Differences in Perspective and the Influence of Charitable Appeals: When Imagining Oneself as the Victim Is Not Always Beneficial
Published 6/1/2009
Author: Iris W. Hung and Robert S. Wyer
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Advertisements often stimulate consumers to imagine themselves in a situation in which they would personally benefit from using the product being advertised. When an advertisement is intended to induce consumers to benefit someone else (e.g., to donate money for relief of disaster victims), however, stimulating them to imagine themselves in the situation confronting the beneficiary can sometimes conflict with the image they form of themselves as a potential helper, and this conflict can have an adverse effect on the appeal’s impact.
Five studies confirmed this conclusion. Some participants read about a victim’s misfortune without thinking about whether they would personally make a donation until later. In this case, characteristics of the appeal (e.g., providing a picture of the people in need, instructing participants to imagine the situation from the victim’s perspective) increased the appeal’s effectiveness. In other cases, however, participants were asked if they would help at the outset, before reading about the victim’s plight. In this case, the same characteristics decreased the appeal’s effectiveness. These effects were evident not only in participants’ self-reported urge to help but also in the actual money they donated to the charitable organization. A final study showed that the effects generalized over domains (appeals to help eliminate child trafficking and to make an organ donation). Furthermore, the decreased effectiveness of an appeal was evident both when participants read a victim-focused appeal with the perspective of a potential donor and when they read a donor-focused appeal with the perspective of a potential victim. The authors discuss implications of the results for the construction of charitable appeals.
Biography
Iris W. Hung received her PhD from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and is currently Assistant Professor of Marketing at the National University of Singapore.
Robert S. Wyer Jr. received his PhD from the University of Colorado and is currently Visiting Professor of Marketing at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
J Marketing Research, Volume 46, Number 3, June 2009
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