From Emotional Appeals to Brand Attitudes: Investigating the Role of Persuasion Knowledge

Nowadays, with advertising online and offline, consumers become more and more aware and resistant to persuasion tactics, while brands work continuously to improve their marketing strategies. Inevitably, customers form attitudes towards the brands and make purchasing decisions accordingly. Brands on the other hand, want to ensure that their target audiences hold positive attitudes towards them and will engage with them in the future. One way to accomplish this is if companies release appealing advertisements. Previous research has already shown that emotionally appealing advertisements lead to favourable brand attitudes. However, this outcome is frequently influenced by other variables. One of them is persuasion knowledge. Therefore, the goal of this research is to investigate how are brand attitudes formed when ad appeal and persuasion knowledge are assessed. By using quantitative methods, a mixed-method approach was adopted. Namely, a survey together with an experiment were designed to gather the data which after the analysis will enable the researcher to answer the thesis question. The study was conducted via an online tool employing an experiment and a survey, which assessed respondents' reactions towards three advertising stimuli, 2 of which were emotionally appealing. The results showed that emotional ad appeals did not render a significant result on situational persuasion knowledge, nor on brand attitudes. However, this research is in accordance with previous studies which demonstrate that persuasion knowledge influences brand attitudes negatively. Namely, high scores of persuasion knowledge are translated in negative brand attitudes. With regards to implications, the study suggests marketing specialists to acknowledge the product type and the interest towards the respective product before designing ad appeals. Furthermore, as far as consumers are concerned, this paper advises them to be vigilant and assess critically the advertisements they encounter.