| dc.description.abstract | Narratives are an effective strategy to employ within advertising for their ability to help people
establish meaning through constructing stories. Advertisers often draw on the emotion of
‘being moved’ as it further immerses the audience into the story and can positively affect brand
attitudes. Both commercial and non-profit companies utilise these benefits of emotional,
narrative advertising, but it is proposed that the values of being moved are perhaps more in line
with the characteristics of non-profit brands. This study uses evaluative conditioning to explore
the differences in perceptions of commercial and non-profit companies when they use moving
and non-moving narratives in their advertisements. The experiment (N = 128) used a
2(company type: commercial vs. non-profit) x 2(story type: moving vs. non-moving) withinparticipants
design. Attitudes towards the companies were measured in attractiveness, appeal
and likeability. The results showed that, overall, the non-profit companies were rated more
positively than the commercial brands. It was also found that, overall, the moving stories did
not produce higher attitude scores of companies than the non-moving stories. However, the
effect of emotionality was significant for the commercial companies, not the non-profit
companies, as they were rated more positively after being associated with moving stories than
after being associated with non-moving stories. This suggests that advertisers in the
commercial sphere should employ moving narratives within their marketing techniques. The
findings offer guidance for marketers of commercial and non-profit companies and illustrate
how businesses can benefit from scientific research to increase the effectivity of their strategies. | |
