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ISSN (Online): 2455-7838
SJIF Impact Factor (2016): 4.144
Research &
Development
Volume:2, Issue:8, August 2017
EPRA International Journal of
(IJRD)
Monthly Peer Reviewed & Indexed
International Online Journal
www.eprajournals.com Volume: 2| Issue: 8| August 2017
31
ISSN: 2455-7838(Online)
EPRA International Journal of Research and Development (IJRD)
SJIF Impact Factor: 4.144 Volume: 2 | Issue: 8 | August | 2017
ADVERTISING APPEAL AND PURCHASE INTENTION
OF BEER CONSUMERS IN PORT HARCOURT
Prof. Sylva Ezema Kalu1
1Professor, University of Port Harcourt, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria
Enyia Charles Daniel2
2PhD Student, Department of Marketing, University of Port Harcourt, Port Harcourt, Rivers
State, Nigeria
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the extent to which rational and emotional appeal affects the purchase intention of beer consumers in
Port Harcourt. 146 consumers were studied from ten registered and non-registered beer shops in Port Harcourt. This study finds out
that beer consumers are more convinced to purchase through emotional advertising appeal than rational advertising appeal. Our
results also shows that consumer’s age and gender moderates the relationship between advertising appeals and purchase intention.
KEYWORDS: Advertising, rational appeal, emotional appeal, purchase intention, beer consumers
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Every organization depend on customers
purchase and repurchase decision to grow their sales
volume as well as market share (Shwu-lng & Chen-
lien, 2009). There is no single organization that
would not want to encourage more customers to buy
their product and this is why most often,
organizations incorporate the components of rational
and emotional advertising appeal as part of their
promotional strategies so that they would win more
customers for themselves. Doing this requires huge
consumer behavior skills on the part of the
organization because there is need to understand their
psychological response towards organizations’
products before advertising such products to
consumers (Mitchel, 1998). Today, retailers of beer
products have put in place so much emotional appeal
in bringing customers to themselves and this can
come in form of employing the services of strippers
to dance around their bar, having advertorials done
with faces of beautiful women and this often induce
customers to take more beer. While adopting
emotional appeal, they often utilize rational appeal
through bill boards and other advertorials at each and
every corner of the bar that explain the uniqueness of
their brand. This study empirically investigates the
extent to which these advertising appeals would
significantly influence customer purchase decision.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The rise in consumption of alcoholic drinks
in Nigeria (especially beer products) has continued to
increase overtime. Nigeria accounts for 36% of the
formal alcohol market in Africa (Nwankwo, 2015).
Within Nigeria, The Nigerian Breweries owns over
71% of the market share, Guinness have a total of
27% while other players have about 2% of the total
market share. Despite the growing rate of inflation
and the unfavorable foreign exchange between the
naira and dollar, there is an increasing beer
consumption. Could this be as a result of people
trying to forget about their stress and problems?
Would it be as a result of increase in personal
disposable income or a drive to socialize? These and
many more questions cannot escape the mind of an
EPRA International Journal of Research and Development (IJRD) |ISSN:2455-7838 (Online) |SJIF I mpact Factor: 4.144
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32
average observer. The producers and wholesalers
often use rational methods to advertise these
products, they even emphasize it is meant for 18
years and above. The retailers on the other hand
adopt more of emotional appeal in order to sell off
their products. Places like clubs, hotels, etc often
employ comedians, musical bands, dancers, etc. these
strategies can also be classified as part of emotional
appeal.
1.3 HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT
This study empirically examines how
advertising appeal would significantly affect the
purchase decision on consumers in Port Harcourt. In
achieving this, the following hypotheses were
developed
H01 Rational appeal does not significantly affect
purchase intention
H02 Emotional appeal noes not significantly
affect purchase intention
H03 Consumer demographics does not moderate
the relationship between advertising appeal
and purchase intention
Operational framework
Fig. 1.1 Conceptualized by the researcher
2.1 BASELINE THEORY
This study is anchored on Theory of
Reasoned action (TRA) which was proposed by
Fishbein and Ajzen (1975). This theory considers the
attitudes as well as subjective norm which people
hold as predictors of their future behavior. Fishbein
and Ajzen further proposed that an individual’s
intention to engage in any behavior or transaction is
the most important factor which determines the
success of marketing activities. Every purchase
originates from the mind and there is need for
marketers to communicate with the mind of such
customers in order to make them buy the product.
