger purchase intention.

22 This paper provides insights into the underlying mechanisms mediating the effect of blog format on brand attitude and purchase intention. As a marketing strategy, the findings in this paper indicates that the narrative content needs to get consumers transported to positively influence their attitude or make their purchase intention stronger. Making consumers feel the using experience and putting consumers in the “blog character’s” shoes, are the key to result in their more liking the brand and purchasing the brand’s products, instead of consumers’ wandering outside the content and no change in beliefs. So when telling the story in the sponsored content, it is crucial to make the story involving and attention grasping.

Since this study used an online experiment instead of a laboratory experiment, respondents can finish the experiment wherever they are. They can stop this experiment at any time and then continue due to distraction by other activities. This could happen in people’s real life that they easily get distracted by other things during reading blogs, so the results might be more valid compared with results from laboratory experiments.

Limitations and directions for future research

In the questionnaire, respondents were asked about their demographic information. But some control variables like daily media use and daily blog reading were not included in the questionnaire. For consumers who read a lot of blogs every day, they might have been used to the sponsored blog using narratives, and the experiment materials may not have a big influence on them. For further research, they can include more questions like how often they read blogs in questionnaires.

23 The medium used in this study, online blog, may be less likely to evoke transportation compared with video/audio advertisements. With sound or visual scenes, video/audio content can better absorb consumers into the narrative. Hence, for future studies, researchers can investigate the effects of narratives in different types of medium.

This study chose Dr. Martens’ boots as the product embedded in the blogs because shoes are products people need to actually wear every day and are supposed to be an involving topic to get people engaged in the blog content. Maybe for different product types, narratives can have different impacts. The study done by Lu, Chang, and Chang (2014) indicates that when products recommended in sponsored blog posts are search goods, it can induce consumers’ positive attitudes toward sponsored recommendation posts, which improves purchase intention. While for experience goods like cars or laptops, which consumers need to spend more effort to make buying decisions, they might be more likely to think critically and objectively and harder to persuade. Thus, further studies may include product type as a moderator to see if product any moderating effect on the relationship between blog format and brand evaluations.

To conclude, the present study uncovered transportation as an crucial mediator of the effects of blog format on brand attitudes and purchase intention. This research is one of the first to examine the persuasiveness of narratives in blogs on consumers’ brand attitude and purchase intention. It does not only cast lights on previous studies in this domain, but also provide inspiration for future research on the effects of narratives in sponsored content.

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Appendix

Experiment questionnaire

Thank you for your interest in this study. The study will be conducted under the auspices of the Graduate School of Communication, a part of the University of Amsterdam.

The data is collected for a master thesis of a student enrolled in a master program of Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam. In the online questionnaire, a short blog will be displayed. Then, several questions will be asked about your thoughts regarding the blog.The study is designed to learn more about people's beliefs towards blogs.

This questionnaire will take 5 to 10 minutes to finish. Thank you for your time and patience. As this research is being carried out under the responsibility of the ASCoR, University of Amsterdam, we can guarantee that:

1) Your anonymity will be safeguarded, and that your personal information will not be passed on to third parties under any conditions unless you first give your express permission for this.

2) You can refuse to participate in the research or cut short your participation without having to give a reason for doing so. You also have up to 24 hours after participating to withdraw your permission to allow your answers or data to be used in the research. 3) Participating in the research will not entail your being subjected to any appreciable risk

or discomfort, the researchers will not deliberately mislead you, and you will not be exposed to any explicitly offensive material.

4) No later than five months after the conclusion of the research, we will be able to provide you with a research report that explains the general results of the research

Informed consent

29 the research, as described in the email invitation for this study.

I agree, fully and voluntarily, to participate in this research study. With this, I retain the right to withdraw my consent, without having to give a reason for doing so.

I am aware that I may halt my participation in the questionnaire at any time.

If my research results are used in scientific publications or are made public in another way, this will be done such a way that my anonymity is completely safeguarded. My personal data will not be passed on to third parties without my express permission.

If I wish to receive more information about the research, either now or in future, I can contact jingyi4shi@gmail.com. Should I have any complaints about this research, I can contact the designated member of the Ethics Committee representing the ASCoR, at the following address: ASCoR secretariat, Ethics Committee, University of Amsterdam, Postbus 15793, 1001 NG Amsterdam; 020‐ 525 3680; ascor-secr-fmg@uva.nl

√ I understand the text presented above, and I agree to participate in the research study.

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Below is a lifestyle blog written by a blogger. Please read carefully before you answer the questions. After finishing reading it, please tap the "Next--> " button to continue. Thank you for your cooperation!

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Q1 What do you think of Dr Martens?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 bad

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Q2 How likely is it that you will buy the products of this brand mentioned in the blog?

Extremel y likely Moderate ly likely Slightly likely Neither likely nor unlikely Slightly unlikely Moderate ly unlikely Extremel y unlikely Please choose your answer here.

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Q3 The following questions ask what you thought while you were reading the blog shown before

the questionnaire. Please indicate the extent to which you agree/disagree with the statements. (1 stands for Strongly agree, 7 stands for Strongly disagree)

1. While I was reading the blog, I could easily picture the events in it taking place.

2. When I was reading the blog, activity going on in the room around me was on my mind. 3. I was mentally involved in the blog while reading it.

4. I wanted to learn how the story ended. 5. The blog affected me emotionally.

6. While I was reading the blog, I had a vivid image of the scene. 7. While I was reading the blog, I had a vivid image of the character. 8. I found myself wandering when I was reading the blog.

9. I could picture myself in the scene of the events described in the blog. 10. The events in the blog are relevant to my everyday life.

Q4 The following questions ask you about your thoughts while reading the blog. Please indicate

the extent to which you agree/disagree with the statements ( 1 stands for strongly disagree, 7 stands for strongly agree).

1. While I was reading the blog, I thought it was pretty obvious that the blog was trying to entertain me. (Item deleted during analyses due to low reliability)

2. The blog is involving and attention grasping.(Item deleted during analyses due to low

reliability)

3. The blog is about products and brands.

4. While I was reading the blog, I thought it was pretty obvious that the blog was trying to provide me information.(Item deleted during analyses due to low reliability)

5. The blog is promotional and biased.

6. While I read the story, I thought it was pretty obvious that the blog was trying to persuade me.

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Q5 What is your gender?

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Q6 How old are you? (e.g. 23 )

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Q7 What is the highest educational level you have obtained?

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Q8 Please indicate your nationality:

▼ American (11) ... Other (27)