How do admiration and envy affect attitude formation towards cosmetic products based on nonsense slogans?

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How do admiration and envy affect attitude formation

towards cosmetic products based on nonsense slogans?

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How do admiration and envy affect attitude formation

towards cosmetic products based on nonsense slogans?

Completion date: 20th June, 2016

Master thesis

Msc Marketing, specialization Marketing Management University of Groningen- Faculty of Economics and Business

By LILLA SZOMBATI Student number: S2849313 Van Houtenlaan 27. 9722GR Groningen Phone: +31 (0) 658839227 Email: l.szombati@student.rug.nl

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Abstract

Since for cosmetics and beauty companies the usage of endorsers is a common tactic, it is crucial to them to find the best fitting endorser to represent the company. Another well- known characteristics of cosmetics’ marketing slogans are the nonsense or absurd contents of them. However, many studies have investigated the beneficial effects of advertiser credibility on consumers’ attitudes toward a brand or company (see Harmon and Coney, 1982; Grewal et al., 1994; Lafferty and Goldsmith, 1999), this thesis supplemented the previous researches by examining the extent to which two set of emotions (envy and admiration) felt toward the endorser influence the evaluations of these nonsense slogans. Results of the research on this question are discussed and consequences are drawn in the present work.

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Management summary

Since for cosmetics and beauty companies the usage of endorsers is a common tactic, it is crucial to them to find the best fitting endorser to represent the company. Another well- known characteristics of cosmetics’ marketing slogans are the nonsense or absurd contents of them. However, many studies have investigated the beneficial effects of advertiser credibility on consumers’ attitudes toward a brand or company (see Grewal et al., 1994; Lafferty and Goldsmith, 1999), this thesis supplements the previous researches by examining the extent to which two set of emotions (envy and admiration) felt toward the endorser influence the evaluations of these nonsense slogans. One can find that the extremity level of these messages are divided into two main groups, namely high and low, which means that this work will distinguish between these two level of extremity of message contents in order to gain more insights on the nature of these messages. The results of this study can be used by marketers to be able to plan their future campaigns more effectively taking into account the feelings potential customers have toward the endorsers and how these influence their attitude formation toward the company. In fact, consumers’ attitude toward an advertisement is proved to mediate the effectiveness of advertisements (Mackenzie et al., 1986), which is crucial for companies in order for them to be able to sell their products and stay competitive.

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5 engage in deep information processing affects the way how the different nonsense messages are evaluated. Results revealed that participants who felt admiration during the experiment, have the most number of relevant thoughts, meaning that they engaged in deep information processing when they were exposed to these slogans. In conclusion, based on the results, those endorsers of cosmetics who trigger admiration from consumers, are advised to be presented in marketing campaigns due to their beneficial effects on positive attitude formation.

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Preface

I daresay, my decision approximately one year ago of continuing my studies at the University of Groningen can be considered as one of my best ones so far. I have had the opportunity to get to know a very different culture, language and system than in which I grew up in Hungary. The experiences I gained throughout this year taught me a lot about inter alia vocation, friendship, hard work, the respect of each other and of course mostly about myself. These things cannot be taken away from me by anyone and I wave goodbye to Groningen with slightly heavy heart. I would like to take the opportunity to thank my supervisor, dr. Yannick Joye for his guidance throughout the process of working on this thesis. Thanks to his continuous motivation and his trust placed in me, now this thesis can be read instead of lying in the garbage somewhere unfinished.

Furthermore, I would like to thank my family for the opportunity that I could continue my studies at this university. Last but definitely not least, I would like to thank Daniel for his never ending patience and support throughout this challenging year.

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List of tables

Table 1: Different scenarios regarding the manipulation of emotions ... 23

Table 2: Extremity of the tested messages ... 24

Table 3: Frequencies of Age, Gender and Education ... 27

Table 4: Distribution of Condition and Nonsense ... 27

Table 5: Normality test on Attitude and Thoughts ... 28

Table 6: Pairwise, Multiple comparison and Estimates for Attitudes ... 33

Table 7: Pairwise Comparisons and estimates for Thoughts ... 35

Table 9: Results of Moderation analysis ... 37

Table 10: Summary of findings ... 38

Table 11: Results of Pearson's Chi-square tests ... 54

Table 8: Results of Mediation analysis ... 57

List of figures

Figure 1: Conceptual model ... 20

Figure 2: Examples of advertisements used in the experiment ... 23

Figure 3: Manipulation testing: scores on Perceived admiration as a function of Condition ... 29

Figure 4: Manipulation testing: scores on Perceived benign envy as a function of Condition ... 30

Figure 5: Manipulation testing: scores on Perceived malicious envy as a function of Condition 31 Figure 6: Condition and Nonsense on Attitude ... 34

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1. Introduction

While the Luxury goods market spends an average of 6.6% (as a percent of total sales), the Cosmetics market expends an average of 25.1% on advertisements (Ernst and Young, 2015). Cosmetic companies concentrate their spending of their total sales on different tools of advertisements, such as social media, television ads, e-commerce and others.

Since for cosmetics and beauty companies the usage of celebrity endorsers is a common tactic, it is crucial to them to find the best fitting endorser to represent the company. Furthermore, another well-known characteristics of cosmetics’ marketing messages are the absurd or nonsense contents of them. Many studies have investigated the beneficial effects of advertiser credibility on consumers’ attitudes toward a brand or company (see Harmon and Coney, 1982; Lafferty and Goldsmith, 1999). Mackenzie and Lutz (1989) took one step closer and examined the importance of the combined effect of advertiser credibility and advertising claim extremity on the credibility of the advertisement itself. Found by the authors that advertisement credibility influences consumers’ future attitudes toward the brand and the company. This study (among many others) lack the examination of how different emotions and the content extremity of claims affect attitude formation toward brands or companies that are endorsed by someone. Consequently, to the best of our knowledge, no empirical studies tried to investigate the boundaries of customers’ attitudes toward the brands, when it comes to the content extremity of nonsense messages presented by endorsers in cosmetics advertisements, who trigger different emotions from the potential consumers.

