University of Groningen Master Thesis Marketing Management

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University of Groningen

Master Thesis

Marketing Management

EFFECT OF AWE AND NONSENSICAL

MESSAGES ON MARKETING

ADVERTISEMENT MESSAGE

ACCEPTANCE

Author: Jussi Naapuri

Student Number: S2544091

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Abstract

Nature has the ability to influence our emotions which in turn changes how we process information around us. This research conducted a survey to test which environment conditions evoke the emotion awe to the greatest extent, namely two conditions; views of awesome and grand nature and secondly mundane nature. This study also looked at whether awestruck consumers were more likely to have higher message acceptance for ads that contain nonsensical information, more than those witnessing mundane nature. Findings showed that the grand nature condition elicited the most awe. Respondents also rated feelings of fear, anger, sadness and feelings of insignificance higher compared to the mundane nature condition. While no significant results were found for the influence of awe and nonsense on message acceptance, this study found a marginally significant interaction effect between the level of awe and nonsense on respondents’ brand attitude. Respondents who were assigned to the mundane nature condition scored higher on message acceptance when the advertisement was paired factual messages. Other than these findings, this study researched whether openness to experience and product involvement had moderating effects on the relation between awe, nonsense and message acceptance, however, there were no significant results.

Contact Details

Name: Jussi Naapuri

Address: Kuuratie 16B, 33400 Tampere, Finland Telephone: +358406762675

Email: naapuri.jussi@gmail.com

Institution: University of Groningen, the Netherlands Master track: MSc Marketing Management

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Abstract ... 1 Contact Details ... 1 Introduction ... 3 Literature Review ... 3 Emotion ... 3 Awe ... 4 Nonsense... 5 Openness to Experience... 6 Product Involvement ... 7 Conceptual Framework ... 7 Methodology ... 8 Participants ... 8 Design ... 8 Materials ... 8 Measurement Scales ... 8 Procedure ... 10

Preliminary Analysis of Data ... 10

Results ... 11

Manipulation Check: Environment Conditions and Awe ... 11

Video Condition, Message Condition and Message Acceptance ... 11

Moderation Analysis: Openness to Experience and Product Involvement ... 12

Correlation Analysis ... 13

Discussion ... 14

Summary of Findings ... 14

Limitations and Future Recommendations ... 14

Managerial Implications ... 15

References ... 17

Appendix 1: Moderation Analysis... 20

Openness to Experience... 20

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Introduction

With the increasing amount of advertising competition, it has become more difficult for marketers to attract and hold consumers’ attention, establish strong memory traces for the advertised brand, and break through the clutter of ads (Pieters, Warlop, & Wedel, 2002). There is large body of marketing research that examines this, concerning the different execution tactics, such as humor, eroticism, and famous spokes persons, on consumer attitudes towards ads and brands. This is complemented by early theories such as classical conditioning (Staats & Staats, 1958) and mere exposure (Zajonc, 1965), which describe the evaluations of objects changing as a result of affective and associational processes that occur under various situations. These evaluations are important as they shape brand attitudes, and influence purchasing behaviour. According to Petty and Capiocco (1986), attitudes can be defined as general evaluations that people hold in regard to themselves, other people, objects and issues. The two authors showed that these evaluations can be based on a variety of behavioural, affective and cognitive experiences, and are capable of behavioural, affect or cognitive initiated change. Research has long recognised emotion as a significant aspect of the influence on customer behaviour. Specific emotions have the potential to alter persuasive impact of messages as a function of the emotional framing of persuasive appeals (DeSteno et al. 2004). Desteno et al. suggest that therefore, a source of information external to the message that can bias the likelihood of desirability estimates attached to attributes of an attitude object should be able to affect persuasion. This presents implications for marketers who seek to induce affective states in consumer mindsets that are favourable towards increasing message acceptance in marketing programmes. This may be especially relevant for advertisements that make use of exaggerated messages, i.e. puffery, which Rotfeld and Rotzoll (1980) classify as harmless exaggerations that are expressions of opinion rather than claims of an objective quality or characteristic of a product.

