Stories in product descriptions - How advertising creativity in narrative advertising affects consumer responses

Sammanfattning

Narrative advertising, ads that contain events, characters, and a plot (Boller & Olson, 1991a) has become widely popular among marketers. Simultaneously, advertising creativity, known as how original or relevant an ad is (Rosengren, Eisend, Koslow, & Dahlen, 2020), has been said to be the most important tool in a marketer's arsenal (Reid, King, & Delorme, 1998). Yet, the two subjects have not been studied together. This study connects the two areas of research and conducts an experiment about what role advertising creativity plays in narratives, using three versions of an FMCG product description. It was empirically found that stories presented in product descriptions resulted in more favorable consumer responses as higher product attitude and purchase intention than the absence of a story. Additionally, creative product stories were found to produce more narrative transportation, positive affect, and empathy than a less creative product story. A further analysis using participants' perceived originality of a product story, resulted in higher transportation, empathy, positive affect, processing, and less critical thoughts. These findings also showed that higher perceived originality in a product story resulted in more favorable customer outcome responses such as higher product attitude and purchase intention.