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10 two emotions will be construed, which further influences the acceptance of cosmetics advertisements. The thesis investigates how two set of emotions, envy and admiration affect the way consumers evaluate marketing messages and how these affect consumers’ attitude formation. Thus, leading to the following main research question: ‘How do the emotions of admiration and envy affect the way consumers evaluate nonsense cosmetics advertisements?’.

By examining this problem, marketing specialist of cosmetics companies can gain insights on the mechanism and the extent to which nonsense messages can lead to positive attitude formation under two specific emotions of their customers. This can be a useful, scientific base of their future marketing campaigns regarding the usage of endorsers and the extent to which endorsers can make people believe irrelevant, but well drafted slogans. On the other hand, not only marketing specialist, but also casual people can gain insights and become more conscious

customers in the future.

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2. Theoretical and conceptual framework

Hereinafter, this chapter includes the theoretical background of the proposed problem, including the examination of the relevant literatures, illustration of the conceptual model and the proposition of the related hypotheses of this work.

2.3 Emotions towards the endorser

The first independent variable in the conceptual model used by this thesis consists of two emotions customers have toward the endorser presented in the marketing advertisement, namely admiration and envy. In this chapter, one can find the exact definition of these emotions followed by the theoretical background of these on customers’ attitude formation.

In regards to affective attitude formation, affect- as - information hypothesis refers to the fact that in many cases, feelings influence customers’ evaluations through feeling- based inferences (Fennis and Stroebe, 2016). Pham (1998) found that customers sometimes rely on experienced feelings about products, where these feelings are influenced by both context factors and attitude objects. Further suggested by Pham (1998) that this misattribution fades when customers’ mood state is attributed to the information about the attitude object. To sum up, ones’ decision is most likely to be influenced by the mood state when the decision is about a product that is not essential, which is true to many cosmetics, such as make up products or perfumes, for instance. Furthermore, Fennis and Storebe (2016) emphasizes that the attributes of an endorser can be used both as a heuristic cue and as arguments at the same time to influence attitudes toward the product. The authors refer to this as ‘Multiple- role assumption’, which depends on the level of motivation of the consumers to engage in message relevant thinking.

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12 possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it” (Parrott and Smith, 1993, p 906). Van de Ven et al (2009) distinguishes two types of envy, benign and malicious envy. While malicious envy leads to frustration and the feeling of that the other person’s advantage is undeserved, benign envy is a more positive feeling. People who feel benign envy think that the other person’s advantage is well-deserved (Van de Ven et al, 2012).

2.3.1 Admiration and envy

Next, the two emotions are investigated and described in more details regarding their role in attitude formation.

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13 performance, meaning that admiration results in lower effort and motivation to complete a task than benign envy (Van de Ven et al., 2009).

Based on the literature presented, it is assumed that people, who feel admiration toward an endorser would spend less time on evaluating marketing messages, which leads to less carefully evaluations. Meaning that these participants may not realize the nonsense nature of these messages. Petty and Cacioppo (1986) emphasizes that only those people are affected by the quality of the arguments, who think about the content of the messages. Since time spent, motivation and cognitive effort also play important roles in the evaluation of persuasive messages (Fennis and Stroebe, 2016) – the latter two are necessary criteria of customers’ central route information processing, which is responsible for systematic information processing (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986) - the following hypothesis is formulated:

Hypothesis 1a: Admiration leads to higher likelihood of positively evaluating exaggerated or nonsense messages.

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14 proved that time spent, motivation and cognitive effort also play important roles in the evaluation of persuasive messages (Fennis and Stroebe, 2016).

Related to the core problem of this thesis, it is assumed, that people who feel benign envy toward an endorser will realize the nonsense nature of them, meaning that they will evaluate them more critically.

Hypothesis 1b: Envy leads to a significantly lower likelihood of positively evaluating exaggerated or nonsense messages.

2.1 Extremity of “nonsense” content

Besides emotions, the ‘Extremity of the nonsense content’ is also assumed to influence participants’ attitude formation, thus used as the second independent variable of this thesis. This variable is examined with two possible variations, high and low. This chapter includes the relevant theories, literature background of this variable.

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15 to have the following structure in order for them to be evaluated favourably by the consumers: (1) well- structured product claims, (2) data provided to strengthen these claims and (3) messages need to contain conditional rules describing the relationship between the presented data and claims. Because of the nature of ‘bullshit’ (nonsense) messages, these structure are not present in the marketing messages that are the object of this study. Since the acceptance of the message content (which can occur even if the message is only partly comprehended) is crucial for positive evaluation of these messages, thus positive attitude formation (MacKanzie et al., 1986), it is assumed that the higher the nonsense content of these messages, the less they will be evaluated favourably, consequently, leading to less favourable attitudes.

Hypothesis 2: The extent of message extremity negatively influences consumers’ attitude formation toward endorsed cosmetics.

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16 advertisement and spokespersons.

Since MacMillan et al. (2005) proved that stakeholders evaluate the company’s reputation based on (next to other variables) their emotions toward the managers of the company, it is assumed that admiration (which triggers positive evaluation of the admired person) have a positive effect on the extent to which the highly and less exaggerated messages of this study are judged and relates to positive attitude formation. Meaning that it is expected based on the literature presented before that even highly nonsense messages will be accepted by those who are manipulated in a way to feel admiration.

Hypothesis 3: Those who feel admiration toward an endorser are more likely to positively evaluate even the high extremity content messages, than those who are faced with envy. Meaning that both high and low extremity content messages will be evaluated significantly better by the admiration group.

2.4 The mediating effect of message processing

Next, in this chapter the mediating effect of consumers’ message processing on envy and admiration is proposed.

