Emotion in Advertising: Theoretical and Practical Explorations

Written by leading industry practitioners and academic researchers, this book explores the complex relationship between emotion and advertising. The chapters include both theoretical and empirical papers representing a broad spectrum of approaches and techniques. Some of the key topics include the measurement of mood, emotion and feeling in an advertising context, the effects of mood on recall and advertising effectiveness, the interaction of the message with the emotional make-up of the recipient,and the structural aspects of an ad and how they relate to emotional responses. Taken together, these papers represent the cutting edge of research in the area of advertising and emotion and a major contribution to the literature of consumer psychology.

The volume is organized into six general sections. Part I provides an overview of the ways in which emotions affect the advertising environment. The next group of chapters investigates how emotional responses to advertising can and should be measured. The third section is comprised of empirical chapters which examine such issues as the potential role of facial expression in the arousal of emotion, differential emotional responses to storyboards, animatics and finished commercials, and the impact on emotional response of the introductory position of the brand name and product category within a commercial. In Part IV, the contributors look at how the emotional reactions to ads affect other constructs or behavior of interest to advertisers, including message recall and attitude toward the ad. The following section contains two chapters that explicitly examine how the emotional make-up of the viewer interacts with the emotional fabric of the ad. The final chapter presents an overview of the role of consumer psychology in the social sciences. Ideal as a set of readings for graduate students and researchers in consumer psychology and advertising research, this book would also be invaluable as a supplemental text for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in cognitive psychology, social psychology, mass media/communications/journalism, or family economics.

STUART J. AGRES is Executive Vice President and Director of Strategic Planning at Lowe & Partners.

JULIE A. EDELL is Associate Professor in Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Her previous work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, and Advances in Consumer Research.

TONY M. DUBITSKY is Group Head in the Marketing Research Department at Lowe & Partners.