A Project Report on

THE ROLE OF EMOTIONAL ADVERTISEMENTS IN BRAND

ATTITUDE AND CONSUMER DECISION MAKING: A STUDY
IN RELATION TO AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY

Submitted By

ROHITASHWA CHAUHAN

MBA (157647)

Name of Guide

DR. SANJEEV SWAMI

Head of Department, Management

Dayalbagh Educational Institute, Agra

DAYALBAGH EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE, AGRA, INDIA

2017
 Certificate

It is certified that Mr. RohitashwaChauhan has carried out the research work presented in this

project entitled “The role of emotional advertisements in brand attitude and consumer

decision making: A study in relation to Automobile industry” for the award of Master of

Business Administration from Dayalbagh Educational Institute under my supervision. The

project embodies result of original work and studies carried out by the student himself and the

contents of the project do not form the basis for the award of any other degree to the candidate or

to anybody else.

Dr. Sanjeev Swami

HOD, Management
Faculty of Social Sciences
Dayalbagh Educational Institute, Agra
 Acknowledgement

This project report on “The role of emotional advertisements in brand attitude

and consumer decision making: A study in relation to Automobile industry” has

been possible only because of kind cooperation lent by many individuals.

I would like to give special thanks to our Director of Dayalbagh Educational

Institute, Agra who gave me a platform to nurture my abilities, and I am very thankful to

my project guide Dr. Sanjeev Swami, (HOD- Manangement, Faculty of Social Sciences,

D.E.I.), without whose guidance it would not possible to bring me to this topic.

At last but not the least, I would like to thank my batch mates and Faculty of

Social Sciences for their constant support and guidance throughout the project duration.

(RohitashwaChauhan)
Roll No. 157647
 Declaration

This thesis is a presentation of my original research work. Wherever contributions

of others are involved, every effort is made to indicate this clearly, with due reference to
the literature, and acknowledgment of collaborative research and discussions.
The work was done under the guidance of Dr. Sanjeev Swami (HOD-
Manangement, Faculty of Social Sciences, D.E.I. Agra).

RohitashwaChauhan

[Candidate’s name and signature]

In my capacity as supervisor of the candidate’s thesis, I certify that the above statements
are true to the best of my knowledge.

Dr. Sanjeev Swami

[Guide’s name and signature]

Date:
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE…………………………………………………………………………. i

ACKNOWLDGEMENT……………………………………………………………….. ii

DECLARATION……………………………………………………………………….. iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS…...………………………………………………………….. iv

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS……………………………………………………………v

1. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………....1
1.1. Consumer Decision Making Process.......................................................................2
1.2. Consumer Response Sequence…………………………………………………….3

2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE………………………………………………………..5
3. OBJECTIVE………………………………………………………………………….10
4. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY……………………………………………………10
5. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS………………………………………………………..11
5.1. Impact of emotional advertisement & Consumer Perception………………….......12
5.2. Discussion………………………………………………………………………….13
6. RECOMMENDATIONS…………………………………………………………….14
7. CONCLUSION…………………………………………….…………………………14

EXHIBITS………………………………………………………………………………....15
I- Questionnaire…………………………………………………………………...15
II- Responses ……………………………………………………………………...23
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FLOWCHARTS
Flowchart 1: Conceptual Framework of key findings…………………………………………….9

FIGURES
Figure 1: Factors influencing consumer behaviour……….………………………………………..2
Figure 2: Buyer response sequence...……………………………………………………………....3
Figure 3: The model proposed by Mehrabian and Russell ………………..………………….……3
Figure 4: Effects of media formats on emotions and impulse buying intent………………………4

Figure 5: Age group………………………………………………….............................................10

Figure 6: Frequency of riding bike………………………………………………………………..10
Figure 7: Factors for purchasing bike……………………………………………………………..11
1. INTRODUCTION

According to Dan Hill in Emotionomics: Leveraging Emotions for Business Success, “Emotions process
sensory input in only one-fifth the time our conscious, cognitive brain takes to assimilate that same input.”
Emotions, rather than cognitive thinking, have a more profound impact on our actions; create lasting,
instinctual impressions; and actually predispose us to follow the same course of action in the future.

Consumer research has demonstrated that emotions play an important role in decision making and
marketers have long made attempts to target consumers’ emotions.

