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ACADEMIC PAPER
The role of storytelling in advertising: Consumer emotion,
narrative engagement level, and word-of-mouth intention
Jin-Ae Kang
1
| Sookyeong Hong
2
| Glenn T. Hubbard
1
1
School of Communication, College of Fine
Arts and Communication, East Carolina
University, Greenville, North Carolina
2
Department of Media and Advertising, Hansei
University, Gunpo-Si, Republic of Korea
Correspondence
Sookyeong Hong, Department of Media and
Advertising, Hansei University, Hansei-Ro
30, Gunpo-Si, Gyunggi-Do, Republic of Korea.
Email: paris2@hansei.ac.kr
Abstract
This experimental study with a national online sample (n= 300) tested the effects of
storytelling in radio advertisements on participants' positive emotional responses and
intentions to share information about the product, depending on audiences' narrative
engagement level. Treatments included a commercial for a fictitious brand of luggage
using a story told by the founder of the company, another version of the same com-
mercial manipulated so the speaker was a customer of the company, and a control
stimulus consisting only of information about the product. Results showed that narra-
tive transportation and narrative preference are positively associated with favorable
responses toward ad. Stories elicited more favorable emotional responses and had
some effect on participants' intention to share information about the product by word-
of-mouth. This was especially true among participants hearing the founder's story.
Results support previous assumptions about the power of storytelling in advertising,
including distinctions regarding the identity of the speaker (founder vs. customer).
Storytelling has become a common technique for increasing the emo-
tional power of advertising. This is because humans tend to store
information in the form of stories (Schank, 1999), making it easy to
remember (Lundqvist, Liljander, Gummerus, & Van Riel, 2013). Thus,
much consumer literature has assumed that storytelling in advertising
would be effective. Storytelling ads stimulate consumers' emotions as
they mentally combine stories with their own experiences
(i.e., Escalas, 2006). However, such effects do not seem to be fully
born out in research. Literature points to three reasons: experimental
design issues, measurement problems, and questionable variables.
First, it is not easy to design experiments capturing the effects of sto-
rytelling as it is done in the real world. Researchers struggle to deter-
mine which message strategies to use and how to design them, since
there are too many message strategies and product options. Secondly,
it is not easy to establish which measures most accurately reflect story
effectiveness, which is somehow too subjective. Lastly, there are con-
ditioning factors that influence these experiments, such as brand
image, CEO image, and consumer involvement. Researchers grapple
with how best to control these variables.
With the understanding of these issues, this study delved into the
question of the effectiveness of storytelling in advertising, relying on
literature on several key elements of narrative persuasion, such as
transportation, identification, and preference for narrative in one's
thinking. We chose to compare storytelling ads with nonstorytelling
ads to measure storytelling effectiveness. We were interested in how
advertising effects vary depending on who the storyteller is and to
what extent audiences immerse themselves into stories.
The purposes of this study are to explore (a) which type of people
are more likely to be affected by storytelling ads, and (b) how individ-
uals are differently affected by storytelling ads according to narrative
transportation, preference, and the identities of storytellers in the ads.
In order to exclude previously held perceptions of a brand, this study
created a fictitious brand and made different types of storytelling ads
for it. Specifically, this study examined how storytelling advertising
affects consumers' emotions and word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions.
1|LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1 |Emotional responses to advertising
Including Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), many scholars have assumed that
humans are rational rather than impulsive and their consumption
behaviors would be also made by rational decision-making processes.
Received: 4 May 2018 Revised: 6 October 2019 Accepted: 16 October 2019
DOI: 10.1002/cb.1793
J Consumer Behav. 2020;19:47–56. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cb © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 47
This notion supports the idea that having logical arguments helps
achieve the best effects in advertising. Thus, informational advertising
often plays an important role as a source of product knowledge for
information seekers (Lin & Chen, 2006). However, decisions made by
consumers are often nonrational. People purchase a commodity not
because they need the product but because they want it. Desires for
self-expression or socialization often justify consumers' decisions
(Holbrook & Batra, 1987; Saenger, Thomas, & Johnson, 2013) in
which consumers are emotionally attached to a product. Emotion can
play a role as a mediator in consumer responses. Advertisers consider
the role of emotion in the decision-making process in individual con-
sumers' minds and diversify strategies so that an ad not only delivers
information to satisfy consumer's cognitive demands but also creates
positive emotional responses (i.e., Taylor, 1999). This is one reason
why scholars have measured emotional responses to test advertising
effectiveness.
In marketing and advertising literature, emotion has been broadly
conceptualized as either a mood state during the viewing of commer-
cials (Friestad & Thorson, 1986; Srull, 1983) or a mental state of readi-
ness that arises from the cognitive appraisals that people make about
commercials (Bagozzi, Gopinath, & Nyer, 1999; Friestad & Thorson,
1986). The present study uses the term emotional response to refer to
the latter definition for following reasons: Feelings that audiences
experience fluctuate over time in nature, and it is difficult to influence
the mood state of an individual with a 30-s commercial. In addition,
some scholars acknowledge emotion as a part of an attitudinal dimen-
sion (Cwalina, Falkowski, & Kaid, 2005; Heath, 2001) that reflects a
cognitive process.