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17 only one low effort process people engage in while forming attitudes, and investigates the usage of different heuristics or simple rule of thumb (Fennis and Stroebe, 2016). There can be different heuristics on which consumers rely on, but the related to this work, the most interesting is the ‘liking-agreement’ heuristic, developed by Eagly and Chaiken (1993). Based on their theory, during attitude formation and acceptance of persuasive messages, people will rely their decision making on the extent to which they like the source of the information. Fennis and Stroebe (2016) argues that during the decision making about the evaluation of a message, people will rely on either heuristics cues contained by the message or the quality of the arguments. It is further argued by the authors that people rely on heuristics when they are not motivated or lack the ability of engaging in systematic processing and quality of the arguments play important role for those who are motivated and able to process messages. Furthermore Fennis and Stroebe (2016) emphasize the importance of motivation on evaluating messages, because with the lack of motivation people tend not to put much effort to engage in message-relevant thinking, thus they are likely to rely on heuristics.

Vladas et al. (2010) not only argues that positive emotions of the consumers result in increased reliance on heuristics, but also proved three types of positive emotions, namely anticipatory enthusiasm, amusement and attachment love, to result in more positive evaluation of persuasive messages. Since Van der Ven et al. (2010) found that the feeling of benign envy result in more motivation and time spent on solving a specific task than admiration, the following conclusion can be drawn. It is assumed that participants, who were put in the mood of admiration, are more likely to form positive attitude toward exaggerated or nonsense messages due to less systematically process they engage in than those who feel benign envy. Leading to the presumption that information processing mediates the effect of emotions on evaluating nonsense messages.

Based on the literatures presented, the following hypothesis are formulated:

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2.5 The moderating effect of consumers’ cognitive capability

Chapter 2.5 consists of the examination of the relevant literature regarding the effects of consumers’ cognitive capability on the attitude formation of exaggerated messages.

Besides motivation, time and peace of mind, processing ability plays a key role for consumers in evaluating the validity of arguments in a marketing message (Fennis and Stroebe, 2016). Many studies had been stated the same and proved the importance of consumers’ ability to process the information on attitude formation (see Kallgren and Preisler, 1985; Maheswaran, 1994). In their study the authors (Kallgren and Preisler, 1985) proved that more knowledgeable participants were less influenced by the communicated message than those with little knowledge. Meaning that more knowledgeable participants were influenced by the arguments stated in the messages, while less knowledgeable participants relied on the heuristic cues was used by the examiners, namely the length of the messages. Maheswaran (1994) further argues that less knowledgeable people tend to rely on heuristics (in their study, the country of origin), while more knowledgeable people tend to rely on the quality of the arguments presented by the marketing message. This study states that knowledge moderates the reliance on heuristic cues. Moreover, Pennycook et al. (2015) found that people’s reasoning ability (which has a strong relationship with their cognitive ability) moderates the extent to which people accept ‘pseudo- profound bullshit’ statements. They propose that those people who can argue better, are more likely to deny these messages and rate them as ‘bullshit’.

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19 Hypothesis 5: Participant’s cognitive capability assumed to moderate the effect of the message content extremity on attitude formation, meaning that lower cognitive capability leads to more likelihood of positive attitude formation.

2.6 Conceptual model and hypotheses

In this chapter, one can find the summary of the hypotheses that are formed based on the presented literature and the conceptual model of this work.

Figure 1 illustrates the conceptual model of this thesis, including two independent variables, namely the ‘Extremity of nonsense content’ of messages and ‘Emotions towards the endorser’. Furthermore it shows the relationship between these two independent variables and the dependent variable, namely the ‘Attitude towards the brand/ product’. Figure 1 also shows a moderator, namely ‘Cognitive capability’, on the relationship between the ‘Extremity of the nonsense content’ and the dependent variables. Last but not least, it also illustrates the mediating effect of ‘Message processing’ on the relationship between the ‘Emotions toward the endorser’ and the dependent variables. Emotions towards the endorser (Condition) Admiration Envy Attitude towards the brand/ product

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20 Figure 1: Conceptual model

Furthermore, one can find listed below the summary of the hypotheses that are formed based on the relevant literature examined in the framework of this thesis:

Hypothesis 1a: Admiration leads to higher likelihood of positively evaluate exaggerated or

nonsense messages.

Hypothesis 1b: (Benign) envy leads to the significantly least likelihood of positively evaluate

exaggerated or nonsense messages.

Hypothesis 2: The extent of message extremity negatively influences consumers’ attitude

formation on endorsed cosmetics.

Hypothesis 3: Those who feel admiration toward an endorser are more likely to positively

evaluate even the high extremity content messages, than those who are faced with envy. Meaning that both high and low extremity content messages will be evaluated significantly better by the

admiration group.

Hypothesis 4: Message processing is assumed to mediate the effect of the two set of emotions

(envy and admiration) on the positive attitude formation.

Hypothesis 5: Participant’s cognitive capability assumed to moderate the effect of the message

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3. Methodology

After investigating the relevant theoretical background of the proposed problem, the Methodology of the research conducted is elaborated in this chapter. One can find how the conducted research is designed, the procedure through which data is gained and measures used by this study.

3.1 Research design

In order to be able to reach as many participants from different countries (Hungary and the Netherlands) cost- efficiently, an online quantitative research is conducted with the help of the platform called Qualtrics. The participants of this study were allowed to reach the online survey through an online link previously sent to them. Since the research includes two independent variables, namely the Extremity content of messages (high and low) and Emotions toward endorsers (admiration, envy and neutral) with two (content of the message) and three (emotions) variations of them, the design used for this research is a 2 by 3 experimental design. In order to avoid situations where preliminary knowledge or differences between participants influence the results, this study works with a randomly assignment of participants to the manipulations (emotions and content extremity) of the survey. Furthermore, a between-subject design is found to be suitable in order to avoid sequence effects (Aronson et al., 1998).

3.2 Participants

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22 participants out of the 126 had to be dropped out because of their lack of completing the survey, thus 124 participants’ data are the basis of the analysis.

