Significant Objects: How Eudaimonic Narratives Enhance the Value of Featured Products

Abstract

Eudaimonic narratives, which past work identifies as stories featuring themes related to virtue and life’s higher purpose, are increasingly prevalent in advertisements and marketing communications. The current research examines whether this type of narrative achieves advertiser-desired outcomes. If these outcomes are achieved, how? The results from five studies demonstrate that eudaimonic narratives enhance the value of, attitude toward, and purchase intentions for products featured in the story. This occurs because the product becomes a symbol for the meaningful theme communicated in the narrative. The effect of eudaimonic narratives on valuation is stronger when a product is central to the narrative plot and when consumers have experienced a threat to their worldview coherence; the effect disappears when people consider giving the focal product as a gift.

Notes

1 Nevertheless, pretests and manipulation checks in our studies indicate that our manipulations also cohere with definitions that focus on viewers’ subjective eudaimonic responses: the meaningful stories used in our studies all evoke eudaimonic appreciation.

2 The overall model was significant F(4,24) = 4.50, p < .001; the hedonic pleasure covariate was not (β = −.88, t = −.61, p = .55). Results are similar with alterative clustering approaches, and without clustering.

3 Participants were debriefed at the end of the study that the news article was not real.

4 We also measured attitude towards the product and purchase intention. See Supplemental Online Appendix F for these measures and analyses; results are essentially the same.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anne Hamby

Anne Hamby (PhD, Virginia Tech) is an assistant professor of marketing, College of Business and Economics, Boise State University.

Ali Tezer

Ali Tezer (PhD, Concordia University) is an assistant professor of marketing, HEC Montreal.

Jennifer Edson Escalas

Jennifer Edson Escalas (PhD, Duke University) is a professor of marketing, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University.