Consumers’ appreciation of humorous marketing communications

Capasso, Marco (2023) Consumers’ appreciation of humorous marketing communications. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

Humour is one of the most common appeals in marketing communications. Since the 1970’s, over 42% of advertising appeals had a humorous intention. The trend has grown since then, especially with social media and newer forms of advertising. Over 91% of viral advertising, for example, is humorous. Despite advancements of research in the field, there is not yet a clear integration of the cognitive and emotional implications of humorous appeals, mainly because the field suffers from the lack of a general theory of humour. This thesis aims to overcome this gap by integrating cognitive and emotional models. The quantitative investigation based on the diary-study method of research has allowed the observation within and between participants responses. Over a 7 days shortitudinal study, 33 participants recorded a marketing message they found humorous (N=224), and another they did not found humorous, despite recognising the intention (N=226), over a 7-days period. Stimuli collected were quantified according to brands, markets, products categories, and media format using humour. The best fitting model resulting from Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) shows the concurrence of cognition and emotion in the case of successful humour; while its failure is determined by the emotive response, with the cognitive one resulting negative toward humorousness of the message and advertising liking. Regarding unsuccessful humour, this research offers a pioneering investigation, allowing a self-reported reason of the causes of humour failure. The latter analysis has allowed a coding of the reasons for unsuccessful humour, and their relative impact on both humorousness and message liking.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Norwich Business School
Depositing User:	Nicola Veasy
Date Deposited:	15 Jul 2024 08:34
Last Modified:	15 Jul 2024 08:34
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/95914
DOI:

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