Advertisement is one of the effective tools of integrated marketing communication to emotionally

motivate consumers to buy the products. It also has strong linkage with entertainment and the
proliferation of media has blurred the distinguishing lines between advertisements and entertainment
(Moore, 2004). Advertising is to create brand awareness, preference, and selection of product or services.
The most influencing theory in marketing and advertising research is attitude-towards-the-ad. Consumer
buying behavior is based on the concept and idea that he/she simply decided to purchase a product or
service at the spot (Adelaar et al. 2003). As the goal of effective advertising is to form positive attitude
toward ad and the brand, to increase the number of purchase, then a positive emotional response to an ad
may be the best indicator of effective advertising (Goldsmith and Lofferty, 2002). That’s why basic aim
of advertising to encourage people to buy things and creates awareness (Bijmolt et al. 1998). Advertising
proliferate the beliefs that possessions are more important and desirable qualities like beauty,
achievement, prominence and happiness can be acquired only by material possessions

Advertisement is known to develop consumer attitudes towards products and service portrayed in
message. Now these days as we can see new ad of Samsung cares in which they have shown the blinds
and in Bajaj V bike commercial they are saying that they are feeling pride on having a small piece of INS
Vikrant and on the other hand Gurudeep Singh and Daughters, the TV commercial of Star Plus sending
the social message. These social and emotional commercials try to attach product with customers’ feelings
to create an urge to buy. These emotional factors work as emotional driver.

Emotional factors are the emotional drivers of buying behaviour. The fact is, everybody’s buying
behaviour is driven by emotions, then justified as necessary, after the fact, with logic.

An emotion is defined as a state of psychological arousal with cognitive aspects that depend from the
specific context. There are basic and complex (primary and secondary) emotions. Some authors (Ortony
and Turner, 1990) consider a different number of basic emotions from two (good and bad) until about
thirty. Paul Ekman, as basic emotions, considers anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise while Zamuner
(1998): joy, love, peace, compassion, anxiety, boredom, sadness, surprise, fear and anger.
The primary emotions, according to a recent definition of Robert Plutchik (1997) are eight, divided into
four couples: anger and fear, sadness and joy, surprise and the waiting, disgust and acceptance. Bindu et
al. (2007), with their model of emotions recognition from facial expressions, have classified 22 emotions:
Happy, Pride, Enthusiasm, Joy, Love, Tenderness, Ecstasy, Lust, Surprise, Conformity, Boredom,
Indifference, Disgust, Fear, Revenge, Rage, Sadness, Hate, Grief, Shame, Sorrow, Anger. From the
variations, shades, nuances of primary emotions it is possible arise others complex emotions: cheer,
shame, anxiety, resignation, jealousy, hope, forgiveness, offense, nostalgia, remorse and disappointment.

The emotional stimuli may be an event, a scene, a face, a poster, an advertising campaign. For brands, this
is an incredibly powerful piece of information, and many are capitalizing on it by creating emotional and
social ads designed to go straight for the gut. Emotional ads aren’t merely images and slogans that try to
educate and persuade viewers. They strategically manipulate consumers’ feelings and stimulate the
emotional triggers that influence how we make decisions. An emotional ad may be designed to
incite anger, sadness, or joy—all targeted toward the brand’s end goal.

Since emotional ads create a deeper and more visceral impression on the memory centres of the brain,
marketers are now measuring more cerebral responses to content using neurometrics tools like facial
coding, implicit response testing, eye tracking, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

So it would be very interesting to see that how much these advertisement affects the buying behavior
of customer, how much they create an urge to buy that product.

1.1 Consumer Decision Making Process

According to Kotler, there are the factors (cultural, social, personal and psychological) which influence
consumer behaviour, and these factors are somehow related to emotions as with that product how he’ll
feel in society, does it improves his status or not (social factors); does it bring some new positive changes
in his lifestyle or not, personality improvement (personal factors); feeling of motivation, good perception
(psychological factors).
1.1 Consumer Response Sequence

Rossiter and Percy are the theorists explain that there are actually three different response sequences
operating at once (they operate within the last three buyer response steps of ad processing, brand
communication effects, and brand purchase).

