Jae Min Jung

A cultural paradox in authority‐based advertising

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine an important exception to the “value congruity hypothesis,” which holds that advertising should be more effective when it is congruent with cultural values. It documents a paradoxical “reverse authority effect” among young adult consumers in traditionally high power distance (PD) countries.Design/methodology/approach – Two experiments were conducted using data from traditionally high (South Korea in Study 1, Thailand in Study 2) and low (USA in Study 1) PD countries. Data are analyzed by variance analyses (multivariate analysis of covariance, analyses of variance) and regression.Findings – Results show a reverse authority effect in Korea and attenuation of this effect in the USA (Study 1). Results also show a reverse authority effect in Thailand (Study 2), suggesting the generality of the effect across young consumers in traditionally high PD countries. It appears that a shift away from traditional cultural values has occurred in the course of modernizatio...

The impact of emotional arousal levels and valence on product evaluations: From regulatory goal perspective

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the moderating roles of emotional arousal levels (elevated vs mild) and emotional valence (positive vs negative) stemming from outcomes of self-regulatory goal pursuit in understanding effectiveness of the product attribute type on product evaluation. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the literature on goals, emotions and behaviors, this research advances and tests hypotheses with two studies and an ANOVA. Findings – This study shows that when consumers experience positive emotions stemming from the success of self-regulatory goals (approach vs avoidance), the impact of product attribute type on product evaluations is primarily driven by the emotional arousal levels and that the type of regulatory goals does not matter. In contrast, when consumers experience negative emotions stemming from the failure of goal pursuit, the impact of product attribute type is determined not only by the emotional arousal levels but also by the type of goals. Practical implicati...

The interplay between consumer self-view, cognitive style, and creative visual metaphors in print advertising

Abstract This paper examines the use of an advertising rhetoric technique – visual metaphor, and its persuasion effects in light of consumers’ cultural and individual dispositional characteristics when processing visually relational information. Of particular interest are the culturally driven self-views and individuals’ cognitive thinking styles. An experimental study involving visual metaphor manipulations in the context of print advertising was conducted. Results showed that, visual metaphor techniques significantly enhanced the persuasion outcomes through consumers’ evaluation of the advertising message and the brand. Both consumers’ self-construal orientation and their analytic-holistic processing style, moderate the effects of visual metaphors in print ads for low-involvement products, but not for high-involvement products. Implications for academics and practitioners, as well as future research directions suggested through the current experiment, are discussed.

Effects of Self-Construals on Consumer Assertiveness/Aggressiveness Evidence From Thai and U.S. Samples

This study investigates the effects of self-construals (independent self and interdependent self) on consumers’ tendency to be assertive or aggressive in their interaction with retail sales representatives. For this, the study employs samples from the United States and Thailand and tests the hypotheses through multigroup confirmatory factor analysis and full structural equation modeling. The results indicate that independent (interdependent) self-construals had positive (negative) effects on consumer assertiveness and aggressiveness. The implications of these results and some avenues for future research are discussed.