Consumer Responses to Ads with Positive vs. Negative Appeals: Some Mediating Effects of Context-Induced Mood and Congruency between Context and Ad

Abstract

Information processing and consistency paradigms are used to investigate the influence of mood-inducing contexts on the persuasiveness of appeals of different types. Persuasion is examined with respect to two forms of attitude—evaluation and affect. Findings indicate that positive (negative) context-induced mood is associated with more (less) favorable evaluations. In addition, findings indicate that affect is influenced by the interaction of context-induced mood and ad-type, and that this effect is mediated by ad affect. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the development of theory, applications, and further research.