The Use of Rhetoric and Emotional Appeals in Fitness Ads: An Abstract

Abstract

Many consumers suffer from obesity and other health-related issues caused by overeating and lack of exercise. These conditions trigger different emotions. Some consumers experience guilt, anger, fear, and sadness, while others experience positive emotions, such as joy, hope, and pride. Consumer researchers and marketers are, therefore, interested in examining which types of ad characteristics will encourage consumer behavioral intentions and actual behavior that lead to more healthful lifestyles. This study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it integrates two important research areas, appraisal tendency framework and advertising rhetoric. Second, it includes both positive and negative emotional appeals (viz., pride and shame), thereby connecting existing coping models to emotional antecedents (Duhacheck and Oakley 2007). Third, by using a controlled ad exposure situation instead of hypothetical or recalled events, this study extends findings in appraisal theory. The Appraisal-Tendency Framework (ATF) links the appraisal processes related to various emotions to different judgment and choice outcomes (Lerner and Keltner 2000; Han, Lerner and Keltner 2007; Lerner et al. 2015). The framework is designed to predict a specific emotion’s influence on consumer decision-making. Han et al. (2007) claim that appraisal tendencies affect consumers’ content and depth of thought prior to judgment or decision-making. This study is particularly interested in the ATF’s stance on how emotions influence depth of processing. Advertising rhetoric research has shown that higher levels of processing positively influence processing outcomes, such as degree of processing, memory, and behavioral intentions (McQuarrie and Mick 1996, 1999, 2003; Mothersbaugh et al. 2002; Phillips and McQuarrie 2004). The experimental stimulus was a print ad featuring a mock brand running shoe. It manipulated the type of emotional appeal and verbal rhetorical work in the headline. A 2 × 3 between-subjects experimental design used six headlines containing an emotional appeal (pride vs. shame) and advertising rhetoric (no rhetoric, rhyme [scheme], or metaphor [trope]). ANOVA results show that not all types of emotions are effective in obtaining favorable consumer responses. We find that pride as an emotion outperformed shame on both ad copy readership and involvement with an advertisement. This favorable effect of pride over shame was especially evident when pride was used in combination with a trope as a rhetorical work but also when no rhetoric was present in the ad. Interestingly, when the rhetorical work was a scheme, no difference was observed between pride and shame in advertising outcomes.