3.3 Measures

3.3.1. Manipulation and thought- listing

In the framework of this survey, both the emotions felt by the participants and the extremity of the slogans used needed to be manipulated. Furthermore, a thought- listing procedure was asked at the end of the survey from the participants, since it is the most effective way of examining whether they engage in deep processing of the messages or not (Greenwald, 1968; Osterhouse and Brock, 1970). In the last part of the survey, participants had to indicate how many thoughts they generated during the experiment (maximum of eight thoughts), followed by the evaluation of these generated thoughts regarding their relevance of the survey. Three possible options were available for the participants to evaluate their thoughts, namely ‘neutral’, ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ related to the advertisements presented.

As for the manipulation of different emotions, the experiment of Van de Ven et al. (2010) was used as a basis. In their studies they manipulated admiration and envy with the help of different scenarios that participants needed to imagine themselves in. The same technique is used in this thesis, participants were divided into three groups randomly, and they either got into a neutral group, an admiration group or envy group. Table 1 shows the different scenarios participants needed to imagine.

Group Description of the scenario

Neutral Hans is a fellow student or colleague of yours, who is an average person with no outstanding qualities. You know him a little as you meet him almost every day, but your relationship with him is neither particularly good nor bad. One day, during a short talk with a common colleague, you got to know that in a local foot-race he finished in the 12th place out of 24. Please describe very briefly how you would feel, how you would react, what you would do if you meet him.

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23 situation.

Envy Recall a situation in which someone else was better off than you were, and you felt envy (“afgunst”) towards that person. Describe that situation in a few sentences so a reader could imagine the situation.

Table 1: Different scenarios regarding the manipulation of emotions

After the participants writing down their experiments regarding these feelings, each of them (regardless of the triggered emotion) were asked to evaluate their current emotions and feelings, by answering the questions to what extent they feel admiration, benign- and malicious envy, using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1=’not at all’ till 5=’very much’.

As for the manipulation of message extremity, participants were randomly assigned to evaluate either highly or less extreme or nonsense messages. The messages were put on different pictures of cosmetic products in order for the participants to be able to imagine these messages as real slogans of advertisements (see examples: Figure 2).

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24 The extremity of the messages was manipulated with the help of the study and definition by Pennycook et al (2015), which is the following: “messages that consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous” (Pennycook et al., 2015; page 549). Table 2 shows the tested messages and their extremity extent.

Extent of extremity Tested slogan

High The secret of good skin is the womb of new bliss

High Apply, and illuminate incredible creativity

High Make your skin a modality of positive miracles

High When beauty opens the door of joy

High Show a symphony of unbridled energy, and start using moisturizing cream

Low This cream will make your skin less dry

Low Apply three times a day for maximal moisturizing effect

Low Start using, and make dry skin supple again

Low By using this product, your skin will be less dry and more beautiful Low This product can be used in a way it is created for

Table 2: Extremity of the tested messages

3.3.2 Attitude towards the products (in terms of willingness to buy)

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3.4 Procedure

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4. Results

In this chapter, the necessary analyses are conducted and their results are presented in order to test the hypotheses formed in the previous chapters. First, the setting up of the dataset and descriptive statistics are presented, followed by the testing of the hypotheses formed based on the literature review. Last but not least, the findings are summarized in Chapter 4.3.

4.1 Setting up the data and Descriptive statistics

In this chapter, the necessary analysis prior testing the hypotheses of this work can be found. First, all of the answers had to be reviewed and analysed in regard to accuracy and precision (Malhotra, 2010) in order for the data to be suitable for further analysis. The survey was filled out by 126 participants in total, of which 124 finished it, meaning that 2 participants’ answers had to be deleted (dropout rate: 0. 02%).1 The number of participants, who were each randomly assigned individually to one of the 6 different conditions, met the requirement set up by Hair, Black, Babin and Anderson (2009). Consequently, all the six conditions (nonsense: two levels, emotion: three levels) have at least 20 participants, thus the dataset is suitable for proceeding further analyses and testing the hypotheses.

Next, one can find the distribution of the dataset based on the variables Age, Gender and Education of the participants. The results are presented in Table 3 below. Furthermore, in order to see whether the different age groups, education levels and gender of the participants were equally distributed among the six conditions, Pearson’s Chi-square tests were conducted. The results of the analysis (Appendix 3) shows that there are no significant difference regarding age, gender and education across the three emotional conditions (i.e. Condition; all p’s > . 247) and the two nonsense conditions (i.e. Nonsense; all p’s > . 220). Lastly, Table 4 summarizes the distribution of the participants regarding Condition and Nonsense.

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27 Age Frequency 0-18 8 (6.5%) 19-25 69 (55.6%) 26-50 41 (33.1%) 51-100 6 (4.8%) Gender Male 57 (46%) Female 67 (54%) Education2 Primary School 8 (6.5%)

Secondary/ High school 23 (18.5%) Bachelor degree 40 (32.3%)

Master degree 53 (42.7%)

Table 3: Frequencies of Age, Gender and Education

Condition Frequency Neutral 50 (40.3%) Admiration 37 (29.8%) Envy 37 (29.8%) Nonsense High 63 (50.8%) Low 61 (49.2%)

Table 4: Distribution of Condition and Nonsense

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4.2 Normality test

This chapter discusses the results of the necessary Normality tests. Since the ANOVA is used for examining the differences of means of normal distribution data, prior the hypotheses and manipulation testing, normality test had to be conducted with the results summarized by Table 5.

Variables Skewness Std. Error

Skewness Kurtosis Std. Error Kurtosis Attitude 0.184 0.217 -0.652 0.431 Thoughts 0.357 0.217 -0.631 0.431 Education -0.721 0.217 -0.480 0.431

Table 5: Normality test on Attitude and Thoughts

Table 5 provides the results of the Normality test conducted on the dependent variable (Attitude), the mediator (Thoughts) and on the moderator (Education). It can be seen that the data meets the requirements of Normal distribution, meaning that the values for Kurtosis analysis are between -1. 96 and -1. 96 and for Skewness the values should be between -0. 05 and 0. 05. Important to note that this value (Skewness) for Education lies out of this range with a Skewness value of -0. 721, which means the data distribution of education is moderately skewed, but still acceptable. All in all, the results show that the data provided by the survey are suitable for further analyses, because of the values still being in the acceptable range.

