Research On The Influence Of Guilt Appeal On Mixed Emotions And Advertising Effect

Advertisers now use two main persuasion strategies(rational and emotional)to persuade consumers to buy products.Rational appeals are driven by conscious thought through information processing.While emotional appeal is driven by unconscious thoughts or intuitions,it is a double-edged sword.According to the emotional valence of advertisement,the emotional appeal can be divided into positive emotional appeal and negative emotional appeal.Generally speaking,the valence of emotional advertisement is positively related to the effect of advertisement.That is,positive emotional advertising(as opposed to negative emotional advertising)leads to better advertising results.However,there are also a number of studies that show that advertising negative emotions leads to positive reactions.As a special part of negative emotional appeals,guilt appeals can change consumers’ attitudes and behaviors by stimulating their guilt feelings.In recent years,scholars have focused on the forms and influencing factors of guilt appeal advertisements,but neglected the intensity of appeal and the existence of mixed emotions of consumers.Therefore,starting from the intensity of guilt appeal,this study added the concept of mixed emotions of consumers to explore the relationship between the intensity of guilt appeal,mixed emotions of consumers and advertising effect.In this paper,270 college students were taken as research objects,and 221 valid questionnaires recovered from 6 groups of experiments were statistically analyzed by using SPSS20.0 and PROCESS3.4.The results showed that :(1)there was a significant difference in the influence of the intensity of guilt appeal on mixed emotions.Specifically,the intensity of guilt appeal negatively affects positive emotions,positively affects negative emotions,and presents an inverted u-shaped relationship with guilt.(2)the advertising effect is best when the intensity of guilt appeal is moderate;(3)negative emotions and guilt emotions in mixed emotions mediate the relationship between the intensity of guilt appeal and the advertising effect,while the mediating effect of positive emotions has not been verified.Finally,according to the research conclusion,several marketing Suggestions are put forward :(1)enterprises should pay attention to the application of guilt appeal when designing advertisements;(2)enterprises should control the intensity of guilt appeal when they use it.Comparatively speaking,moderate intensity of guilt appeal has the best advertising effect.(3)reasonable and appropriate use of mixed emotions of consumers can better help marketing practitioners to provide useful guidance and reference in customer communication.