Promotional material that uses these boastful statements about a products services can be found in many places, in attempts to create an aura of differentiation around products, and to convince the customers of their own superiority. For example, using the coffee or wine industry, one can find the usual descriptors like ‘plum and

grapefruit’, which sometimes can be strikingly true to its description. The customer is not meant to think they

taste of this, but are rather reminiscent of them. However, another argument would be about the usefulness and effect of flowery descriptions, which tend to be about marketing more than anything else. For example, coffee marketers may advertise their products as “Crispy, finely structured, quietly distinctive. Dark chocolate and a

shifty, anise-toned fruit persist in a rich, deep finish. Creamy, full yet buoyant mouthful”. Even though coffee

is more commodity-like in nature, people may be susceptible to accepting these over-the-top descriptions, due to the various nuances involved in tasting, especially if it is advertised as a speciality product.

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Page 4 This therefore makes message acceptance one of the key factors leading to purchase intention and willingness to try a product. As mentioned earlier in the study by DeSteno et al. (2004), emotions can affect message acceptance. One of the lesser-studied emotions that has the potential to influence this is Awe. Research has shown several implications on the influence of positive affect (e.g. happiness and awe) on persuasive messages (Batra & Stayman, 1990; Mackie & Worth, 1991). However, there is a limited body of research on the effects of experiencing awe on consumer behaviour, specifically message acceptance and intent to purchase a product, and specifically, whether experiencing this emotion compared to other positive emotions such as pride and amusement leads to a higher willingness to accept pseudo-profound but factually untrue marketing messages. For this study, the wine industry will be examined as a study for the use of puffery language and nonsense, and how advertising tactics can be used to influence consumer’s willingness to purchase or try out products.

Literature Review

1. Literature on Emotion

In advertising research, understanding the emotional process in communication concerns the presumed effects of different aspects of message content on emotional response. For example, how can one compose background music that evokes feelings of joyfulness, or what aspects of visual content can convey feelings of excitement the best? Researchers from a number of disciplines have emphasised the importance of these different emotions in their impact on human behaviour and decision making (Ambler & Burne, 1999; Du Plessis, 2005; Hall, 2002). According to emotion literature, there are ‘lower-order emotions’, uncontrollable reactions which are more spontaneous, involving mainly feelings of pleasure and arousal that do not require one to be cognitively labelled as specific emotions (LeDoux, 1996, Shiv & Feodirkhin, 1999). ‘Higher-order emotions’ on the other hand depend on deeper cognitive processing of the situation, including sympathy, empathy, nostalgia and pride (Poels & Dewitte, 2006).

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Page 5 In addition to this, extensive research has been made into the idea that the matches between receiver, message, and/or source characteristics can enhance persuasion (Katz, 1960; Petty & Wegener, 1998). These present implications for marketers who aim to ‘engineer an experience’ around the product or service to elicit positive consumer responses, e.g. perceptions of credibility and quality, before a consumer fully engages with the product. Poels and Dewitte (2006) explain this idea well by suggesting that in order for marketers to ‘capture the heart of consumers’, emotional reactions need to be established before further cognitive processing of advertising stimulus takes place. In summary, feelings can provide information, and consumers can use the informational value of feelings as a heuristic, “If I feel good about it; I must like it” Schwarz (1990). The next section will look specifically at the emotion of awe and how this sensation can influence individual behaviour, and how it affects their processing of persuasive messages.

2. Literature on Awe

Of the various emotions, awe has been researched less and there are gaps in research as to how this emotion can influence attitudes towards advertisements, purchase intention, message acceptance, among others consumer-related variables. As a scientific concept, the emotion of awe has lacked a consensual meaning and concrete definition due to the ambiguity of its nature (Bonner & Friedman, 2011). According to Keltner and Haidt’s (2003) definition of awe, they suggest that first that it should be elicited by information-rich stimuli rather than the anticipation of material of social rewards, and that vastness and the need for accommodation are core features of awe-eliciting stimuli. The first element -vastness- is a perceptually-oriented term, referring to anything that is experienced as being much larger than the self, or the self’s ordinary level of experience or frame of reference. On the other hand, ‘need for accommodation’ involves a challenge of mental structures, when one fails to make sense of an experience of something vast. Keltner and Haidt (1999) suggest this emotion facilitates new-schema formation in unexpected information rich-environments, in the presence of something difficult to grasp.

