 The impact of animal metaphors on consumer response to courtesy advertisingWen-Hsien Huang and Shao-Yu Hsieh Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2023, vol. 75, issue C Abstract: This paper investigates how consumers feel and react to animal metaphor advertising in the context of the public service environment. Three studies are carried out using both field and experimental data. The results show that ads with an animal-like transgressor (vs. a human transgressor) elicit a stronger moral outrage response (e.g., contempt, anger, disgust), which generates a stronger perception of dehumanization toward the transgressor, consequently enhancing the consumers’ persuasive reaction to follow public etiquette. The animal metaphor effect is robust, irrespective of whether the metaphorical objects are high or low in conceptual similarity, but the consumer reaction is more intense when the metaphorical pairing is conceptually high in similarity. However, this effect is diminished when the ad is displayed as a drawing as opposed to a photograph. The implications of the findings for retailers or service providers considering the use of animal metaphor in their ads are also discussed. Keywords: Negative moral emotions; Pictorial rhetoric; Jaycustomer; Denial of humanity; Visual illustration; Prosocial behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joreco:v:75:y:2023:i:c:s0969698923002321 DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2023.103485 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services is currently edited by Harry Timmermans More articles in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.