4.3 Manipulation check

As of a Manipulation check, three one-way ANOVAs were conducted with the variable, Condition (Neutral, Admiration and Envy) as independent variables and the emotion items (i.e. Perceived admiration, Perceived benign envy and Perceived malicious envy) as dependent variables (Appendix 4).

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29 condition (M = 2. 32, SD = 1. 292; p = . 000) or the Neutral condition (M = 2. 20, SD = 0. 95; p = . 000) participants. Perceived admiration did not differ between the Neutral and Envy condition (p = . 839). Furthermore, Figure 2 illustrates the means of the Perceived admiration among the three groups of emotions: Admiration, Envy and Neutral.

Figure 3: Manipulation testing: scores on Perceived admiration as a function of Condition

Second, there was a statistically significant effect of Condition on Perceived benign envy, F (2, 121) = 29. 14, p = . 000. Planned comparisons (using Tukey’s LSD) revealed that Perceived benign envy in the Envy condition (M = 3. 51, SD = 1. 193) was significantly higher than in the Admiration condition (M = 2. 73, SD = 1. 12; p = . 005) or the Neutral condition (M = 1. 78, SD = 0. 887; p = . 000) participants. Perceived benign envy also differed between the Neutral and Admiration condition (p = . 000). Furthermore, Figure 3 illustrates the means of the Perceived benign envy among the three groups of emotions: Admiration, Envy and Neutral.

4,38 2,32 _2,2 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 5

admiration envy neutral

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30 Figure 4: Manipulation testing: scores on Perceived benign envy as a function of Condition

Third, there was a statistically significant effect of Condition on Perceived malicious envy, F (2, 121) = 11. 99, p = . 000. Planned comparisons (using Tukey’s LSD) revealed that Perceived malicious envy in the Envy condition (M = 2. 41, SD = 1. 26) was significantly higher than in the Admiration condition (M = 1. 81, SD = 1. 10; p = . 032) or the Neutral condition (M = 1. 34, SD = 0. 66; p = . 000) participants. Perceived malicious envy did not differ between the Neutral and Admiration condition (p = . 082). Furthermore, Figure 4 illustrates the means of the Perceived malicious envy among the three groups of emotions: Admiration, Envy and Neutral.

2,73 3,51 1,78 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4

Me an s o f ev alu atin g b en ig n en v y Condition

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31 Figure 5: Manipulation testing: scores on Perceived malicious envy as a function of Condition

4.4 Testing the hypotheses

In this chapter, the predicted relationships between the variables, thus the formed hypotheses of this work are empirically tested. One can find in this chapter the individual examination of each hypotheses formed before, followed by a short summary, which includes the main findings of the hypotheses testing.

4.4.1 Effect of Condition and Nonsense on Attitude

In order to be able to examine the group differences between the mean values of Attitude across the independent variables, namely Nonsense and Condition a two-way ANOVA had to be run. Furthermore, the analysis also took into account whether the interaction between the two independent variables (Nonsense and Condition) showed any effects on Attitude. The two-way ANOVA, followed by a Tukey post hoc test, were conducted using Nonsense and Condition as independent variables and Attitude as dependent variable.

The two-way ANOVA with Nonsense and Condition as the between- subjects variables and participants’ Attitude toward the marketing messages as the dependent variable, revealed

1,81 2,41 1,34 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3

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32 statistically significant main effects of Condition, F (2, 118) = 6. 86, p = . 002 but no such effects of Nonsense, F (1, 118) = 1. 39, p = . 241. Furthermore, the analysis resulted in statistically significant interaction effects between Condition and Nonsense, F (2, 118) = 7.50, p = . 001 (Appendix 5).

4.4.1.1 Planned comparisons within Condition

The results indicated that the group of Admiration rated the messages the most favourably (M = 3. 02, SD = 0. 14), followed by the group of Neutral (M = 2. 42, SD = 0. 12) and Envy (M = 2. 38, SD = 0. 14) participants. Pairwise comparison of the Condition revealed statistically significant differences between both Admiration and Envy (Mean difference = 0. 64), F (2, 118) = 6.86, p = . 002 and Admiration and Neutral (Mean difference = 0. 60), F (2, 118) = 6. 86, p = . 002. Meaning that Admiration significantly leads to the best evaluation of the examined slogans. In contrast, there were no significant differences between Neutral and Envy (Mean difference = 0. 04), F (2, 118) = 6. 86, p = . 818 group of participants.

4.4.1.2 Planned comparisons within Nonsense

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33 4.4.1.3 Planned comparisons for interaction between Condition by Nonsense

Hereinafter, also the examination of the effects of Condition by Nonsense on Attitude was included in the analysis. Results of the comparison are presented in Table 6. Lastly, figure 5 illustrates the development of the means of Attitude of the High and Low Nonsense messages

among the three group of participants, namely Admiration, Envy and Neutral.

Table 6: Pairwise, Multiple comparison and Estimates for Attitudes

Important to note that within the High Nonsense condition, marketing messages are the most favourably evaluated by the group of Admiration (M = 3. 547, SD = 0. 195) followed by the

Pairwise comparison (Attitude)

Condition Condition Mean difference P value

Admiration Envy 0.67 .003

Neutral 0.61 .004

Neutral Envy 0.06 .945

Nonsense Nonsense Mean difference P value

High Low 0.18 .241

Condition x Nonsense Nonsense- Nonsense Mean difference P value

Admiration High- Low 1.047 .000

Envy High- Low -3.19 .258

Neutral High-Low -1.82 .451

Estimates (Attitude)

Condition x Nonsense Nonsense Mean Standard Deviation

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34 group of Envy (M = 2. 22, SD = 0. 19) and the group of Neutral (M = 2. 33, SD = 0. 17) participants. Multiple comparison of the Condition revealed statistically significant differences between both Admiration and Envy (Mean difference = 0. 67), F (1, 118) = 14. 03, p = . 003 and Admiration and Neutral (Mean difference = 0. 61), F (1, 118) = 14. 03, p = . 004. Meaning that Admiration significantly leads to the best evaluation of the High Nonsense slogans.

