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This research aims to examine how religiosity influences consumers’ responses to rational versus emotional ad appeals.

Four experiments were conducted that examined how religiosity affected consumers’ responses (attitude toward the product, purchase intentions and brand trust) to rational versus emotional ad appeals, and how perceived fit between the ad appeal type and consumers’ information processing style mediated the effects.

The results show that consumers low in religiosity respond more favorably to rational (vs emotional) appeals because of these types of appeals being more congruent with their rational information processing style. In addition, there is no difference in consumer responses toward rational and emotional appeals for individuals high in religiosity.

In this research, the authors only used surveys and measured behavioral intentions rather than actual behaviors. Thus, future research should measure actual behaviors in the field to enhance the external validity of the observed effects. In addition, this research samples one primary culture that is more representative of Judeo-Christian religious beliefs. Therefore, future research should sample from other cultures and religious groups.

The results suggest that marketers should use rational rather than emotional appeals in their marketing communications to low religiosity consumers (identifiable through such means as demographic data for geographic regions or self-identified classifications on social media). Marketers can also prime low religiosity in their messages (e.g. using words such as “evolution”) and, when doing so, should couple that prime with a rational (vs emotional) appeal.

This research is novel in that it is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to examine how religiosity influences consumers’ responses to rational versus emotional ad appeals.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether rational and emotional appeals are more effective for small boutique hotel websites in Australia. Specifically, it assesses how attitudes towards websites, service expectations and attitudes towards boutique hotels will influence purchase intention under the two different types of appeals.

Using a systematic intercept approach, a total of 249 useable data was collected in a large suburb of Western Australia. Results were analysed using t‐test and a series of multiple regressions.

The results show boutique hotel websites that used emotional appeals performed differently to those that used rational appeals. Further analysis shows that emotional appeals evoked more favourable attitudes towards the website and attitudes towards the boutique hotel. In addition, websites that utilised emotional appeals were a stronger predictor of purchase intention.

The research focuses only on homepages of the boutique hotels. Further, the study was limited to two rational (price and service accolades) and two emotional appeals (warmth and serenity).

The study is the first to provide empirical evidence on the effectiveness of website appeals. It broadens the scope of the service communication literature by exploring rational and emotional appeals in an interactive medium.

The purpose of the study was to compare young adult responses to rational and emotional sports product advertisements. The moderating roles of product type and gender were also examined.

The study utilized a 2 (advertising appeal: emotional vs rational) ×2 (gender: male vs female)×2 (sport product type: utilitarian vs hedonic) research design. Data were collected from 160 sport product users. The collected data were analyzed using three-way analysis of variance (ANOVA).

The results indicated that emotional advertising has a greater impact on the attitude toward advertising and the intention to purchase sports products. The results also revealed that rational advertising appeals have more impact for utilitarian sports products and that emotional advertising appeals are more effective for hedonic sports products. However, there were no significant effects for gender as a moderating variable.

This is the first study to examine responses to rational and emotional appeals in sports product advertisements.

This research aims to examine the use of emotional and rational advertising appeal regarding service options that differ in terms of their experience and credence properties and exploring the moderating role of individual difference in affect intensity on the consumers’ varying reliance on rational vs emotional appeals.

Study 1 is a 2 (service type: restaurant vs dentist) × 2 (advertising appeal: emotional vs rational) between-subjects design. In total, 137 undergraduate students took part in this study. Study 2 is a 2 (service type: airline vs hospital) × 2 (advertising appeal: emotional vs rational) between-subjects design. In total, 84 MBA students were randomly assigned to each of the experimental conditions. Study 3 is a 2 (service type: airline vs hospital) × 2 (advertising appeal: rational vs emotional appeal) × 2 (affect intensity: high vs low) between-subjects design. The sample size was 170 undergraduates.

The results of the first two studies provided support that an emotional advertising appeal led to a higher purchase intention in the experience service condition, while a rational message generated higher purchase intention in the credence service condition. Study 3 showed the moderating role of individual difference in affect intensity. High affect intensity individuals reported higher levels of brand favorability than did their low affect intensity counterparts when exposed to ads using emotional appeal. Conversely, subjects showed no significant differences in the intensity of their emotional responses when exposed to rational appeals.

Our results suggest a strong need to tailor ads to fit different service categories. An emotional appeal would be more effective for experience services, and a rational appeal would be more effective for credence services. Besides, individual traits may also need to be considered when matching the appeal to the service type.

This study makes an important contribution to the limited existing research by providing a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between advertising appeal and the type of service across different sub-categories, themes, individual trait and effectiveness measures. Specifically, the present research seeks to illuminate the relative effectiveness of emotional vs rational appeals in services advertising. In addition, the current research reveals new knowledge about the role that affect intensity plays in determining consumer responses to advertising.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the effectiveness of cognitive and emotional appeals to mobilize resources in prosocial crowdfunding settings that combine the creation of economic and social value.