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Page 6 However, other research has shown contradictory results. In a study by Griskevicius et al. (2010), the authors explored how a set of positive emotions (enthusiasm, love, amusement, among others) influence information processing, showing evidence that the emotion of awe leads to increased systematic processing, and found that participants who were induced to feel this were less persuaded by weak messages, when compared to a neutral control condition, indicating less heuristic processing. The authors attributed this to the fact that awe can be felt in response to a stimulus that cannot be accounted for by his/her current understanding of the world, and that this promotes information gathering and new schema formation. Information processing can be influenced by a number of factors, and emotion has been shown to be have significant effects on this. When examining message processing in a marketing context, persuasive message processing depends on many factors that the marketer has to take into consideration. One of these is argument strength, which has been one of the most manipulated message features in persuasion research (Johnson, Maio & Smith-McLallen, 2005). As mentioned earlier, there is a lot of nonsense that can be found in the marketing world, which will be explored in the next section below.

3. Literature on Nonsense

There are a number examples of nonsensical messages using in marketing tactics, much of which is puffery that makes subjective and vague claims concerning the strengths of products, which are difficult to prove real (Chakraborty & Harbaugh, 2014). According to the Federal Trade commission (1979): Puffery is frequently

used to denote the exaggerations reasonably to be expected of a seller as to the degree of quality of his product, the truth or falsity of which cannot be precisely determined. Instead of consumers ignoring and disbelieving

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Page 7 Research by McDougall (1910) highlighted two other components central to awe, including power and wonder. Here, he emphasised the submissiveness and admiration that resulted from being in a condition of awe. Frijda (1986) discussed that the surprise and amazement coming from experiencing wonder, individuals would enter a passive, more receptive mode of attention when they encounter something unexpected. Keltner and Haidt suggested that as a result, awe will promote an accommodative, stimulus-driven information processing which is less analytical in nature. Linking this back to nonsense, an awe-inducing stimulus followed by something unfamiliar e.g. an exaggerated marketing message, individuals may be more willing to accept the message and accommodate new information as more credible, compared to neutral states. This could be especially relevant to goods with hedonic characteristics, as awe has been shown to accentuate preferences for experiential goods (Rudd, Vohs & Aaker, 2012).

Another factor that might lead to increased willingness to accept puffery, and nonsense is through the idea that awe can lead to long for something that is more profound. Unlike other types of positive emotions, awe tends to direct attention away from one’s self to the environment (Shiota, Keltner & Mossman, 2007). In a study by Valdesolo and Graham (2014), the authors showed that awe increased agency detection in both supernatural and mundane circumstances, and that this effect were partially mediated by awe-induced changes in participant’s tolerance for uncertainty. This study showed that in the moment of awe, people may be induced to accept nonsensical information in a moment of awe and spiritual feeling and longing. However, how susceptible one is to accepting information will also depend on the extent of their analytical thinking. Pennycook et al. (2015) suggest that analytic individuals should be more likely to detect the need for additional scrutiny when exposed to profound information, vice versa with more intuitive individuals, who are more likely to respond based on first impressions.

4. Literature on Openness to Experience

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Page 8 5. Literature on Product Involvement

There are several factors which influence how consumers process information and make decisions when they purchase items, one of which is the individual’s involvement with the product category. There is a large body of literature on involvement, regarding the personal relevance of the message and how this influence purchase intent among others. According to existing research, variations of this product involvement include: ‘ego involvement’ (Rhine & Severance, 1970; Sherif, Sherif & Nebergall, 1965), ‘issue involvement’ (Kiesler, Collins & Miller, 1969), and ‘personal involvement’ (Apsler & Sears, 1968). Existing literature has shown that when individuals possess little or no knowledge about the topic, i.e. have low involvement, or when they are under time pressure, heuristic processing will dominate, in order for them to make an evaluation of whether a product or service is good or not (Hui, Zhao, Fan & Au, 2004; Wood, Kallgren & Priesler, 1985).

