Leen Adams

The effectiveness of regulatory (in)congruent ads: the moderating role of an ad’s rational versus emotional tone

In a 2 (ad tone: emotional versus rational) × 2 (ad’s regulatory focus: prevention versus promotion)× 2 (viewer’s self-regulatory focus: prevention versus promotion) between-subjects experimental design, the effectiveness of fair trade campaigns is tested. The results show that, in the case of a rational ad, regulatory congruence (versus incongruence) effects were found (though only for prevention focused people), whereas in the case of an emotional ad, regulatory incongruence (versus congruence) effects were found (though only for promotion focused people).

Healthy or unhealthy slogans: That's the question

An experiment was conducted to examine the effect on adolescents of different health appeals (healthy versus unhealthy) in ads for healthy and unhealthy perceived foods. The results did not reveal a main effect of product or slogan, but indicated a significant interaction effect between slogan and product. The healthy slogan only led to significantly more positive attitudes and purchase intentions when it promoted a healthy food product. An unhealthy food product received better results in combination with an unhealthy slogan than with a healthy one. This indicates that adolescents react better to ads in which the health appeal is congruent with the health perception of the product. Moreover, we took into account gender and health concern as potential moderators in the relationship between slogan and ad responses. Gender did not lead to different responses to healthy or unhealthy food ads, whereas health concern did interact significantly with the slogan type. Highly concerned adolescents responded more favorably to a healthy slogan in terms of attitudes. A necessary first step seems to be making adolescents more health conscious. A following step is to reinforce their positive attitudes toward healthy foods and turn these into real behavior.

The Effectiveness of Emotional and Rational Regulatory (In)congruent Messages for a Fair Trade Campaign

According to research on message framing, messages that are factually equivalent, but framed differently, often lead to differences in persuasion (Yi and Baumgartner, 2009). Most previous research on message framing has compared message frames that differ in overall valence, i.e., positive frames versus negative frames (Rothman and Salovey, 1997; Levin et al., 1998). Message framing in terms of a prevention versus promotion outcome focus lately received an increased academic interest. This way of framing is based on the self-regulatory focus theory of Higgins (1997), stating that people can be classified as either relatively more promotion-focused or relatively more prevention-focused. Furthermore, this theory proposes that message (frame) effectiveness depends on consumers’ underlying motivational orientations (e.g., Aaker and Lee, 2001). That is, when the message frame is congruent to the viewer’s self-regulatory focus, the message is assumed to be more effective (Higgins, 2002). Although ample evidence supporting this regulatory congruency principle has been found (e.g., Latimer, et al., 2007; Yi and Baumgartner, 2008), the boundaries of this principle are still insufficiently studied. So far, studies have mainly focused on differently framed rational messages. To our knowledge, no studies were conducted yet to scrutinize the effectiveness of differently framed emotional messages despite the importance of emotions in consumer decision-making and their use in realistic ads (Pham, 1998). Therefore, the current study wants to complement prior academic research by examining the moderating role of message type (i.e., rational vs. emotional) on the effectiveness of regulatory congruent versus incongruent messages.