The authors quantitatively measure the effectiveness of cognitive and emotional appeals in the entrepreneurial narratives of 2,098 entrepreneurs from 55 countries shared via the Kiva platform by performing multiple regression analysis.

The findings suggest that using cognitive appeals can attract more resources than using emotional appeals. In fact, using affective language in general, and negative emotion words specifically, can be detrimental and attract fewer resources.

The authors contribute to the entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship literature by linking insights from the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of persuasion and motivational framing to understand resource mobilization in prosocial settings. This study demonstrates that cognitive and emotional appeals could lead to different outcomes in contexts where entrepreneurial narratives are all framed as “doing good” and individuals allocating resources are highly socially motivated.

The growth of international business, combined with an increase in the number of service offerings, underscores the importance of understanding effective promotional strategies for services versus goods in international markets. The current study examines advertising appeals for services and goods across four different countries: Brazil, Taiwan, Mexico and the USA. Results of a content analysis indicate that the use of rational and emotional appeals differs across both product type and country. It is suggested that culture plays a role in the use of the appeals and that the product type × country interaction is strongly reflected in Taiwanese and US advertising.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of emotional appeals in advertisements for loans and explored consumers’ perceptions of advertisements featuring such appeals in order to explore how emotional meanings are transferred to consumers via advertising.

Study 1 employed content analysis to examine the use of emotional appeals in loan advertisements. Over 2,900 editions of eight British newspapers were monitored for advertisements for loans containing emotional appeals. Study 2 employed 33 semi-structured interviews to explore consumers’ perceptions of emotional appeals in loan advertisements.

Loans were positioned as services providing relief, security and excitement. The use of negative emotional appeals such as guilt, fear and sorrow was sporadic. Loans that carried the most risk were advertised with positive emotional appeals the most frequently. Five dimensions of perceptions of emotional loan advertisements were conceptualised from the reported data in Study 2.

This is the first study in the UK to examine the use of emotional appeals in loan advertising and to explore consumers’ perceptions of loan advertisements featuring emotional appeals. The study identified five dimensions of perceptions of emotional appeals.

This paper aims to analyse the prevalence of emotional and rational appeals in social advertising campaigns. There are studies about the effectiveness of these tones of appeals in social marketing, but there is no evidence about their prevalent use in social advertisements.

The authors conducted a content analysis of forty social advertisements promoting attitudes and behaviours regarding social causes. The selected ads were in video format and were extracted from the YouTube channels of Portuguese governmental and non-governmental organisations. The ads were coded according to the characteristics of each tone of appeals and classified as emotional, rational or a mix of both.

The authors classified 25 social ads as rational appeals, 8 as emotional and 7 as a mix of both appeals. The results of the research show that social marketers have preference for the use of rational tone in social advertising campaigns.

This study shows that there is a disruption between theory and practice in social marketing, considering the higher prevalence of rational appeals in contexts where theory recommends emotional appeals for higher effectiveness. This evidence is surprising, considering a previous study that evidenced a higher use of emotional appeals in advertising connected to social causes than in commercial advertisements. This paper focus on how practice may disrupt theory and explores possible reasons for the phenomenon.

This study aims to investigate whether digital advertising can be effective despite consumer inattention and how certain common combinations of ad characteristics increase or decrease ad effectiveness under conditions of low attention.

Using two online experiments in naturalistic environment, the authors compare ad effects under focussed, divided and incidental attention, for certain ad characteristics, namely, appeal type and (mis)matching between appeal and brand type. The results are analysed using logistic regression.

Ad exposure under low attention does increase brand consideration and choice. The greatest uplift in impact occurs when moving from non-exposure to incidental attention. Under incidental attention, emotive advertising was more effective than rational advertising, as was matching rather than mismatching an emotional appeal to a hedonic brand. Conversely, under divided attention, rational advertising and mismatching a rational appeal to a hedonic brand were more effective.

This research explores the effectiveness of Twitter ads with an emotional or a rational appeal and the (mis)matching between appeal and utilitarian or hedonic brand type. Future research can examine other formats and creative elements of digital advertising that can affect the low-attention processing and the effects that occur.

Intrusive, attention-getting advertising strategies may not be necessary. Certain common creative devices can increase advertising effectiveness despite low attention, so marketers can ensure consumer-centric marketing communication.

There has previously been limited understanding of low-attention mechanisms in advertising and little evidence of ad effectiveness under conditions of low attention. The research also demonstrates that certain ad characteristics, linked to common creative devices, enhance the impact of advertising despite low attention.