Emotional Appeals In Marketing example essay topic

Persuasive communication in marketing today is one of the key tools when approaching a target market. It is a complex field, which has been recognised widely by marketers of today, yet it is a never ending struggle to re-adapt to the publics conceptions and what concepts may be used in order to market a specific product and the approach used to do so. Current trends show that emotional appeals have been more widely used in order to capture the desired market, thus drawing many conclusions about the whole concept, which is changing the attitudes of many who intend to boost a products image (Luce, Bettman and Payne, 2001). This idea of Emotion versus Fact in marketing appeals is quite objective, and many discussions have been derived from the basic principle of emotional advertising. The communicator must take into account certain concepts, such as; what is the product, what is the target market and what is the segmentation, the time of the proposed advert and so on. It is not as simple as fear will have this effect and so on.

In a general overview from Schiffman, Bed nall, Watson and Kan uk (1997) states that the more educated audience would respond to a factual approach, as opposed to the less educated, and the degree of involvement of customers on that specific product. 2.0 One of the most widely used emotional appeals in marketing today is that of fear. Fear shows a way of dealing quickly with embarrassing, common social problems, a fantastic illustration in Schiffman et al (1997), where a slight fear appeal is used with an advertisement by BANLICE, advertising a head lice mousse simply stating "BANLICE BANS LICE". Yet, sometimes strong fear more is effective that mild fear. Once again this concept can be abused, for example, cigarette campaigns about quitting cigarettes, over the radio, or television are quite harsh and create excessive fear. This campaign can be viewed 2 separate ways, it will either cause the audience to reject the practice completely (unlikely with this particular drug) or this appeal may cause 'cognitive dissonance' and in turn, the audience will reject the unwelcome information with statements such as "There is no proof of lung cancer associated to smoking" or "I only smoke light cigarettes".

This stems from the 'assimilation-contrast' theory, whereby consumers will assimilate (or accept) only moderate changes. Another fantastic example may be people rejecting that high cholesterol contributes to heart disease or strokes because they cannot imagine denying themselves of butter, salt or rich desserts. In this instance a firm may decide that an appeal of fear, must not scare the target audience away, yet rather allow them to embrace the product positively, which would require a perfect mix of fear, persuasion and the correct target audience.