Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PAWAN KUMAR
MBA (2ND YEAR)
UBS PURC LUDHIANA
This study examines the effect of humor on the perceived credibility, character and
authority of an advertisement and on the recall of that advertisement.
Two groups of subjects were shown two television commercials: one humorous and
another non humorous. Subjects then filled out a questionnaire that solicited
information on their perception of the commercials credibility, authoritativeness, and
character. As well as their retention of the message. For the analysis of the datas
nonparametric test is done.
After the analysis it was observed that there is a major difference of impact of
humorous and non humorous type of advertisement on the subjects. The detailed result
is published in the research design chapter.
I owe a great many thanks to a great many people who helped and supported me during the
successful completion of this project
My deepest thanks to Lecturer, Mr.Shashi kapoor, the guide of the project for guiding and
correcting various documents of mine with attention and care.
I express my thanks to Mr.Tarun vashisth ,lecturer ,UBS, PURC, LUDHIANA for his
positive support and encouragement throughout the project period
I express my thanks to my friends, Ms. Megha dutta,Mr. Akhilesh Mittal,and Mr. Arvind Jain
for their moral and academic support throughout the project period.
PAWAN KUMAR
ADVERTISING
Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, good, or
services by an identified sponsor. Ads can be a cost-effective way to disseminate messages,
whether to build a brand preference or to educate people.
KNOWLEDGE
LIKING
PREFERENCE
CONVICTION AND
PURCHASE
FIG: HIERARCHY OF EFFECT MODEL
So from seeing this model we can say that conviction and purchase depends upon awareness
and knowledge of the advertisement.
Thus its clear from the model that a marketer can use the consumer behavior in favors of its
product only if there is mass awareness among the consumer for the product.
Also its obvious that just awareness is not enough for conviction and purchase, a liking and
positive attitude is necessary for purchase behavior.
Many practitioners favors the use of humor in advertising. They support the use
of humor because humorous ads may take longer to get on ones nerves
than serious ones which, because of their constant badgering may produce
resentment and hence and unfavorable attitude towards the product being
advertised.
Most critics in humor in advertising concur that humor may tend to entertain more than sell
and should therefore be avoided.
Humor may detract from the real selling information by focusing attention to itself rather than
the message it is designed to convey. As Weingarten explains.
The problem is that the humorous, understated maverick point of view often
obfuscates the content as the heavy emphasis on presentation gets in the way of product.
There is the chance then that while humor may improve attention, it may decrease
comprehension and overall message reception.
2. Humor creates a relaxed, positive mood which will improve liking for the product
being advertised.
3. Because the advertiser is seen as willing to laugh about the product, the advertiser is
perceived as more honest
4. Because humor makes a message more memorable, it will be acted upon for a longer
period of time.
Results of research on the effectiveness of humor are contradictory .Two of the major areas
of emphasis in research on humor have been RECALL and source perception.
In these studies humor has been operationalised in the context of audio visual commercials.
RECALL
Till now there is not any undisputed notion evolved which is supportive to creative use of
advertising for higher recall value.
Few studies found that humor has a negative effect on recall of message.
CREDIBILITY
Its a matter of concern for research scholars that whether a humorous advertisement is more
credible or a serious one. However it might be possible that humorous advertisement may
attract more attention of the audience than a serious does, but as far as credibility is concern,
serious advertisement seems to be more credible.
NEED OF STUDY
Many studies examined the effect of humor on the audiences perception of the source. The
dependent variable ranged in operations from source character to safety, qualification, and
dynamism. Few of these studies found evidence that humor has a positive effect on source
perception.
The result of these studies on humor suggest that the effect of humor on recall is still unclear.
in some case humor in advertising may depress recall while in other cases it enhance recall.
And in others it probably doesnt matter whether one selects a humorous or serious approach.
While the result of the source perception studies can be utilized in planning advertisement
employing testimonials or single spokespersons they are not so readily applicable to other
type of advertisements. The question of these studies was how credible was the source?
The question, how credible was the message? Need to be answered.
Thats why I have decided to work on this ambiguous topic once more and have tried to find
out the result with greater accuracy and effectiveness.
