The Effects of Emotional Television Advertising on Older and Younger Adults

The baby boomer market maven in the United Kingdom: an experienced diffuser of marketplace information

“…These mavens love trying new brands and introducing new brands to their friends and family, they watch more TV than others in their cohort and they have very positive attitudes towards advertising and use advertisements to gain product information. Relatively recently a focus on ways to successfully target mature consumers through advertising has resurfaced (SudburyRiley & Edgar, 2013;Van Der Goot et al, 2016;Wei et al, 2013), and the results here suggest such studies are of utmost importance, given the emphasis boomer mavens place on advertising as a crucial source of information for them to diffuse. Finally, they love to seek out bargains and sales.…”

“…Furthermore, boomer mavens have relatively positive attitudes towards advertising. Recently age-related differences in advertising appeals have been identified (Van Der Goot, Van Reijmersdal, & Kleemans, 2016;Wei, Donthu, & Bernhardt, 2013), thus future work needs to ascertain the types of advertisements that are likely to resonate with market mavens in this cohort. Finally, while this research has uncovered a group who enjoy shopping, their preferred retail outlets remain unknown.…”

Age differences in preferences for emotionally-meaningful versus knowledge-related appeals

“…In our previous study (van der Goot et al, 2019), we used this dimensional structure to identify two complications in previous SST-based persuasion studies (Drolet et al, 2007;Fung and Carstensen, 2003;Sudbury-Riley and Edgar, 2016;van der Goot et al, 2015b;Williams and Drolet, 2005). First, the studies differed in the dimensions of emotionally-meaningful versus knowledge-related appeals they focused on.…”

“…An additional feature of this study is that, compared with previous persuasion research applying SST, it helps to understand the attractiveness of SST-based appeals in a wider variety of contexts. Previous studies that hypothesized age differences have particularly focused on consumer goods (Drolet et al, 2007;Fung and Carstensen, 2003;Sudbury-Riley and Edgar, 2016;van der Goot et al, 2015b;Williams and Drolet, 2005). Despite the mixed findings in these previous studies, the most recent SST-based persuasion study straightforwardly concluded that SST may have a limited applicability to advertising (Sudbury-Riley and Edgar, 2016).…”

“…Using SST, several scholars hypothesized that these age-related changes in goal hierarchy imply that older adults prefer persuasive messages that appeal to emotionally-meaningful goals over messages that appeal to knowledge-related goals, whereas younger adults do not show this preference (Drolet, Williams, and Lau-Gesk, 2007;Fung and Carstensen, 2003;Sudbury-Riley and Edgar, 2016;van der Goot, van Reijmersdal, and Kleemans, 2015b;Williams and Drolet, 2005). However, these studies showed mixed findings regarding the age differences, potentially because the studies differed in how they defined and operationalized the appeals.…”