TRA believes that an individual’s intention towards a
particular behavior is a function of his attitude
towards engaging in such behavior as well as the
subjective norm which relates to what the customer
feel others think about the his purchase behavior.
This theory fits into this work because consumers of
beer products must be attracted to the product,
Advertising Appeal
Consumer
Demographics
Rational Appeal
Emotional Appeal
Purchase Intention
EPRA International Journal of Research and Development (IJRD) |ISSN:2455-7838 (Online) |SJIF I mpact Factor: 4.144
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33
sometimes through rational appeal and other times
through emotional appeal. All these advertising
appeals are for the ultimate purpose of influencing
the mind of customers towards purchase
2.2 CONCEPT OF ADVERTISING
APPEAL
According to Sadeghi, Fakharyan, Dadkhah,
Khodadadian, Vosta and Jafari (2015), advertising
appeal is a process whereby customers are
communicated to understand how certain products
proves to be beneficial to them. Kotler (1997) further
explains the fact that advertising appeal forms the
theme of every marketing effort. In order to ensure
that consumers/audience grab the message that
marketers pass through, it is very necessary that those
who carry out advertising function apply some
driving effort into their action and this can be referred
to as appeal. Every appeal done by advertisers ought
to have some element of attraction which could
increase the desires of target consumers towards
purchasing such product. According to Kotler (2003),
advertising appeal can be divided into rational appeal
and emotional appeal. Because advertising influences
the attitude as well as judgement of customers
towards purchasing products, there is a need to
understand that such attitude can be classified into
cognitive and affective components. According to
Allport (1935), the cognitive components represents
the evaluation of individuals towards external
simulation while the affective components refer to
the internal feelings of individual. However, the
essence of advertising appeal is to ensure that both
the affective and cognitive components of
consumer’s psychology are attracted to the product.
2.2.1 Rational advertising appeal
Rational advertising appeal are those appeal
which focus on consumer’s practical need of
organizations products and such appeal only
concentrate on the products, its uses as well as how it
would benefit customers (Kotler, 2003). Such appeal
are often advertised on print media and it also
requires high level of involvement as well as
attention. Rational appeal often concentrates on
products characteristics and those consumer who
would purchase the product would have been
satisfied by the features listed in the product. Because
the message consumers receive have the ability of
influencing their behavior and purchase intention,
rational advertising appeal covers more of product
information as well as why such products are better
than their rivals. Today, products like Star, 33,
Gulder, Heineken, etc often let the public understand
the kind of raw materials their drinks are made of and
how many times their drinks are filtered before
entering the consumer market. According to Chu
(1996), rational appeal as a means of advertising has
high influence on the purchase intention of consumer.
2.2.2 Emotional appeal
Kotler (1997) is of the opinion that
emotional appeal as a process whereby purchase
intention of consumers are stimulated by ensuring
that employee emotion is aroused. Kotler (2003)
further explained that emotional appeal could come
in form of sex appeal, social appeal, humor appeal,
music appeal, etc. Humor appeal is one of the appeals
often used by beer retailers to attract purchase
intension from consumers, take for example, during
comedy shows, people seem to drink so much beer
because there is always a reason to laugh. Humor
brings out more thirst for beer which results to
increase in sales. Sex appeal is also another approach
which also stimulates consumer purchase intention.
Most beer retailers today employ the service of
beautiful ladies who most times give the male
consumers reason to drink more beer. Some retailers
go to the extent of employing strippers who dance
around the hall and stimulate the intention of
consumer to buy more beer. There is a need for
marketers to understand the psychology of their
customers before applying any of the advertising
techniques because some consumers may not be
comfortable with some types of appeal.
2.3 PURCHASE INTENSION
Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) defined intention
as a subjective probability for someone to engage in a
specific behavior. This same definition can be
extended to consumer purchase intention as well as
their willingness to come up with purchase behavior.
According to Hsu (1990), purchase intention refers to
those transactional behaviors which occur after
consumers have evaluated a specific product as well
as an emotional reaction which reflects the attitude
towards a particular product. Purchase intention starts
from the mind of consumers because every customer
has different needs, taste, wants and preferences,
there is a need for them to have different purchase
intention as what drives one may not drive the other
and there is need for marketers to ensure that such
needs are considered before embarking on
advertising. Because purchase intention is the
possibility of consumers’ willingness to patronize
organizations in purchasing their products and
services, there is a need to do proper analyses before
such advertising programs are carried out so as to
ensure adequate acceptability from consumers.