Abstract
A study examined the effect of humor on the perceived credibility, character, and
authority of an advertisement and on the recall of that advertisement.
Two groups of subjects each heard two radio spots announcements, one humorous and
one serious. Two different products were advertised, so that the first group of subjects,
117 college advertising students, were exposed to a serious commercial for one
product and a humorous spot for the other, while the second group, 132 students,
heard the opposite.
Abstract
Although the pace of humor research in advertising has quickened over the past decades, the
body of empirical evidence regarding humor effects in advertising remains equivocal.
Previous
Qualitative reviews barely provide generalizable conclusions on the question if humor is
effective or when humor in advertising is effective. Both issues, the search for generalizable
results and for factors that moderate the impact of humor in advertising are specific tasks to
be addressed by application of a meta-analysis. Assumptions for the analysis are based on
theoretical models and on previous qualitative reviews.
Theoretical Models and Previous Qualitative Reviews
Two types of models, cognitive and affective, have been used to explain the impact of humor
in advertising. The models suggest a positive impact of humor on attitude towards the ad
(AAD),
Method
Results
The integration results show that humor significantly enhances AAD, ABR, attention,
comprehension, cognitive responses, positive emotions, purchase intention, recall and
recognition. Humor reduces credibility and negative emotions. Humor has no impact on
AADV, distraction, and purchase behavior. The results of the moderator analysis come up
with rather
Consistent findings. Contrary to expectations, humor works better in influencing attitudes for
high involvement products and thinking products than for low involvement or feeling
products. No effects were found for established vs. new brands. Also media have an effect
that contradicts previous assumptions: humor effects are stronger for print media than for
broadcast media for AAD. Ads are also more liked when the program context is rather humor
incongruent than congruent. Repeated exposure enhances ABR, but shows no effect on other
dependent variables. Finally, reception in social group leads to less attention compared to
reception of humorous ads
Alone. No difference was found for different demographic groups. Also culture does not
influence attitudes and memory, but attention: humorous ads do enhance attention particularly
for US consumers compared to other countries. Methodological factors impact only the
attention measure such that more controlled ads and laboratory studies enhance the effects on
attention.
Abstract
This study investigates the use of humor in both Print and Television Advertisements to study
the persuasiveness of humor in advertising and the difference between the two mediums.
Zhang, Baize, and Altenburg all suggest that advertisements are much more attractive to a
consumer when using humor but they may not be as effective for selling the product. Strick,
van Baaren, Holland, van Knippenberg, and Zhang all suggest that humor does increase the
Method
Participants:
Participants consisted of 27 undergraduate students from the University of Puget Sound. The
majority of the students came from First Year Communication Studies Courses. Participation
was volunteer and confidential. The participants were asked to complete a packet consisting
of three questionnaires twice. The first set was finished after viewing the print stimulus
material, and the second was completed after viewing the television stimulus material. The
questionnaires measured attitudes towards the ad, humor in ads, and purchase intent.
Participants were split up into two groups: one receiving both a print and television humorous
stimulus and the other receiving both a print and television non humorous stimulus.
Stimuli
All 4 stimuli were from Pepsi campaigns, and both non humorous stimuli were from the
newest 2009 campaign. The non-humorous print ad featured very bright colors with different
phrases with Os being filled instead with the new Pepsi logo. Also, different smiley faces
resembling emoticons were created out of the manipulation of the new logo. The non-
humorous television ad was very short at 30 seconds, and they also featured bright colors and
the replacement of Os with the new logo in positive phrases. The humorous print ad
displayed a monkey handing a Pepsi to a truck driver to bribe the driver for the Bananas in
the truck. The humorous television ad was about a minute and a half and featured a child
growing up and training to become a monk. At his initiation, he realizes that the symbol for
the monks is actually the top of a Pepsi can. So, he promptly crushes the can with his
forehead to gain the symbol and acceptance.
Means were first used to compute the difference between the non-humorous and humorous
stimuli in the print and television groups. Hypothesis 1 stated that Humorous television
group would have the highest ATA, PIS, and Brand. In table 1, this is proven to be false in a
statistically significant way for the ATA and Brand. The PIS does also show false, but not
statistically significant.