In a less effortful and heuristic mode of information processing, decisions are made by applying simple rules of thumb such as “consensus implies correctness”, or that “experts can always be trusted”. On the other side, Petty and Cacioppo (1986) suggest that as personal relevance increases, people become more motivated to process the issue-relevant arguments presented. Here, decisions are reached through more detailed, systematic modes of information processing (Chaiken, 1980). It is therefore reasonable to believe that when consumers encounter puffery and nonsensical messages in an advertisement of a product category they are familiar with, they are more likely to exhibit negative evaluations compared to those with low involvement. This is because high involvement consumers should be able to process information in terms of product strengths and attributes more effectively as they have more knowledge and past experiences to refer to. In summary, a framework has been developed below to visualise this current research and literature review.

Conceptual Framework

Figure 1: Conceptual Model

Hypotheses

Hypothesis 1: The level of awe will positively influence message acceptance

Hypothesis 2: The level of nonsense in a message will negatively influence message acceptance

Hypothesis 3: OTE will positively influence the relationship between the level of awe and message acceptance

Hypothesis 4: OTE will positively influence the relationship between the level of nonsense and message acceptance

Hypothesis 5: Product Involvement will negatively influence the relationship between awe/message acceptance

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Snapshot of Mundane Nature Video: Source - Harry Knitter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4s1gjF7xLc

Snapshot of Awesome Nature Video: Source - Harry Knitter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkl3rZNCvOM&t=28s

Methodology

Participants

One-hundred and eighty-eight participants (101 Male, 87 Female), ranging from age groups of 18-64 (Mean= 18-25), participated in this study. Respondents ranged from BSc and MSc students to graduates working in various occupations. Participants were gathered through social media platforms, using snowball sampling.

Design

This study has a between-subjects design, created using an online survey platform Qualtrics. The current study was part of a larger survey into the effects of awe on consumer behaviour. Independent variables in the study included “Environmental condition” (awesome vs. mundane nature), and “Level of nonsense” (Factual vs. nonsensical), whereas “Message Acceptance” was the dependent variable. In addition to this, the moderating factors of “Openness to Experience” and “Product Involvement” were also studied.

Materials

Manipulation of Awe: Two videos were used for this study to manipulate awe. One video consisted of awesome

and grand nature, with views of huge icebergs, mountain cliffs, among other landscapes. The other video showed views of mundane nature e.g. forest paths with no striking features, as a control condition. Participants were randomly assigned to either one of the videos. Also, the videos have been well established to trigger awe.

Measurement of Awe and Smallness: After viewing one of the three minute videos, the level of experienced

by participants was measured using Piff et al.’s (2015) scale. Respondents were asked to rate how much they felt the following emotions: Amusement, Awe, Disgust, Anger, Fear, Happiness and Sadness on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Participants were also asked about their feelings of insignificance, and were asked to rate the following statements: “I felt the presence of something greater

than myself, I felt small or insignificant, I felt part of some greater entity, and I felt like I was in the presence of something Grand” measured using a scale ranging from 1=Strongly disagree to 7=Strongly agree. This was

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Level of Nonsense: Participants were displayed the following advertisement of a wine brand. It shows three

bottles of wine paired with either one of two equally-lengthed descriptions, one describing the factual elements of the product, and the other just nonsensical information about the wine’s characteristics:

- Factual: In this collection of premium wine, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellar’s captured the essence of the selected Chilean Valleys and land, Stag’s Leap Reserva is the result of years of research and hard work. The secret of this exclusive creation lies in the process of working with the grapes carefully chosen from specific zones offering a unique contribution to the wine.

- Nonsensical: The overall character of Stag’s Leap wine is that of a sex-loaded scarlet, scented with every part smelling and tasting provocative, yet blooming. Its gorgeous style is burning, and amorous with an extravagant softness that is grandiose and vast. There is an edginess, sophistication, supported by dominating air, with a hint of toned-fruit overlaid on crushed rock.

