Considerable social psychology and communications research show that intelligent use of fear messages can have favorable effects on attitude change and action. Yet the unique persuasive possibilities offered by the fear appeal have been neglected by marketing. This is in sharp contrast to the creative pursuit of positive advertising appeals. This article presents a marketing-oriented discussion and summary of research on the fear appeal.
If marketers want to know the meaning of their measures, they must turn to measure validation, which consists of determining the extent to which measures correlate (convergent validity) and predictably do not correlate (discriminant validity).
Interest has been shifting from how consumers choose brands to how they use brands. The authors focus on how advertising can best encourage consumers to use a mature brand in a new situation. They develop a schema congruity framework that integrates comparison advertising with substitution-in-use research. The framework suggests that situation comparison ads favorably affect usage attitudes, but have no advantage over product comparison ads in enhancing a person's ability to recall the target brand in the target situation. The authors’ empirical study shows increases in brand usage. The authors conclude with implications for brand managers and researchers.
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