AAA Annual Conference 2020

Traditionally, advertising strategy can be categorized as either informational or transformational. Scholars have proposed a unique pathway to persuasion through narrative transportation but devote little attention to developing its application in advertising, despite the fact that narrative and storytelling are widely used in many forms of advertising today. This study proposes an overlapping advertising strategy model. The model adds narrative transportation as an additional strategy that is conceptually different from informational and transformational strategies. The authors refer to this new strategy as the transportational advertising strategy. For this study, six fictional ads each focuses on one of the three advertising strategies for two medium involvement products. These ads are created and tested for perceived strategy used, ad attitude, brand attitude and purchase intention. Findings indicate that the transportational strategy outperformed the other two strategies in terms of ad attitude, brand attitude and purchase intention. Additionally, ads that are perceived as being focused on one strategy rather than using a mix of different strategies received more favorable evaluations. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Author(s): Tao Deng, DePaul University; Dawn Pysarchik, Michigan State University