2.4 ADVERTISING APPEAL AND
PURCHASE INTENTION
According to the works of Shamdasani
(2001), the degree to which consumers purchase
goods and services or the degree to which consumers
intend to purchase goods and services can be said to
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be a result of the advertising appeal adopted by
marketers. This is also similar to the findings of
Schiffman and Kanuk (2007) who also confirmed
that the attitude of consumers towards purchasing
specific products are always a result of advertising
appeal adopted by the marketing department.
Because the purchase intention of consumers us more
psychological than physical, there is a need to
understand what actually drives their purchase
decision. This purchase decision is also translated to
economic outcome which includes more purchasing
and re-purchasing.
3.1 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The research design for this study is quasi-
experimental research design because the study
covers human beings in their live-behavior.
Respondents for this study would be randomly
selected from several bars where beers are been
retailed. The data for this study is primary data which
would be collected through the use of questionnaire.
150 copies of questionnaire were distributed and 146
copies were retrieved and useful for analyses. The
hypotheses would be tested using linear regression
and partial correlation.
Table 1
SPSS 20 output
Respondents for this study are 54 females and 92
males. This could mean that more male visit the bar
compared to female.
Table 2
SPSS 20 output
According to our analyses, 25 of our respondents are
between the age of 25 and below and this constitutes
17.1% of total respondents. 48 respondents were
within the age of 26-35 years which constitute 32.9%
of total respondents, 38 respondents’ age ranged from
36-45 years which is 26% of total respondents.
Respondents who are 46 years and above were 35
which represents 24% of total respondents
Table 3
SPSS 20 output
EPRA International Journal of Research and Development (IJRD) |ISSN:2455-7838 (Online) |SJIF I mpact Factor: 4.144
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From our model, we can see that our coefficient of
determinant (R square) is 0.580 which means that our
predictor variables (emotional and rational appeal)
accounts for over 58.0% of the outcome of purchase
intention. There is also a coefficient of 0.76 which is
strong. This means that advertising appeal
significantly accounts for the outcome of beer
consumer purchasing intention.
Table 4
SPSS 20 output
Our ANOVA table confirms our model output as it
shows an F value of 98.9 as well as a p-value of
0.000 which is less than alpha level of 0.05. This also
implies that advertising appeal significantly predicts
purchase intention.
Table 5
SPSS 20 output
In considering the multivariate analyses of
our data, we realize how our dimensions (rational and
emotional appeal) independently affect the outcome
of purchase intention. Here, we see rational appeal
having a coefficient of 0.041 which is quite weak and
a p-value of 0.554 which is higher than alpha level of
0.05. Therefore, we would accept the first null
hypothesis that rational appeal does not affect
consumer purchase intention.
In considering our second hypothesis, we
realize that contrary to the results relating to rational
appeal, emotional appeal has a coefficient of 0.735
which is very strong. It also has a p-value of 0.000
which is less than alpha level of 0.05. Base on this
output, we would reject the null hypothesis that
emotional appeal does not affect consumer purchase
intention.
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Table 6
SPSS 20 output
Our third hypothesis shows that gender and
age significantly affect the interaction between
advertising appeal and purchase intention. While our
first null hypothesis was rejected without the
consideration of age and gender of respondents, it
shows a positive relationship when gender and age is
considered and here there is a correlation coefficient
of 0.515 which is strong and a p-value of 0.000
which is less than 0.05. Therefore we would reject
our third hypothesis which states that there
demographics does not moderate the relationship
between advertising appeal and purchase intention.
CONCLUSION
This paper revealed that consumers of beer
products respond more quickly to emotional appeal
than rational appeal. However, the introduction of
demographics such as age and gender proved a
different result which was quite different from our
first hypothesis. It also shows that respondents within
the ages of 26-35 years had much influence on the
outcome of our hypotheses because they seem to
dominate the other respondents. Because emotional
appeal communicates with the mind, consumers are
easily attracted to make purchases.
RECOMMENDATIONS
This study would recommend the following;
1. Producers of beer products must understand
that there is a need to place value on rational
appeal, more content should be introduced
to products in order to receive the attention
of consumers.
2. In order to make more sales, there is a need
for constant collaboration with retailers,
know their challenges and how to make their
businesses better.
3. More promo should be done within retail
outlet and consumers should be the receivers
of promo/gift items.
4. More emphasis should be made in reducing
the number of teenagers patronizing their
products.
5. There is need to produce more beer products
with little or no alcohol content to capture a
wider market.
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