Fig. 2. Buyer Response Sequence

Source: John R. Rossiter & Larry Percy (2017) Methodological Guidelines for Advertising Research
Fig.3. The model proposed by Mehrabian and Russell (1974) for studying the problems of environmental psychology and its
important variables

Fig.4. Effects of media formats on emotions and impulse buying intent

2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE

1. Domenico Consoli 2009. “Emotions that influence purchase decisions and their electronic
processing”, Annales Universitatis Apulensis Series Oeconomica, 11(2),

i. The emotion becomes more important with the emergence of the principle of the consumer
pleasure. The emotions represent another form of language universally spoken and understood.
Emotions are a distinctive element that must be added to enhance the basis supply of
product/service and especially they are designed and managed with rigor and ethical spirit.

ii. The purchase decisions of customers are driven by two kinds of needs: functional needs
satisfied by product functions and emotional needs associated with the psychological aspects of
product ownership. The products must generate emotions but also present good functionality

iii. In this paper they examined how emotions affect customer purchases. The emotions, like the
functionality of the product/service, influence the decision-making processes of customer
purchasing. Nowadays the customer is very fond of the company brand with which he/she lives
unique emotional experiences.

iv. Non-textual emotions could be measured with facial expressions, blood pressure, pupillary
dilation, bio-feedback, eye-tracking and other quantifiable methods (Picard et al. 2003).

2. Neyati Ahuja 2015. “ Effect of Branding On Consumer Buying Behaviour: A Study in Relation
to Fashion Industry”, Journal of Multidisciplinary Research,

i. Advertising is the art of influencing human action to buy or possess ones product. The term
‘media’ refers to the means through which the advertising information is communicated by the
advertiser to the prospective customers. Advertising helps the brands to popularize their
products among the mass, which in turn helps them to influence the purchasing decision of the
consumers.
 ii. Analysis reveals that 38% of the total respondents become aware about particular brands
through Print media (newspapers & magazines), 30% through advertisements on TV & Radio,
26% through Online Media, and another 6% through words of mouth.

3. Mai Ngoc Khuong and Vu Ngoc Bich Tram 2015. “The Effects of Emotional Marketing on
Consumer Product Perception, Brand Awareness and Purchase Decision — A Study in Ho Chi
Minh City, Vietnam” Journal of Economics, Business and Management

i. Raising consumers’ purchase decision should interpret more consumers’ perception as

perception and perceived quality of product and more brand awareness as brand recall and
brand recognition. There is significant correlation between brand recognition and independent
variables. Consequently, in order to have significant brand recognition in brand awareness,
marketing manager of the companies should pay attention and focus on emotional marketing.

ii. The four main elements affecting the brand recognition. They are symbols, meaning and form,
cultural symbols and self-identification. These four factors have a significant effect on brand
recognition in brand awareness.

iii. The brand recall in brand awareness was found to be one of reasons why the companies design
to identify in purchase decision. There is a significant correlation between the factor of brand
recall in brand awareness and the independent variables. It was argued that in order to obtain
the brand recall, the companies also should concentrate on meaning and form of emotional
marketing. The perceived quality of product was one of considerations that marketing
managers of the companies believe may lead to purchase decision. The results showed there
were significant relationships between the perceived quality of product and the independent
variables.

iv. The three main elements affecting the perception of product are image, kind of media, and
symbols of emotional marketing. These three factors have a significant effect on perceived
quality of product in consumers’ perception as well as purchase decision.
4. Zain-Ul-Abideen & Salman Saleem 2015. “Effective advertising and its influence on
consumer buying behavior”, European Journal of Business and Management

i. The behavior is a result of emotional response, which is affected by three independent factors:
Pleasure: the state in which person feel good, happy, or joyful in a particular situation.
Arousal: the state of feeling that is varying from person to person in different situations i.e.
feeling of excitement, active, bored, or sleepy.
Dominance: this defines individual feelings, which are in control of or free to act in a
particular situation.
These appear when consumer watches an advertisement about the brand and develops likeness
for the brand and then eventually willing to purchase it.

ii. Another component of effective advertisement that creates emotional response is the consumer
ability to recall the brand ad i.e. brand awareness, it helps in ensuring the recall ad, which has
the competitive advantage over those brands that are not recalled easily.

iii. As emotional advertising is considered to be most effective tools, so that consumer ultimately
gives emotional response to that product. Normally, a positive relationship between visual,
verbal and text intensity of media and emotional response has been found

5. Yi Zhang 2015. “The Impact of Brand Image on Consumer Behaviour”, Open Journal of
Business and Management

i. When the product performance exceeds expectation, customer satisfaction increases; when
expectation exceeds the product performance, customer satisfaction decreases. Since product
performance is an important component of brand image, companies could infer the potential
influence of brand image on customer satisfaction by identifying the perceptual difference
toward a brand between the existing customers and non-users of the brand.

