Transformational advertising via Instagram and its impact on expected happiness and willingness-to-pay

The introduction of Instagram has opened up an important marketing channel, enabling a new way of advertising through user-generated content. The present study aimed to experimentally investigate the impact of transformational, as compared to informational advertising via Instagram on women’s expected happiness and willingness-to-pay for the advertised product while taking into account personal heterogeneity. Participants were 135 females aged 18 to 35 who were randomly assigned to view either a set of Instagram images of a dietary product with a transformational appeal i.e. a thin model, a set with images of a dietary product with an informational appeal or a control set of a non-dietary product with an informational appeal. The results showed that exposure to images of the diet product together with a thin model did not differ in its effect on expected happiness from the dietary product alone. Further, the regression analysis revealed that participants exposed to any of the dietary product related image sets scored lower on expected happiness as compared to the control set. Importantly, however, the images with the transformational appeal did lead to a greater willingness-to-pay for the advertised product. Thus it was concluded that the illustrated thin ideal body as well as the topic of “dieting” in itself can carry negative connotations leading to a reduced level of expected happiness. Nevertheless, the transformational format does bear additional value to the message recipient. The results support existing research of thinness promoting media effects on women and extends these to “new” media formats.