These days, there is significant growth in the concept of emotional advertising as it is likely to shape customer perception and possibly influence the customer's purchase decision and intention. The results revealed that the emotional advertisement is able to trigger customer response to the advertisement. The study also states that the impact of emotional advertising on customers' purchase decision is very weak.
Due to the changes and evolution in the culture and society, emotional advertising is considered very popular in Thailand. One of the famous emotional ads from Thailand that makes the country one of the world's most creative countries for advertising is from an insurance company called 'Thai Life Insurance' with an ad called 'Unsung Hero'. The research will focus on the power of emotional advertising to influence customers' perception and their purchase decision.
Expected Benefits
In the paper, a quantitative research approach will be implemented, in which data will be collected using an online questionnaire with 124 respondents.
LITERATURE REVIEW
- Rational and Emotional Appeal in Advertising
- Four Basic Emotions
- The Use of Emotions in Advertising
- Happiness create sharing
- Sadness create connection and empathy
- Fear/surprise create desperation for something to cling to
- Anger/disgust create more stubbornness
- Customer Perception in Advertising
- Customer’s Buying Process
- Problem/need recognition
- Information search
- Evaluation of alternatives
- Purchase decision
- Post-purchase behavior
Donald Brian Calne, "the essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions". What happens in the brain during the emotions of sadness is similar to happiness as it lights up many of the same brain areas. It is a part of the brain that helps people define the significance of any frightening event and decide how people feel emotion.
The emotion of anger is associated with hypothalamus which is a part in the brain that controls things like body temperature and the release of hormones. A study by the University of Wisconsin found that when the researchers assigned the participants to read the same blog post about a balanced discussion of the risks and benefits of nanotechnology. Out of many elements of the psychology of advertising, the perception is one of the main factors to be considered for creating an advertisement to meet the need of customers (Vogt, 2016).
Perception in advertising can help make consumers feel that they can have a lifestyle like the person they saw in the advertisement when using the same product (Vogt, 2016). Exposure, which is one of the key elements of consumer perception in advertising, includes how often consumers are exposed to a product. In this way, it can make customers realize that they are missing an opportunity to get something, or they are not counted as a member of the group if they do not use the product (Vogt, 2016).
This phase is the first and most important step in the process, because the recognition of the need leads to a buying process. Furthermore, both the internal stimuli (thoughts or feelings) and external stimuli (such as advertising or word of mouth) can motivate the need (Johnston, 2016).
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
- Research Model
- Hypotheses
- Research Design
- Data Collection Methodology
- Population
- Sampling
- Data Collection
- Data Collection Methodology
H2: There is a relationship between emotional advertising and customer perception (perception of product benefit, perception of product value and perception of brand value). The research will be conducted as a quantitative research study in which data will be collected through online survey. The data collected was clearly defined to the participants who will only use this response for research purposes.
In addition, this research will examine the relationship between emotional advertising and customer purchase intention in Thailand. After watching the videos, participants were asked to complete the five-point Likert scale, which was used to allow respondents to express how much they agree or disagree with a statement about the customers' perception of the emotional advertising video clips and to answer closed questions about the purchase . decision. This research population is anyone in Thailand who can access any kind of media, especially the Internet or website because of the online survey approach.
The research approach was the online closed survey due to the short period of data collection and ease and convenience for respondents to access the questionnaire. Data collection is distributed through the online closed questionnaire which is divided into 3 parts. In the first and second part of general question and specific questions, the participants will be asked to watch advertisement video clip and answer the same set of questions.
The online questionnaire will be distributed via the Internet and social media such as email, Facebook and Line. In addition, a crosstab is used to compare the relationship between emotional advertising and other variables.
FINDINGS AND DATA ANALYSIS
Demographic Characteristics
As shown above, according to the researchers' random sampling, the total number of participants in a study is 124. Most of the respondents are female, 72 people, which is 58.1% of the total respondents, while the remaining 52 respondents (41.9%) are men. In addition, it is clearly stated that the majority of respondents are between 18 and 35 years old, but the majority falls on participants aged 26 to 35 years who are considered to be 41.1%, 51 people, of the total respondents, with only 2.4% . unlike respondents aged 18 to 25 (38.7%).