Photo: The following picture of the brand Stag’s Leap was used for the wine advertisement (760x550 pixels)

Message Acceptance: This was measured using three measures: brand attitude, which asked respondents about

their feelings towards the product/brand, using the five items: Unappealing/Appealing, Bad/Good, Unpleasant/

Pleasant, Unfavourable/Favourable, and Unlikeable/Likeable. This was measured using a 7-point Likert scale

ranging from 1=Strongly disagree to 7 Strongly agree. This was followed by purchase intention, which asked participants whether they would purchase the product, using the five items: Never/Definitely, definitely do not

intend to/definitely intend to, Very low/high purchase interest, Definitely not buy it/definitely buy it, probably not/probably buy it, measured using a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1=Strongly disagree to 7 Strongly

agree. This was followed by the general liking of the advertisement, where respondents rated the following statements on a 7-point Likert Scale ranging from 1=Strongly disagree to 7 Strongly agree: “How much do you

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Openness to Experience: This is derived from the Big Five Inventory (Benet-Martinez & John, 1998; John &

Srivastava, 1999). This inventory is based on five dimensions that aims to explore an individual’s openness to experience, which includes: Ideas (Curiosity), Fantasy (Imaginativeness), Aesthetics (Artistic), Actions (Width

of Interests), Feelings (Excitable) and Values (Unconventional). Participants will report their openness to

experience on a 7-point Likert-Scale, ranging from 1=Strongly Disagree to 7=Strongly Agree. Sample items include: “I see myself as some who has an active imagination, values artistic, aesthetic experiences”. The reliability of this scale was supported by a Chronbach’s alpha of 0,701, after removing the item: “I see myself as someone who has few artistic interests (reversed)”.

Product Involvement: To measure this, we used Zaichkowsky’s scale (1985), one that can be used to measure

an individual’s involvement across several product categories. This scale involves four statements: “I would

be interested in reading information about how the product is made, I have compared product characteristics among brands of the product”, I think there are a great deal of differences among brands of the product, and I have a most preferred brand of this product”, measured on a 7-point Likert Scale, ranging from 1=Strongly

disagree to 7=Strongly agree. The reliability of this scale was supported by a Chronbach’s alpha of 0,831. Procedure

The study began with a general introduction and briefing about the purpose of study, after which we asked the participants for demographic information: Age, gender, nationality, level of education, and monthly income. Following this, we measured the participant’s openness to experience, before being randomly exposed to either the a three-minute video of awesome and grand nature, or the mundane nature which acts as a control condition. Participants were asked to imagine that they were in the environment depicted. After viewing the video, we measured the participants’ feeling of awe, and took the emotion measurement. This was followed by the wine advertisement, which was paired with randomised descriptions. Participants were then asked about their message acceptance in terms of brand attitude, purchase intention and general liking, followed by their product involvement. At the end of the survey, we informed participants about the purpose of the study and thanked them for participants. There was also space to leave their comments and email us to find out about the results.

Preliminary Analysis of Data

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Results

Manipulation Check: Environmental Conditions and Awe

First, to test whether the two different videos had a significant effect on the level of awe that respondents felt, a one-way ANOVA was conducted. Here, the video condition (awesome vs. mundane nature) was included as the independent variable, and the seven single-items of the mood measurement by Piff et al. (2015), along with a new variable consisting of the average of the four-smallness items, were included as the dependent variables. Results showed a significant effect for conditions of awesome nature on awe, anger, fear, sadness and the items asking about their feelings of smallness at p<.05. This analysis showed that respondents had stronger feelings of these emotions when they were exposed to the awesome nature condition compared to the mundane nature condition. However, emotions of amusement, disgust, and happiness were found to be insignificant at p>.10, indicating that there was not a significant difference to the extent that these emotions were felt more in either of the two conditions. Full descriptive statistics of the analysis can be found in the table below.

Table 1: Emotion Measurement

Emotion

Mean Std. Deviation

df. F-value Significance

Awe Mundane Awe Mundane

Amusement 4,12 3,72 1,745 1,485 1,100 1,513 0,222 Awe 5,04 4,08 1,668 1,700 1,100 8,257 0,005 Disgust 1,54 1,34 0,803 0,772 1,100 1,1616 0,207 Anger 1,96 1,42 1,236 0,859 1,100 6,551 0,012 Fear 2,54 1,62 1,627 1,123 1,100 10,932 0,001 Sadness 2,83 2,08 1,746 1,412 1,100 5,618 0,020 Happiness 4,58 4,74 1,460 1,382 1,100 0,335 0,564 Smallness 4,84 3,77 0,9925 1,5114 1,100 17,822 0,000

