The role of informational versus transformational ad appeals in building consumer-based brand equity for low involvement products

ABSTRACT

Prior literature suggests that, for low involvement products, transformational advertising should be favored over informational advertising. The current study on 927 consumers from the United Kingdom indicates that transformational and informational ad appeals are equally effective in enhancing brand awareness, but informational ad appeals are more effective in increasing positive quality perceptions and company associations. Confirming previous findings, the positive effect of informational ad appeals on brand awareness is greater for utilitarian products than for hedonic products. This study provides insights guiding the adoption of informational and transformational ad appeals to achieve specific advertising objectives depending on the product type.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical and integrity statement

This material is the authors’ own original work, which has not been previously published or currently being considered for publication elsewhere

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

¹ Saleem et al. (2015) used the brand image concept and its measure adapted from Park et al. (1986). The later defined brand image as the brand position relative to its competitors. Managing a brand image is the process of selecting and strengthening a general brand concept derived from basic consumer needs (i.e. functional, symbolic, and experiential; Park et al., 1986). This brand image conceptualization (as a competitive position and a needs-based concept) is different than the brand personality and company associations constructs used in our study.

² The only exception concerned the dishwashing detergent product category, where the first brand (Fairy) had a very high recall rate (96 percent) which increased the risk of ceiling effect when assessing brand awareness, while the fourth brand (TESCO) is a store brand that includes many product categories. Thus, in the dishwashing detergent category the second and third brands were selected.

³ This calculator considers the sample sizes, unstandardized regression weights, and standard errors of the two factors to establish whether there is a significant difference between them on other variables. The calculator computes the t-value for the significance test, the degrees of freedom, and the p-value. A probability value of less than 0.05 indicates that the two slopes are significantly different from each other. The formula used is: $t=\frac{b_1-b_2}{\sqrt{s_{b_1}^2+s_{b_2}^2}},df=n_1+n_2-4$.

where b1 and b2 are the slopes {unstandardized regression weights} of factors 1 and 2: sb1 and sb2 are the standard errors for factors 1 and 2, and n1 and n2 are the sample sizes for factors 1 and 2)

⁴ H1a is not supported at the .05 level of significant, but is at the .10 level of significance. For all statistical tests we used two-tailed tests, yet this hypothesis is directional, and a one-tailed test would have been justified (Cho & Abe, 2013).

⁵ The difference is not significant at the .05 level of significant but is at the .10 level of significance.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.