Fact versus Fiction: Blending Storytelling with Product Attributes in Advertisements

Rebecca Krause-Galoni and Derek D. Rucker

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2024, vol. 9, issue 1, 58 - 70

Abstract: Prior research on persuasion has explored whether marketers benefit more from choosing to advertise via stories, which invoke narrative transportation, or choosing to advertise via facts, which involve argument-based processing. The present research proposes that marketers need not treat such a decision as an either/or trade-off. Rather, it is possible to blend story-based and argument-based processing to produce effective persuasion. In particular, while prior research suggests that dispersing arguments throughout a narrative might be more persuasive, the current work reveals consolidating arguments within a narrative—clustering the presentation of arguments together—can enhance persuasion. Four main experiments and one supplemental experiment demonstrate that consolidating arguments increases elaboration of those arguments without disrupting transportation. As a result, when arguments are strong, consolidating arguments within a story can be an effective means of blending fact and fiction.

Date: 2024
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