Figure 6: Condition and Nonsense on Attitude

4.4.2 Interaction between Condition, Nonsense and Thoughts

Hypotheses testing was continued by another two-way between- subjects ANOVA analysis, using Condition and Nonsense as fixed factors and the Thoughts as independent variable.

The two-way ANOVA analysis with Nonsense and Condition as the between- subjects variables and Thoughts participants had during the experiment as the dependent variable, revealed neither statistically significant main effects of Condition, F (2, 118)= 0. 23, p = . 797 nor of Nonsense, F (1, 118) = 1. 66, p = . 200. Furthermore, the analysis resulted in no statistically significant interaction effects of Condition by Nonsense, F (2, 118) = 2. 02, p = 0. 137 (Appendix 6).

3,547 2,223 _2,333 2,5 2,541 _2,515 2,1 2,3 2,5 2,7 2,9 3,1 3,3 3,5

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35 Table 7 summarizes the results of the Pairwise comparisons including the Estimates of the variables. The Pairwise comparison revealed no statistically significant differences between the variables, meaning that all p values were higher than . 05. However, the analysis showed

marginally significant differences within the High Nonsense condition.

Table 7: Pairwise Comparisons and estimates for Thoughts

Pairwise Comparison (Thoughts)

Condition Condition Mean difference P value

Admiration Envy -0.205 .684

Neutral 0.110 .814

Envy Neutral 0.315 .503

Nonsense Nonsense Mean difference P value

High Low 0.504 .200

Low High -0.504 .200

Condition x Nonsense Nonsense- Nonsense Mean difference P value

Admiration High- Low 1.281 .073

Envy High- Low -0.624 .382

Neutral High- Low 0.856 .163

Estimates (Thoughts)

Condition x nonsense Nonsense Mean Standard Deviation

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36 Figure 7: Estimated Marginal Means of Thoughts

4.4.3 Mediation analysis

Chapter 4.4.3 interprets the results of the Mediation analysis conducted in order to examine the following hypothesis: ‘Message processing is assumed to mediate the effect of the two set of emotions (envy and admiration) on the positive attitude formation.’

After conducting the necessary ANOVA to examine the effects of Condition and Nonsense on the predicted mediator valuable (Thoughts) next a mediation analysis was carried out using the SPSS Macro PROCESS (Model 4) developed by Hayes (2013). During the analysis, Attitude was treated as outcome variable (Y), Condition (admiration vs envy) as independent variable (X) and finally Thoughts as proposed mediator variable (M). The results of the analysis (Appendix 7) showed that bias- corrected 95% confidence interval (1000 bootstrap samples) for the indirect effect of Condition (envy vs admiration) through Thoughts did not include zero (- 0 . 0244 to – 0 . 0192). Based on these findings, it could be confirmed that the differential effect of Condition

4,947 4,2 4,625 3,667 4,824 3,769 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Esti m ated M arg in al M ea n s

Estimated Marginal Means of

Thoughts

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37 (envy vs admiration) on Attitude was caused by Thoughts. To conclude, Hypothesis 4 had to be marked as supported.

4.4.4 Moderation analysis

This chapter discusses the results of the Moderation analysis conducted in order to examine the following hypothesis: ‘Participant’s cognitive capability assumed to moderate the effect of the message content extremity on attitude formation’.

The test of this assumed moderation effect was carried out by using the SPSS Macro PROCESS (Model 1) developed by Hayes (2013). When proceeding the analysis, Attitude was treated as outcome variable (Y), Nonsense as independent variable (X) and Education as moderator variable (M). The results of the analysis showed no interaction effect of Nonsense by Education (p = . 2852, LLCI = - 0. 1646, ULCI = 0. 5545). Consequently, Hypothesis 5 had to be rejected, meaning that based on the findings, Education does not moderate the effect of Nonsense on Attitude. Further results of the moderation analysis are presented by Table 9.

Outcome: Attitude

Coefficients Se T P LLCI ULCI

Constant 4.4566 .9901 4.5013 .000 2.4963 6.4169

Education -.5100 .3016 -1.6908 .0935 -1.1072 .0872

Nonsense -.7872 .5913 -1.3314 .1856 -1.9579 .3834

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38 4.4.5 Summary of the findings

Lastly, Table 10 summarizes the main findings of the hypothesis testing analyses conducted in the framework of this thesis. The list of the hypotheses can be found below with the results of the hypothesis testing, marked as either ‘Supported’, ‘Partly supported’ or ‘Not supported’.

Hypothesis # Description of the hypothesis Supported/not

supported H1a Admiration leads to higher likelihood of positively

evaluating exaggerated or nonsense messages.

Supported H1b (Benign) envy leads to significantly the least likelihood of

positively evaluate exaggerated or nonsense messages.

Not Supported H2 The extent of message extremity negatively influences

consumers’ attitude formation on endorsed cosmetics.

Not Supported H3 Those who feel admiration toward an endorser are more

likely to positively evaluate even the high extremity content messages, than those who are faced with envy. Meaning that both high and low extremity content messages will be evaluated significantly better by the admiration group.

Partly Supported

H4 Message processing is assumed to mediate the effect of the two set of emotions (envy and admiration) on the positive attitude formation.

Supported

H5 Participant’s cognitive capability assumed to moderate the effect of the message content extremity on attitude formation

Not Supported

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39

5. Discussion

Chapter 5 elaborates on the main conclusions of the research, which was carried out in order to gain insights on the extent to which admiration and envy affect attitude formation toward cosmetics brands and companies that promotes their products. One can find conclusions, theoretical- and managerial implications and limitations included in this chapter.

