Executive Summary
Attitudes toward products have been shown to serve different functions: Attitudes toward some products (e.g., cough syrup, ceiling fans, toothpaste) serve a utilitarian function of maximizing tangible rewards, whereas attitudes toward other products (e.g., flags, class rings, university T-shirts) instead serve a symbolic, value-expressive function. Prior research suggests that “function-matching” appeals are more effective than “function-mismatching” appeals: For utilitarian products, appeals emphasizing tangible benefits are superior, but for symbolic products, value-laden, symbolic appeals are superior.
This article shows that though these prior conclusions about attitude functions and persuasion are valid at the category level (e.g., when considering the general category of ceiling fans), conclusions about attitude functions and persuasion are strikingly different at the brand level (e.g., when deciding among brands of ceiling fans).
Specifically, the authors first find that branding alters the associations between products and attitude functions: Products that give rise to utilitarian category-level attitudes give rise to brand attitudes that are less purely utilitarian (and more symbolic), but products that give rise to symbolic category-level attitudes give rise to brand attitudes that are less purely symbolic (and more utilitarian). For example, although attitudes toward toothpaste are indeed predominantly utilitarian, attitudes toward brands of toothpaste (e.g., Crest, Colgate) are somewhat more symbolic. Conversely, although attitudes toward greeting cards are indeed predominantly symbolic, attitudes toward brands of greeting cards (e.g., Hallmark, American Greetings) are more utilitarian. This finding emerged in three experiments and across a variety of product categories and brand names (even unknown, hypothetical brands).
The authors next find that branding alters the persuasiveness of a given appeal. As noted, function-matching appeals have previously been shown to be more persuasive than function-mismatching appeals. However, this article suggests that because attitude functions differ for categories and brands, appeals that match attitudes toward a product category will match attitudes toward brands of that category less well. Indeed, the authors find that appeals that benefit from the function-matching advantage at the category level are not advantaged at the brand level. Specifically, although utilitarian appeals are more persuasive than symbolic appeals when consumers make category-level decisions about utilitarian products (e.g., whether to buy paper towels), symbolic appeals are at least as persuasive as, if not more persuasive than, utilitarian appeals when consumers make brand-level decisions about those products (e.g., which brand of paper towels to buy). Conversely, although symbolic appeals are more persuasive than utilitarian appeals when consumers make category-level decisions about symbolic products (e.g., whether to buy a college T-shirt), utilitarian appeals are at least as persuasive as symbolic appeals when consumers make brand-level decisions about those products (e.g., which brand of college T-shirt to buy). This conclusion was supported by three experiments and by a study examining responses to actual magazine advertisements. Across all studies, there was no evidence that the category-function-matching advantage emerges when consumers evaluate brands. These findings suggest that managers, who may have shied away from mismatching appeals for their brands, may actually achieve some measure of success with such appeals.
Biography
Robyn A. LeBoeuf is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Warrington College of Business Administration at the University of Florida. She received her PhD in Psychology from Princeton University. Her research focuses on judgment and decision making, with a specific focus on how contextual factors, broadly defined, influence people’s preferences and estimates. Among other topics, she has examined the effect of choice descriptions on preferences, the impact of irrelevant anchoring stimuli on estimates, and the various factors that affect people’s perceptions of and decisions about future events.
Joseph P. Simmons is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Yale School of Management at Yale University. He received his PhD in Psychology from Princeton University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy. His research focuses on understanding people’s judgments, decisions, and preferences.
Journal of Marketing Research, Volume 47, Number 2, April 2010
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