ii. Customer loyalty could be recognized as the extension of customer satisfaction. Earlier studies
define customer loyalty as repeated purchasing behaviors in a narrow sense. Generally,
customer loyalty stems from customers’ approval of a brand, which leads to their continuously
purchasing behavior of the brand and thus generates profits for the company
6. Wan Yu Chang 2014. “The Influences of Humorous Advertising on Brand Popularity and
Advertising Effects in the Tourism Industry” Sustainability

i. The brand recognition of humorous advertisement from recognition perspectives and

social perspectives and the brand recall are higher than from emotional perspectives.
Tourism businesses therefore are suggested to focus on the recognition of humorous
advertisements and allow consumers to thoroughly consider and understand the
advertising contents and appeals through expert endorsement so as to enhance the brand
awareness. On the other hand, when a general person is used as the advertisement
endorser, an advertiser can simply attract consumer attention and enhance the brand
awareness by broadly using humor as the advertising topic, rather than particularly
sticking to certain humorous types of advertising contents.

ii. Advertisement with appeals to humor could enhance the persuasion and attention of
consumers’ brand attitudes. Especially, the recognition of humorous advertisement shows
the function of Incongruity-Resolution and that the product-related information should be
emphasized so that the audience could search for answers from the advertisement when
they recognized experiences and expectations are distinct. This could be an effective way
to engage with consumers and further assist in the effects of advertising.

iii. Products with high brand awareness could better acquire positive responses of
consumers. For this reason, tourism businesses are suggested to include the product
characteristics or brand in the humorous materials when applying humorous
advertisement so that the humor has an effect on the use of the brand product. In this
case, the advertising information would impress consumers more and present the
humorous information by emphasizing the emotional connections to distinguish between
the content appeal and the product.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

BRAND AWARENESS
Brand Cognition ADOPTION
Brand Memories
Awareness
Brand Awareness
Interest CONSUMER BUYING
Evaluation BEHAVIOR
Trial
ADVERTISING EFFECT
EFEFFECT Adoption
Brand Attitude

Purchase Intention

Primary Emotions Response

Pleasure
Joy, love, peace,
compassion, anxiety,
Dominance boredom, sadness,
surprise, fear and anger
Arousal

Brand Recall
3. OBJECTIVES
1. To study the impact of emotional advertisements on customer buying behaviour.
2. To understand customer perception towards these advertisements.

4. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

1. Type of Data- Data is taken in two forms Primary and Secondary data. Primary data is of
Descriptive type research design which is collected form personnel in the form of survey
questionnaire & Secondary data is collected from various already published sources such as
journals, internet and books.
2. Data Collection- Survey
3. Sample Area- Research is conducted in north region of India through e-mail or personal
approach.
4. Type of Questionnaire- Questionnaire is of structured form in which respondents are instructed
to choose one alternative response to limit the number of allowable responses.
5. Research Instruments- Questionnaire & Observation
6. Statistical tools used- Descriptive statistics
7. Sample Size – 50 (minimum)
8. Sampling Technique- Simple Random Sampling is used as sampling technique in which
samples are obtained by people those who frequently ride bikes from different age group just to
know their attitude towards emotional advertisement.
5. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

Responses were gathered in order to investigate if there was a relationship between emotions and
an individual’s intent to purchase. Through simple random sampling a total of 40 responses were
collected to answer this question out of that 17 being female and 23 being male. Mostly
respondents lie in the range of (15-25) and (25-35) age group 82.5% and 10% respectively. As
the research tried to reach all those who generally ride bikes and also purchase bikes, the
majority of responses hold true.

Fig 5. Age group

Of 40 responses, 6 (15%) ride bike two to three times a week and 27 (67.5%) ride bike daily.
This suggests that there are responses from active users of two-wheelers whom bike
advertisements are targeted toward. Only 3 responses (7.5%) said they never ride bike or two
wheelers. Relating these findings to purchase behavior it would be assumed that the group of
participants who said they ride two to three times a week or daily would purchase automobile
generally.