5.1 Conclusions

In conclusion, the focus of this work lied on the investigation of the extent to which two set of emotions (envy and admiration) felt toward the endorser influence the evaluations of cosmetics’ nonsense marketing slogans. After formulating hypotheses based on the examination of topic relevant literature, the research was carried out by using a 2 (high and low nonsense) x 3 (admiration, envy, neutral emotion) designed quantitative research with the participations of one-hundred and twenty-six persons. The participants of the study had to fill out an internet based survey (which was sent to them via social media and direct emails) in such a way that they were randomly assigned to one of the six previously mentioned conditions.

The results of the study revealed that those participants whose emotions were manipulated in such a way that they felt admiration during the experiment evaluated the presented marketing slogans, regardless the nonsense extremity, significantly better than those of who were assigned to a group of envy or neutral emotion. Consequently, Hypothesis 1a could be labelled as ‘Supported’. Contrary to the expectations of Hypothesis 1b, the feeling of envy did not result in significantly the least favourable evaluations of these messages. However, important to mention that despite of the lack of significance, the findings showed that the group of envy participants rated the slogans of cosmetics the least favourably.

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40 Thus, extremity of advertising messages did not influence participants’ attitude formation towards endorsed cosmetics brands. Interestingly, on one hand high nonsense content messages were evaluated significantly the best by the group of admiration, leading to the partly acceptance of Hypothesis 3. On the other hand, surprisingly, low nonsense content messages were rated the best by the group of envy participants, although this result was not statistically significant.

As for the assumed mediating and moderating effects, the results of the research demonstrated statistical significance during the mediation analyses, meaning that Thoughts significantly affects the way how Condition influences Attitude. As for the moderation analysis, the results revealed no statistically significant relationships. Consequently, while Hypothesis 4 had to be approved, Hypothesis 5 were rejected. Nonetheless, the fact that participants with admiration both had the most number of thoughts (although, this effect showed no significance) and both evaluated high nonsense messages the most favourably can form the basis of future researches.

To sum up, this work investigated the following research question: ‘How do the emotions of admiration and envy affect the way consumers evaluate nonsense cosmetics advertisements?’. The results indicated that admiration significantly lead to the most positive attitude formation of endorsed cosmetics. Admiration leads to the most favourable evaluations of nonsense content messages both in case of generally speaking and both in case of specifically high nonsense

content messages.

5.2 Limitations and future research

Hereinafter, the limitations of the present empirical study and suggestions for future researches are more specifically elaborated in this chapter.

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41 network of the author. Due to this network, the research also lacks the generation of 51 plus age persons. Important to note, according to a research conducted by the National Research Agency, in Hungary between the age group of 25 and 64 years only the 37% of the citizens speak a foreign language and one quarter of them speaks it on a considerably high level (Portfolio.hu, 2013). These limitations can be considered important, since the proxy used for consumers’ cognitive capability is education, meaning that the under representativeness of the lower education levels and the age group of 51 years plus generation may have violated the results. Consequently, the usage of education as a proxy of consumers’ cognitive capability is not the most suitable solution of measuring the moderation effect of consumers’ cognitive capability. At the same time, because of the circumstances of the study (limited time and opportunities), asking all participants to fill out personalized IQ tests were not realistic and feasible.

Second, the distribution of the three different emotions conditions also showed inequalities, meaning that the condition of neutral mood (i.e. the control group) were highly overrepresented in the survey. One could find that while the control group consisted of 50 participants, the envy and admiration included 37 persons each. These irregularities in the number of participants of the different groups assumed to be due to the small number of participants. Meaning that future researches with a higher number of participants would be beneficial and advised in order to increase the reliability of these results.

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42 has on the success of imagination of the given emotion.

Fourth, during the analysis of the generated thoughts by the participants, it turned out that many participants thought that it is compulsory to mention 8 ideas/ thoughts that he or she had during the experiment. This effect may have caused violated results, however the description of the question was the following: “Please list the thoughts that came to your mind (maximum 8) after filling in this survey. Use the boxes (one thought per box) below!”. Since Thoughts were proposed as possible mediators of this study, further research is advised in order to get more reliable results with regards to the mediation effect of systematic processing.

Fifth, the pictures used during the research are made by the author of the thesis, who has no qualifications for editing images. The results of the thought- listing indicated that many people did not like the pictures presented in the study, meaning that it may have influenced their answers. Thus, in future researches the usage of professionally edited pictures are proposed in order for the results to be more reliable.

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43 researches concentrating on this effect can explore further interesting and useful findings.

In conclusion, the present study had to operate with a number of limitations, meaning that future researches, taking into account the above presented facts, are advised in order to get more reliable results on how admiration and envy toward the endorser affect the way cosmetics companies’ and brands’ nonsense marketing messages are evaluated.

5.3 Managerial implications

Since for cosmetics and beauty companies the usage of endorsers is a common tactic, it is crucial to them to find the best fitting endorser to represent the company. Another well- known characteristics of cosmetics’ marketing slogans are the nonsense or absurd contents of them. However, many studies have investigated the beneficial effects of advertiser credibility on consumers’ attitudes toward a brand or company (see Harmon and Coney, 1982; Grewal et al., 1994; Lafferty and Goldsmith, 1999), this thesis supplements the previous researches by examining the extent to which two set of emotions (envy and admiration) felt toward the endorser influence the evaluations of these nonsense slogans. One can find that the extremity level of these messages are divided into two main groups, namely high and low, which means that this work will distinguish between these two level of extremity of message contents in order to gain more insights on the nature of these messages. The results of this study can be used by marketers to be able to plan their future campaigns more effectively taking into account the feelings potential customers have toward the endorsers and how these influence their attitude formation toward the company. In fact, consumers’ attitude toward an advertisement is proved to mediate the effectiveness of advertisements (Mackenzie et al., 1986), which is crucial for companies in order for them to be able to sell their products and stay competitive.

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44 envy. Meaning that admiration toward an endorser has beneficial effects on the evaluation of the marketing messages, leading to more positive attitude formation.

