International services advertising: an examination of variation in appeal use for experiential and utilitarian services

Abstract

Examines differences in emotional and rational advertising appeal use across experiential and utilitarian services for 11 culturally diverse countries. Pooled across countries, rational appeals were found to be more dominant in utilitarian service advertising, while emotional appeals were used more heavily in experiential service advertising. On a country by country basis, utilitarian service advertisements consistently used a larger number of rational appeals, and experiential service advertisements contained more emotional appeals. Finally, culture appeared to influence the use of appeals more when the appeals were important to the service selling premise. That is, more variation across cultures was observed for emotional appeal use in experiential service advertising, and more variation was observed for rational appeal use in utilitarian service advertising.

INTERNATIONAL SERVICES ADVERTISING (ISA): Defining the Domain and Reviewing the Literature

“…For example, Albers-Miller and Stafford (1999a) found that Taiwan services ads contained significantly more emotional appeals as compared with ads for goods. Conversely, U.S. advertisers used significantly more emotional appeals for goods as compared with services.…”

“…Moreover, many topics related to international advertising need more attention than they have received. In particular, international advertising research has often ignored services (Albers-Miller and Stafford 1999b;Kanso and Kitchen 2004), despite the fact that services are the fastest-growing segment of the global market (Javalgi and White 2002).…”

“…In a separate study, Albers-Miller and Stafford (1999b) used the utilitarian/experiential classification as the basis for examining differences within service types across 11 countries. The authors noted that across all countries, rational appeals were more dominant in utilitarian service ads as compared with experiential service ads, and emotional appeals were used significantly more in experiential services ads than in utilitarian services ads.…”

Effects of message appeal and service type in CSR communication strategies

“…Rational advertising assumes that consumers make rational decisions. Rational advertising's goal is thereby to change consumers' beliefs about a brand using arguments or reason (Albers-Miller & Stafford, 1999). Rational appeals present facts straightforwardly and objectively (Stafford & Day, 1995).…”

“…In contrast, emotional appeals target the emotional or experiential facet of consumption. Such appeals seek to make the consumer feel good about the product, by creating a likeable or friendly brand (Albers-Miller & Stafford, 1999).…”