Fig 6. Frequency of Riding bike

When asked participants what factors go into their purchase decision of bike, then performance
remained at top with 52.5% then brand played an important role which shows pre-conceived
notion regarding automobiles’ brands also an important factor.
 Fig.6. Factors for purchasing bike

5.1. Impact of Emotional Advertisement & Consumer Perception

When asked after showing the first advertisement did they like the advertisement or not? 97.5%
said yes and 2.5% said no. In which around 80% participants felt positive emotions. On the other
hand 10% participants felt negatively and 10% experienced no emotion. But when asked would
they purchase 47.5 % said maybe, 27.5% yes and 25% said no. But when asked next time 40%
said they will suggest others.

When asked a second time, did they like the advertisement or not? 95% said yes and 5% said no.
In which around 82.5% participants felt positive emotions. On the other hand 5% participants felt
negatively and 10% experienced no emotion. And 2.5% said other which is also comprised of
positive emotions. But when asked would they purchase 45 % said maybe, 17.5% yes and 37.5%
said no. But when asked next time 35% said they will suggest others.

When asked a third time, did they like the advertisement or not? 72.5% said yes and 27.5% said
no. In which around 50% participants felt positive emotions. And other 50% comprised of
negative and none. As a result of which, when asked would they purchase 64.1% said no
straight-forwardly, only 12.8% said yes and 23.1% said maybe. In effect of which only 20% said
they will suggest others.
After analyzing above results we can see, a good emotional advertisement can produce positive
impact but it doesn’t mean that it will convert that viewer into buyer. Factors could be anything
but yes, an advertisement with some positive emotions can produce better results than any other
with negative or no emotion. Because if someone is not going to buy that bike based on that
advertisement but that advertisement could influence as that he can suggest others as we have
seen in our results which also favors a company.

5.2. Discussion
Based on the responses it can be concluded that the majority of the respondents experienced
positive emotions from all three ads. However, the mere feeling of positivity is not enough to
influence purchasing behaviour. Morris, Woo, Geason, and Kim (2002) stated that an emotional
response will be a predictor of intent to purchase certain products. From this research it shows
that the emotion itself does not act as a predictor. It may be the strength of this emotional
response that is the true indicator of intent. Kwak, Kim, and Hirt (2011) suggest that individuals
who feel a message is negative are less likely to accept the message compared to those who see
the message as positive or neutral. From this study there seemed to be no connection or
definitive line supporting this. When participants found the message positive, they still
disregarded the advertisement and stated they would not purchase shoes because of this.
The theoretical framework suggesting the self-congruity theory was not supported in this
research. Participants of this research did not accept self-expressive motivation triggers meant to
influence their purchase decision. Instead they acknowledged these values and they had no
noticeable impact on purchase intention. Taking into consideration that the majority of responses
were positive for all three ads under the theory responses for whom would purchase the bike
based on the ad would have been higher. Instead all three questions of purchase intention
resulted in mostly ‘no’ or maybe. It is also worthy to note that for advertisement two more
participants said they liked the ad yet they would still not purchase the bike because of it.
From this research it is clear that there needs to be more of an investigation to see the full impact
of emotions on consumer’s intention to buy bikes. It is worth further investigation so marketers
can reach their target market better and potentially relate to more customers. If this research was
done again participants should be restricted in their answers. The option to check all that apply
should be limited. For example, participants should be asked to define their strongest emotion
when shown different advertisement as opposed to selecting every emotion they feel. The
question of one’s dominant feeling needs to be asked to get a better understanding of how this
feeling would impact their purchasing decision. Also, choosing the most significant factor that
influences purchasing behaviour instead of every factor should be analysed.

6. RECOMMENDATIONS
(i) To create comparatively more impact and brand recognition marketer should use positive
emotions in their advertisements.
(ii) It is also necessary to understand that to add positive emotions in advertisements doesn’t
mean that all viewers will convert into buyers.
(iii) It is also required to analyse more which combination of emotion will create more impact,
for this more research and investigation is required with restricted variables.

7. CONCLUSION
To discover if emotions impacted purchasing behaviour for individuals a survey was conducted
using three different advertisements. Participants were asked a series of questions to find out
how often they ride bike and what factors went into their purchase. They were then asked to
elaborate on the feelings they experienced from analysing an advertisement and discuss if the
advertisements would make them purchase bike. It was found that positive emotions from an
advertisement would not cause an individual to be more likely to purchase the product presented.
A person may like an advertisement, but that does not directly impact their intent to purchase.
The extent to which a participant is loyal to a brand will influence their purchasing behaviour
regardless of the advertisement. This information shows there is a need for further investigation
on the influence emotions have on individuals to better understand their intent to purchase bike.