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45

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http://www.portfolio.hu/gazdasag/munkaugy/37_beszel_idegennyelvet_de_az_angolt_csak_negy eduk_jol.190226.html (Downloaded: 31-05-2016)

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48 25. Pennycook, Gordon; Cheyne, James Allan; Barr, Nathaniel; Koehler, Derek J; Fugelsang, Jonathan A. (2015) ‘On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit’. Judgment and Decision Making 10.6 (Nov 2015): 549-563.

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49 33. Petty, R.E., Ostrom, T.M. and Brock, T.C. (1981). Cognitive Responses in Persuasion. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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7. Appendices

Appendix 1: Survey flow

Dear participant, my name is Lilla Szombati and I study Marketing at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Currently, I am writing my master thesis in the field of marketing management. I would like to thank you in advance for participating in my study and your contributions to my research! I can assure you that all your answers will be treated confidentially. You can start the survey by pressing the button ´next´.

_ _ _

What is your age? _ _ _

What is your gender? Male / Female

Cognitive capability of the consumer: What is your highest education level? primary school secondary/high school bachelor degree master degree PhD or higher _ _ _

I will now ask you a number of questions. There are no right or wrong answers, just indicate what you think generally applies most to you. Press ‘Next’ to continue.

_ _ _

Neutral control:

(based on Van de Ven et al, 2010)

Please spend a few minutes by trying to imagine the following situation:

Hans is a fellow student or colleague of yours, who is an average person with no outstanding qualities. You know him a little, as you meet him almost every day, but your relationship with him is neither particularly good nor bad.

One day, during a short talk with a common colleague, you got to know that in a local foot-race he finished in the 12th place out of 24.

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52 Thank you for writing down your memory! After this, please answer the following questions by pressing the ‘next’ button.

Controlling questions:

Please evaluate the following questions by using the following scale ranging from 1=’not at all’ till

5=’very much’.

To what extend could you recall this memory? 12345

To what extend do you feel awe or admiration? 12345

Attitude and Extremity of the nonsense content (participants got either high or low, not both): High extremity:

(based on Pennycock et al, 2015)

Please take a look at this advertisement of a skin care product, and read the slogan very carefully. Based on your reading of the slogan, evaluate the following questions by using the added scale, ranging from 1= 'I would not consider buying this product' to 5= 'I would definitely buy this product'.

‘The secret of good skin is the womb of new bliss’

1= Strongly disagree 2 3 4 5=I would definitely buy these products ‘Apply, and illuminate incredible creativity’

1= I would not consider buying these products 2 3 4 5=I would definitely buy these products ‘Make your skin a modality of positive miracles’

1= I would not consider buying these products 2 3 4 5=I would definitely buy these products ‘When beauty opens the door of joy’

1= I would not consider buying these products 2 3 4 5=I would definitely buy these products 'Show a symphony of unbridled energy and start using moisturizing cream'

1= I would not consider buying these products 2 3 4 5=I would definitely buy these products Low extremity:

'This cream will make your skin more shining'

1= I would not consider buying these products 2 3 4 5=I would definitely buy these products 'Apply three times a day for maximal moisturizing effect'

1= I would not consider buying these products 2 3 4 5=I would definitely buy these products 'Start using, and make your dry skin supple again'

1= I would not consider buying these products 2 3 4 5=I would definitely buy these products 'This product can be used in a way it is created for'

1= I would not consider buying these products 2 3 4 5=I would definitely buy these products 'By using this product, your skin will be less dry and more beautiful'

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53 Processing of the message: -measurement of cognitive responses

(Priester and Petty, 2003)

Please list the thoughts that came to your mind (maximum 8) after filling in this survey. Use the boxes (one thought per box) below!

Please evaluate the thoughts using the following three options: “positive”, “negative”, “neutral” related to the advertisement!

thought 1- pos/neg/neut thought 2- pos/neg/neut etc

Please evaluate the thoughts using the following three options regarding the thought: „focused on

the product in the advertisement”, „the spokesperson associated with the topic”, or „neither”. thought 1- focused on product/spokesperson associated/neither

thought 2- focused on product/spokesperson associated/neither etc

This is the end of this survey!

Thank you so much for filling in this questionnaire! By filling in this questionnaire, you provided so much help to me, as it is part of my master thesis, which investigates the extent to which people accept nonsense messages by famous endorsers of cosmetics.

Have a nice day! Admiration:

Recall a situation in which someone else did something very well, and you experienced a strong sense of admiration ("bewondering") towards that person. Describe that situation in a few sentences, so a reader could imagine the situation.

Thank you for writing down your memory! After this, please answer the following questions by pressing the ‘next’ button.

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54 Envy:

Recall a situation in which someone else was better off than you were, and you felt envy ("afgunst") towards that person. Describe that situation in a few sentences, so a reader could imagine the situation.

-Same questionnaire-

Appendix 2: Outlier analysis Appendix 3: Chi-square tests P value Age * condition .833 Age * nonsense .220 Gender * condition .247 Gender * nonsense .566 Education * condition .261 Education * nonsense .402 Table 10: Results of Pearson's Chi-square tests

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55 Appendix 4.2: Manipulation check- perceived benign envy

Appendix 4.3: Manipulation check- perceived malicious envy

How do admiration and envy affect attitude formation towards cosmetic products based on nonsense slogans?

How do admiration and envy affect attitude formation

towards cosmetic products based on nonsense slogans?

How do admiration and envy affect attitude formation

towards cosmetic products based on nonsense slogans?

Abstract

Management summary

Preface

Table of contents

List of tables

List of figures

1. Introduction

2. Theoretical and conceptual framework

2.3 Emotions towards the endorser

2.1 Extremity of “nonsense” content

2.4 The mediating effect of message processing

2.5 The moderating effect of consumers’ cognitive capability

2.6 Conceptual model and hypotheses

3. Methodology

4. Results

Estimated Marginal Means of

Thoughts

5. Discussion

6. References

7. Appendices