Engaging through storytelling: the interplay of engagement with a story, cause, and charity

Abstract

Charities engage customers with their cause to encourage charity support behaviours (CSB) and often use storytelling to create that impact. We argue that mechanisms underpinning this process manifest in the story recipients’ engagement with a sequence of focal objects—from the story (i.e. through narrative transportation) to the cause it concerns (i.e. customer engagement), to the charity that supports the cause (i.e. CSB). An online survey (n = 585) required participants to alternatively read a story of a person experiencing homelessness or a general text about homelessness. Results show that narrative transportation leads to CSB through different cognitive, affective, and conative customer engagement paths. Using both narrative and non-narrative text, managers can appeal to specific dimensions of customer engagement to elicit high and low involvement CSB.

Once upon a game: boosting brand storytelling through gamification

“…The current research goes a step further and incorporates games into the story to improve outcomes and assess how game mechanics might influence individuals’ narrative transportation. The research also has implications for the literature examining the effects of storytelling on branding (Junior et al , 2022; Kaczorowska et al , 2023; Fan et al , 2023). By evidencing that a positive experience with a gamified story impacts brand attitude and the intention to recommend the brand and the website, this work helps to evidence the importance of creating consumer-brand connections with stories across different types of media (Granitz and Forman, 2015).…”

“…This research also shows the power of narrative transportation as a mechanism to reinforce the entertainment provided by the story and to ensure that the information the story seeks to convey reaches the user more effectively. This is one of the variables most often used to reflect the effectiveness of storytelling and one of the most widely studied in areas such as branding, consumer engagement or advertisements (Dessart and Pitardi, 2019; Escalas, 2004; Kaczorowska et al , 2023). This study evidences how the narrative transportation derived from gamified storytelling can enhance brand experience with the story and trigger positive responses to the brand in terms of attitude and recommendation.…”

“…The literature on brand management agrees that storytelling is a powerful tool for marketing communication (Lundqvist et al , 2013; Delgado-Ballester, 2021; Kaczorowska et al , 2023). Brand storytelling is used by companies to establish connections with consumers (Delgado-Ballester, 2021), to break down psychological barriers (Fan et al , 2023; Júnior et al , 2022), to communicate brand values to consumers (Lundqvist et al , 2013), to generate customer engagement (Kaczorowska et al , 2023) or to influence customer action willingness (Van Laer et al , 2014). Brand storytelling has even been proposed as a crisis management strategy to combat fake news or brand-risk situations (Mills and Robson, 2020).…”

“…Brand storytelling has even been proposed as a crisis management strategy to combat fake news or brand-risk situations (Mills and Robson, 2020). In short, brand storytelling aims to make the brand more attractive to consumers, to add emotional components and to connect consumers and stakeholders to the brand (Dessart and Pitardi, 2019; Kaczorowska et al , 2023).…”

“…Transportation stories bring users into a positive state that affects cognitive response, beliefs, attitudes and intentions (Van Laer et al , 2019). Narrative transportation has been explored extensively in storytelling in areas such as consumer engagement (Dessart and Pitardi, 2019; Kaczorowska et al , 2023), storytelling ads (Dessart, 2018; Feng, 2018; Van Laer et al , 2014) or attitudes towards the brand (Escalas, 2004; Solja et al , 2018).…”