Only a small minority of those questioned are under 18 and between 36 and 45. In addition, it can be concluded that most of the respondents are bachelor students, which is 61.3% of the total respondents. In addition, there are respondents who have a higher level of education, where 29.8% are those with a master's degree and 2.4% are those with more than a master's degree.
However, the lowest number of respondents is lower than that of high school students (1.6%), while those who have obtained a high school diploma constitute 4.8% of the total respondents.
Descriptive Statistics: Frequency Analysis to Show the Preference of the Respondents to the Emotional Advertising
The tables above show the results of a survey in which respondents were asked about their preferences regarding the advertisements they viewed. The first video clip represents the positive emotion, while the second video clip represents the negative emotion. It is clear from the tables that the majority of respondents like both ads, with the same percentage, 96%, of the total respondents.
Hypotheses Analysis
- Video Clip 1: Positive Emotion
- Video Clip 2: Negative Emotion
It is clear from the cross-tabulation (see Appendix B) that 46% of the total respondents found that they responded to the advertisement and 41.1% believe that advertisement is meaningful to them. Chi-square tests are used to verify that there is a statistically significant relationship between emotional advertising and advertising response and the degree to which it is meaningful or relevant to customers. Therefore, the research has shown that H1: Emotional advertising (meaningful and relevant content) plays an important role in the development of consumer response is true, H1 is accepted.
The cross-tabulation tables (see Appendix B) show that 31.8% of the total participants are not sure that viewing the ad has influenced them. Chi-square Tests are established to see the relationship between emotional advertising and customer perception. It could be clearly seen from the crosstab (see Appendix B) that the majority of respondents (78.2%) say that after seeing the ad, they still have no intention of buying the product or using the service, while only 21.8% say they are likely to buy the product/service.
The cross tabulation table (see Appendix C) illustrates the percentage 49.2 of the total respondents agree that they themselves got a reaction to the advertisement and 42.7% also agree that the advertisement is meaningful to them. Chi-square tests measure that there is a statistically significant relationship between emotional advertising and advertising response and then the degree to which it is meaningful or relevant to the customers. Thus, H1: Emotional advertising (meaningful and relevant content) plays an important role in the development of consumer response, H1 is accepted.
However, as the Pearson Chi-Square is not statistically significant (p> 0.05), it can be concluded that there is no relationship between emotional advertising and customer perception, H2 is not accepted. According to the cross-tabulation table (see Appendix C), 77.4% of the total respondents would definitely not buy the product/service after seeing the advertisement, while 22.6% of them would probably buy the product/service.
CONCLUSION
- Summary
- Recommendations
- Managerial Implications
- Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research
- Time-constraints
- Sampling
Generalizing the results of the surveys, it can be concluded that it is possible for emotional advertising to attract the customer's attention and arouse emotions. However, advertising cannot influence the customer's perception and the most important thing is that advertising has no influence on the customer's decision to buy a product or service which is one of the main roles of advertising. The company can use emotional advertising to stimulate the emotional response of customers and mix it with rational advertising in order to emphasize the benefits and function of a product or service to induce the customer to buy it.
The business categories and types of products or services play a role in the choice of advertising types between emotional and rational advertising and how they can be used perfectly together. More importantly, the company must know how to perfectly use the emotional and rational content together in the advertising. In addition, if a business wants to be well-planned in its advertising, it should consider: 1) business categories 2) types of products or services and 3) target audience.
Based on the result, the manager can be assured that an advertisement can arouse conscious thoughts of the customer. If done well, it will create association with the customer's perception towards the brand and/or product or service and lead to purchase decisions or intention of the customers. Furthermore, the manager could come to an understanding that the audiences are most attracted to the ad with emotional content.
However, to convince them of the purchase decision, the manager may need to make efforts to present the benefit or function of the product and service as well. The sample used in this research may not represent the entire population as only 124 people participate in this research and most of the respondents are aged 18-35.
APPENDICES
Appendix A: Questionnaire
Appendix B: Video 1 Cross-Tabulation
Appendix C: Video 2 Cross-tab