GROUP 1 GROUP2
PRODUCT A SERIOUS HUMOROUS
PRODUCT B HUMOROUS SERIOUS
SAMPLE
STIMULI
To assure that the humorous television commercials used in the experiment would be
perceived as humorous, a simultaneous test of extent of humor present in the commercial is
done.
QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN
The questionnaire design combined elements of tests formerly employed by both Cantor and
Venus (1980) and Charles gruner (1967 and 1970).Identical for all groups the questionnaire
consisted of three parts
Various factors been chosen to rate authority and character of the advertisement on
semantic differential scale.
1) Reliable-Unreliable
2) Informative-Uninformative
3) Intelligent-Unintelligent
4) Valuable-Worthless
1) Honest-Dishonest
2) Friendly-Unfriendly
3) Pleasant-Unpleasant
4) Nice-Awful
DATA PROCESSING
Responses were coded, with open-ended question receiving a 3 for correct answer,
a 2 for partially correct response, and 1 for dont know. Semantic differentials
The statistical package for the social sciences(spas) was used to perform general
frequency calculation and cross-tabulation of selected variables. MANN-WHITNEY
test is performed to determined statistical difference between means a 0.05 alpha
level was considered acceptable for statistical significance.
INTERPRETATIONS
NIRMA AD:
For both humorous and non humorous ads sig. value for different variable. Such as
gender, product recall, slogan recall, overall message recall,reliability,etc were found
different.
Below is the description for each variable differently:
Gender: a no difference hypothesis may be accepted, it means that there is no
relationship between gender and humorous/nonhumorous ads.
GET
FILE='C:\Users\PAWAN\Desktop\nirma spss.sav'.
DATASET NAME DataSet0 WINDOW=FRONT.
NPAR TESTS
/M-W= Q1 BY Q15(1 2)
/STATISTICS=DESCRIPTIVES
/MISSING ANALYSIS.
Test Statistics
GENDER
Mann-Whitney U 84.000
Wilcoxon W 189.000
Z -.742
Product name
Slogan
Message
Feature
Of the above written group of variables only in the case of recall of message ,a no
difference hypothesis can be accepted.
Descriptive Statistics
PRODUCT
NAME SLOGAN FEATURE MESSAGE
Reliability
Informative
Intelligence of ad
Valuable product
Of the above written variable humorous and non humorous ads have considerable effect
on reliability, informative ads, intelligence of ad, and perceived value of the product.
Test Statisticsb
Of the above written variables humorous and non humorous ads have significant
effect on all of them it means that we can reject the no difference hypothesis.
Descriptive Statistics
Test Statisticsb
For both humorous and non humorous ads of cocacola I found different values of sig.
Test Statisticsc
GENDER
Mann-Whitney U 50.000
Wilcoxon W 105.000
Z .000
Monte Carlo Sig. (1-tailed) 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound .281
Sig. .500b
GENDER
Mann-Whitney U 50.000
Wilcoxon W 105.000
Z .000
Monte Carlo Sig. (1-tailed) 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound .281
Sig. .500b
Product recall
Slogan
Feature
Sales message
Of all the variables written above: based on the results found by spss data
processing we can say that only recall of sales message has sig.value more than .
05 . so in this variable only we can accept the no difference hypothesis.
Reliability
Information
Intelligent
valuable
Of the above written variables only in case of reliability, we can accept the no
difference hypothesis. In the rest of cases,nonhumorous and humorous cases hav
different impact on
subjects perceived reliability,information,and valuability.
Test Statisticsb
Honesty
Nice
Pleasant
Friendly
Of the above written variables friendliness and nice/awfulness variables we can accept
nodifference hypothesis. In rest of the variables there is a considerable difference of the
impact of humorous and non humorous advertisements.
Test Statisticsb
LIMITATIONS
REFERENCES
1)Sutherland,john c. the effect of humor on advertising recall (1982)
2) Haseeb Shabbir and Des Thwaites the use of humor to mask deceptive
Advertising