Executive Summary
This article explores the power of an analogy to convey information and influence attitudes about a product experience. Marketing practitioners recognize the value of communicating a product experience through analogy, as evinced by the many advertisements that employ experience-oriented comparisons. For example, State Farm Insurance compares competitors’ services to the experience of sitting between two “fat guys” in an economy class flight, Microsoft compares playing the Xbox 360 to participating in a citywide water balloon fight, Ford compares driving the Fusion to listening to an iPod and dancing at a club, and Alfa Romeo compares driving its Spider to a first kiss. Despite the prevalence of these experiential analogies in recent ad campaigns, an understanding of what makes analogy-based appeals persuasive remains limited.
Through a series of experiments, the authors demonstrate that comparing a product to a familiar but disparate experience (through an analogy-based ad appeal) can focus consumers on the evaluative, emotional, and multisensory information associated with the product experience. The analogy taps into the emotional knowledge that consumers gain from their own prior experiences to understand the new or unfamiliar product experience. Experiential analogies encourage ad viewers to think about how familiar experiences, such as listening to an iPod and dancing, are similar to the experience of the advertised product (e.g., the Ford Fusion).
The findings from three experiments show that the persuasiveness of an experiential analogy hinges on (1) how much the consumer likes the comparative experience, (2) thinking about the emotional similarities between the comparison experience and the advertised product, and (3) the elicitation of actual emotion. This study makes a clear distinction between thinking about and identifying emotional similarities (a cognitive process) and actually experiencing emotion (an affective process).
Marketers should be mindful of the experiences they choose as a basis for comparison in their experiential analogies. If the target audience does not perceive the comparison experience favorably, the mental identification of emotional similarities between the comparison experience and the advertised product will have a negative rather than positive effect on attitudes toward the ad and the advertised product. The advertised product must be perceived as capable of evoking the same kind of emotional experience as the comparison. In a marketplace filled with consumers who seek products that can provide them with meaningful experiences, analogy can tap the evaluative, emotional, and multisensory information they associate with a product experience.
Biography
Miranda R. Goode is Assistant Professor in Marketing in the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. She received a PhD from the University of British Columbia and researches topics related to consumer learning, emotions, and experiences, as well as the psychology of money. Her work in this area has been published in Science and Current Directions in Psychological Science and has been featured in various media outlets worldwide, including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Star Tribune, CBC Radio, and television. She has consulted with and worked for biotech and retail organizations and the government of Canada.
Darren W. Dahl is Fred H. Siller Professor in Applied Marketing Research at the University of British Columbia. His research interests are in the areas of new product design and development, creativity, consumer product adoption, the role of social influence in consumer behavior, and the role of self-conscious emotions in consumption. His research has been published in Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Management Science, and Journal of Consumer Psychology. He currently is a member of the editorial board of Journal of Consumer Research and Journal of Marketing Research. Before coming to the University of British Columbia, he held a faculty appointment at the University of Manitoba for four years. He also has been a visiting professor at Columbia University (2008), Stanford University (2009), and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (1997 and 2001). He has consulted with and organized education programs for several nonprofit and for-profit organizations, including Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Xerox, General Electric–Camco, Vancouver Public Health, Teekay Shipping, Hagensborg Foods, Lulu Lemon Athletica, Agent Provocateur, Daehong Advertising (Korea), LIC India, and the government of Kuwait. Professor Dahl received his PhD from the University of British Columbia.
C. Page Moreau is Associate Professor of Marketing in the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado. She received a PhD in Marketing from Columbia University in 1998 and conducts research in the areas of creativity, consumer learning, and innovation. She has published in Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Consumer Psychology. She is currently on the editorial review boards of Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Product Innovation Management, and International Journal of Research in Marketing. Dr. Moreau was recognized as a Marketing Science Young Scholar in 2003.
Journal of Marketing Research, Volume 47, Number 2, April 2010
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