Video Condition, Message Condition and Message Acceptance

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Page 13 nature condition compared to the mundane nature condition, suggesting that under the state of awe, respondents had partially higher message acceptance than when viewed the mundane condition. When the factual message was paired with the advertisement, brand attitude was found to be lower in the awe condition compared to the mundane condition when the product was paired with a factual message. However, more research should be conducted for more conclusive findings on the interaction effect between awe and nonsense on the acceptance of marketing messages. The full statistics from the one-way ANOVA can be found in the following tables.

Table 3: Two-Way ANOVA – Message Acceptance Sub-variable Descriptives

Table 4: Two-Way ANOVA – Brand Attitude, Purchase Intention, General Liking

Brand Attitude Purchase Intention General Liking

Source F-Value Significance F-Value Significance F-Value Significance

Video Condition 0,439 0,509 0,565 0,565 1,351 0,248

Message Condition 1,327 0,252 1,093 0,298 0,009 0,930

Interaction Effect 2,603 0,110 0,000 0,995 0,288 0,593

Moderation Analysis: Openness to Experience and Product Involvement

Moderation analyses were conducted with the two variables; openness to experience and product involvement, to see whether these variables moderate the relation between the awe-measurement and message acceptance, and level of nonsense and message acceptance. Here, Andrew Hayes’ MACRO Process was used to conduct the analysis. Moderating effects were examined for the three variables of Message Acceptance, brand attitude, purchase intention and general liking. Results from the analysis showed no significant results for a moderating effect of openness to experience on video conditions and message acceptance, and for openness to experience on message condition and brand attitude and purchase intention. However, there was a marginally significant effect for the moderation of openness to experience on the relationship between the message condition and the general liking of the product, at p=.0896. The results indicate that openness to experience positively influences respondents’ message acceptance regardless of whether the advertisement is paired with factual or nonsense descriptions, supporting hypotheses three.

Brand Attitude Purchase Intention General Liking

Video Condition

Message

Condition Mean Std. Deviation Mean Std. Deviation Mean Std. Deviation N

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Page 14 For product involvement, the analyses returned no significant results for the moderating effects of involvement on the relationship between video and message condition on message acceptance. However, there was a significant main effect of product involvement on message acceptance which indicates that the higher a respondent’s score on this, the higher their brand attitude, purchase intention and general liking would be. On the other hand, significant results for the main effects were not found for the relationship between openness to experience and message acceptance. Full statistics for these analyses can be found in Appendix B.

Correlation Analysis

Finally, a correlation analysis was made to assess the relationships between the different continuous variables. The measured emotions, smallness, openness to experience, product involvement and the dependent variables: brand attitude, purchase intention and general liking, were included in this analysis. These correlations can be seen in the table below. First, one can see first that the dependent variables correlate positively with each other. For example, when an individual’s brand attitude increases i.e. more favourable, their purchase intention and general liking will also increase. When examining the correlations between the emotion items and the three dependent variables, anger was negatively correlated brand attitude at -0.221*, indicating that the more anger that respondents felt, the lower their brand attitude would be. Happiness was also positively correlated with brand attitude at 0.235*. Concerning product involvement, results showed significant and positive correlations for all variables of message acceptance, whereas for openness to experience, the correlation analysis returned no significant results, supporting earlier findings in the paragraph above. Awe was also found to be positively and significantly correlated with most other emotions, besides disgust and anger.

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Discussion

Summary of Findings

The main finding from this study showed that respondents reacted differently to the showing of the two videos. Those who were exposed to the grand nature video felt more awe, anger, fear, sadness and feelings of smallness than those who were shown the mundane nature video. Respondents also rated negative emotions stronger than those who were showed the mundane condition. Keltner and Haidt (2003) suggested that in addition to a set of positive emotions, awe-evoking environments can also elicit negative emotions such as fear and sadness, which was seen in this study. These effects were also seen in the correlation analysis, where awe had significant and positive correlations with both types of emotions. In addition, this analysis showed that anger correlated negatively with brand attitude, while the emotion of happiness had positive and significant correlations, thus influencing the respondent’s messaged acceptance of the wine advertisement.

