Purpose

Fear appeals in advertising communication are considered by advertisers when other types of advertising appeals do not achieve expected effects. Fear appeals, by arousing the fear that something may threaten consumers’ present lives, are often adopted to persuade individuals to take a particular action. Although this topic has been widely studied, the internal operation mechanism of fear appeals in consumers has not been fully understood or agreed upon.

Design/methodology/approach

Three experiments were conducted where the type of fear appeal was manipulated (i.e. physical fear appeal or social ear appeal), as well as consumers’ consideration of future consequences (CFC) and mental imagery approaches.

Findings

This study examined the effects of fear appeal on mental imagery fluency and how it affects advertising effectiveness and the moderating effect of consumers’ CFC were discussed. When receiving advertisements with physical fear appeals, consumers with low CFC had greater mental imagery fluency than did those with high CFC. Furthermore, consumers’ purchase intentions could be improved by increasing consumers’ mental imagery fluency on fear appeal. Therefore, the interaction between fear appeal and CFC on purchase intention was mediated by mental imagery fluency. This study found that consumers responded differently to fear appeal advertising when they engaged in different mental imagery approaches.

Originality/value

The present study adds to social marketing literature by showing how consumers’ mental imagery fluency influence the fear appeal effectiveness, and this study’s results also enable social marketers to understand the two factors (i.e. consumers’ CFC level and mental imagery approaches) that affect the influence of fear appeals on consumers’ purchase intentions. Moreover, social marketers are recommended to provide consumers with advertising information by using various message types to facilitate consumers’ imagination of advertising appeals. This heightens the importance of consumers’ acceptance and absorption of advertising content, in turn, strengthening their purchase intentions.

中文翻译：

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心理形象更流利，更有效？

目的

当其他类型的广告申诉未达到预期效果时，广告商会考虑在广告传播中使用恐惧申诉。恐惧呼吁通过引起人们对某些事物可能威胁消费者当前生活的恐惧，通常被说服个人采取特定行动。尽管对此主题进行了广泛的研究，但尚未完全理解或同意消费者对恐惧的诉求的内部运作机制。

设计/方法/方法

进行了三个实验，其中操纵了恐惧呼吁的类型（即，身体恐惧呼吁或社会耳朵诉求），以及消费者对未来后果的考虑（CFC）和心理形象方法。

发现

这项研究探讨了恐惧吸引力对心理形象流利性的影响，并讨论了它如何影响广告效果以及消费者CFC的调节作用。当收到带有身体恐惧感的广告时，CFC较低的消费者比CFC较高的消费者具有更高的心理形象流利度。此外，可以通过提高消费者对恐惧感的心理形象流利度来改善消费者的购买意愿。因此，恐惧诉求与CFC购买意愿之间的交互作用是由心理意象流利程度介导的。这项研究发现，当消费者采用不同的心理形象方法时，他们对恐惧吸引力广告的反应也有所不同。

创意/价值

本研究通过显示消费者的心理意象流畅度如何影响恐惧诉求效果而增加了社会营销文献，并且该研究结果还使社会营销者能够理解影响该影响力的两个因素（即消费者的CFC水平和心理意象方法）。恐惧会吸引消费者的购买意愿。此外，建议社会营销人员通过使用各种消息类型为消费者提供广告信息，以促进消费者对广告吸引力的想象。这提高了消费者接受和吸收广告内容的重要性，从而增强了他们的购买意愿。