The Sorrow for Her Look：The Effects of Envy towards Attractive Spokespersons in Advertising

• Main Authors: Shu-shan Chen, 陳舒珊
• Other Authors: Hsuan-Yi Chou
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/t38q47

碩士 === 國立中山大學 === 傳播管理研究所 === 102 === In advertising practices, highly attractive spokespersons are commonly believed that they can effectively attract audience’s attention and generate favorable ad effects. However, previous spokesperson research based on social comparison theory has found that whether consumers compare their appearance with that of highly attractive spokespersons leads to entirely different advertising responses, and upward comparison usually results in negative consequences. Focused on the advertising contexts with highly attractive female spokespersons, this research explores the effects of possible determinants (i.e., spokesperson similarity and attractiveness-relevant products) on female consumers’ degree of social comparison. To better understand the inconsistent effects of highly attractive spokespersons, this research also examines the role of envy in the advertising-effectiveness process, and tests the possible moderators on envy types (i.e., goal attainability of product and types of beauty) for recognizing the causes to evoke benign or malicious envy. Furthermore, the possible influences of envy emotions on consumers’ ad attitudes, product attitudes, and purchase intention are also explored. 　　The study consisted of a 2(spokesperson similarity) × 2(attractive relevance of product) × 2(goal attainability of product) × 2(types of beauty) between-subject experimental design. Results reveal that similar spokespersons and attractiveness-relevant products raise the degree of upward comparison and envy emotion for highly attractive spokespersons, but showing the non-additive interactive relationship on the degree of upward comparison. Additionally, the degree of upward comparison positively affects the participants’ general envy emotion and negative feelings, evoking benign and malicious envy simultaneously and generating positive ad effects. Attractive relevance of products is unable to directly moderate the types of envy resulted from upward comparison, but it works when the spokespersons have the beauty type of sex kitten. The types of beauty moderate the types of envy generated by upward comparison. Under the condition of the type of girl-next-door, upward comparison increases benign envy and positively influences advertising effectiveness. For sex-kitten typed spokespersons paired with high goal-attainability products, upward comparison produces the two types of envy simultaneously and has positive impacts on advertising effectiveness. However, for sex-kitten typed spokespersons paired with low goal-attainability products, upward comparison only generates stronger malicious envy toward the spokespersons and decreases advertising effectiveness. Finally, this study demonstrates that the types of envy mediate the advertising effectiveness generated by upward comparison.