While no significant results were found for the influence of awe and nonsense on message acceptance, there was a marginally significant interaction effect between the level of awe and nonsense on respondents’ attitude towards the brand. Respondents who were assigned to the mundane nature condition scored higher on message acceptance when the wine photo was paired factual messages, indicating a preference for marketing messages which had less puffery. However, message acceptance did not significantly differ for respondents who were assigned to the awesome nature condition. To provide more conclusive results for these interaction effects and the relationship between awe and nonsense on message acceptance, additional research should be conducted Another finding was that although there was no moderating effect of openness to experience on the relationship between the video and message condition on message acceptance, results showed product involvement to have a direct positive effect on message acceptance, specifically towards a person’s attitude on the brand, purchase intention and their general liking of the product. In the literature review, it was hypothesised that higher product involvement would negatively influence the variables of message acceptance, however, the results in this study showed otherwise. This was also seen in the correlation analysis. The next section will address the limitations of this study, and possible recommendations for future research.

Limitations & Recommendations for Future Research

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Page 16 respondents and improve the response rate e.g. a gift card that would be given to one individual. Other factors that influenced the manipulation of awe in this study include the setting in which the videos are viewed, as background noise can cause distractions and reduce the effectiveness of the videos in eliciting awe. In addition, the devices that was used to complete the survey i.e. mobile phones with small screens, or whether respondents were using headphones to listen to the nature sounds, can influence this. Another possible area of improvement would be to use a less awe-inducing environment for the control condition (mundane nature), as certain people may experience awe from walking in the forest next to a river.

Another limiting factor in this study was the small sample size and variety of respondents that participated in the survey. Respondents were primarily students in either a bachelor or master’s degrees, the majority of which were Italian and German. More heterogeneous samples could be gathered for a more diverse set of respondents, which could be achieved by relying less on snowball sampling, and by finding respondents from a number of nationalities. In summary, according to existing literature, the conceptual model and hypotheses in this study should hold. However, due to the limitations mentioned above, a more intensive study could be carried out to test the model. For example, lab experiments may provide for more suitable environments in gathering more definitive results for this area of research.

Managerial Implications

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Appendix 1: Moderation Analysis

1. Openness to Experience: Message condition and Message Acceptance

Brand Attitude

Purchase Intention

General Liking

2. Openness to Experience: Message Condition and Message Acceptance

Brand Attitude

General Liking

Coefficient Standard Error t-value p-value

Openness 0,1582 0,2001 0,7908 0,4310

VideoCondition 0,1297 0,2560 0,5067 0,6135

Interaction Effect 0,0780 0,3977 0,8450 0,8450

Openness 0,0246 0,2090 0,1177 0,9066

VideoCondition -0,1656 0,2674 -0,6192 0,5372

Openness 0,2456 0,2372 1,0356 0,3029

VideoCondition -0,3366 0,3035 -1,1092 0,2701

Openness 0,1385 0,1880 0,7366 0,4631

MessageCondition -0,2662 0,2543 -1,0469 0,2977

Openness 0,0818 0,1990 0,4111 0,6819

MessageCondition -0,2806 0,2692 -1,0425 0,2997

Openness -0,2966 1,3209 1,3209 0,1896

MessageCondition -0,0242 0,3036 -0,0798 0,9366

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Page 21 3. Product Involvement: Video condition and Message Acceptance

Brand Attitude

General Liking

4. Product Involvement: Message Condition and Message Acceptance

Brand Attitude

General Liking

ProductInvolvement 0,3155 0,1010 3,1239 0,0023

VideoCondition 0,1737 0,2453 0,7079 0,4807

Interaction Effect -0,0889 0,2021 -0,4398 0,6610

VideoCondition -0,0808 1,9785 -0,3494 0,7275

VideoCondition -0,2504 0,2709 -0,9245 0,3575

ProductInvolvement -0,3281 0,1018 3,2235 0,0017

Interaction Effect 0,2065 0,2013 1,0262 0,3073

Interaction Effect 0,3158 0,1913 1,1281 0,2620

University of Groningen Master Thesis Marketing Management