1.2 |Emotion and WOM intention
WOM is generally defined in marketing research as “informal commu-
nications directed at other consumers about the ownership, usage, or
characteristics of particular goods and services and/or their sellers”
(Westbrook, 1987, p. 261). With the development of social media,
WOM has a much more significant impact on consumers' purchase
decision than other forms of marketing communication because social
media creates an environment where consumers act as voluntary mar-
keters sharing information directly through their digital networks
(i.e., Goh, Heng, & Lin, 2013; Kimmel & Kitchen, 2014). Where the
interaction occurs face-to-face or online, the essence of the WOM is
in the notion that communication occurs among peer consumers who
do not expect to receive compensation for the communication.
Researchers studying what motivates consumers' intentions to
share content (WOM) have found that emotion is one of the most influ-
ential factors (Heath, Bell, & Sternberg, 2001). Berger and Milkman
(2013) emphasize the importance of compelling content and advise that
using good content is more effective than targeting opinion leaders to
diffuse WOM. In this regard, consumers are willing to share content if it
appeals to their emotions (Berger & Milkman, 2012).
Meiselman (2015) notes that recent studies on positive emotions
gained more attention. It is perhaps because positive emotion
supports linkages with WOM in promotional advertising. Botha and
Reyneke (2013) find that viewers who have positive emotional reac-
tions to audiovisual content have more intention to share it. In a
decision-making process, “the emotional connection”to content is
regarded as an essential element for consumers to share (p. 168).
1.3 |Storytelling and emotion in an advertising
context
Storytelling is regarded as an effective advertising format to deliver
messages and promote communication (Padgett & Allen, 1997).
Adaval and Wyer (1998) noted that potential customers imagine “the
sequence of events”in which a product is used rather than calculate
the usefulness of the product, and a narrative form in a message is
more easily conveyed than an informational form”(p. 208). Like a fic-
tional story, storytelling advertising is designed with various types of
plots, which give a “direction or intent of meaning”(Brooks, 1992,
p. xi). The plot connects the story to reality and tends to “organize
reality and make sense of the world unfolding within the narrative”
(Holley & Colyar, 2012, p. 116). Characters are created in the plot of a
story; the main characters usually appear with opponents, and helpers
to resolve the problems or the conflicts in a story (Singer & Bluck,
2001). Lakoff (2008) highlights the importance of emotion in a narra-
tive structure, arguing “narratives and frames are not just a brain
structure with intellectual content”but rather “with integrated
intellectual-emotional content”(p. 28). If an advertisement adopts
such narrative components as a format of storytelling advertising,
audiences would also go through narrative processing to respond to
the ad, which elicits emotional responses.
The narrative format in advertising has been actively used espe-
cially in public service announcements such as campaigns pertaining
to organ donation, antismoking, and cancer prevention (Murphy,
Frank, Chatterjee, & Baezconde-Garbanati, 2013; Shen, Sheer, & Li,
2015). Stories of “people like me”increase the relevancy of narratives
to audience members' lives and make people aware that the events of
a story are realistic enough to happen in their lives. Story format,
however, has hardly been tested in a commercial advertising context.
It is unknown whether people engage in a narrative in commercial
advertising just as they process stories in public-service messages. In
the next section, this study reviews several key constructs in narrative
persuasion literature to incorporate them into a commercial advertis-
ing context.
1.4 |Narrative transportation
Scholars have produced multiple transportation theories (i.e.,
Bilandzic & Busselle, 2011; Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009;
Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; Escalas, 2006), all sharing a basic idea of
“immersion into a text (p. 702),”as mentioned in one study by Green
and Brock (2002). Transportation into a narrative world is described
as, “the process of temporarily leaving one's reality behind and
KANG ET AL.
48
emerging from the experience somehow different from the person
one was before entering the milieu of the narrative”(Green, Brock, &
Kaufman, 2004, p. 315).
Scholars have paid attention to the fact that narrative trans-
portation proves persuasive through reducing negative cognitive
response and eliciting strong affective responses (Green & Brock,
2002). In the narrative persuasion process, people are more likely
to be persuaded by emotions rather than by strong arguments
from the information provided in the story. Such a tendency is
observed in both noncommercial and commercial messages.
McQueen, Kreuter, Kalesan, and Alcaraz (2011) found among Afri-
can American women that an individual's level of transportation
was associated both with decreased counterarguing and increased
interpersonal discussion about the breast cancer survivor stories.
Escalas (2006) discovered that the more participants were trans-
ported by their narrative self-referencing, the better they liked the
fictitious shoe brand in her experiment. Weak arguments per-
taining to the brand message also did not negatively affect persua-
sion when people were led to the narrative thought process.
Therefore, it is logical to suggest that the effect of transportation
is associated with positive emotional responses and behavioral
outcomes such as a desire to share information about the ad by
WOM. Thus, we propose the following hypotheses based on the
literature:
H1a.Narrative transportation has a positive impact on participants'
emotional responses toward advertising content.
H1b.Narrative transportation has a positive impact on WOM
intention.
H1c.There is a mediation effect of emotional responses toward
advertising content between narrative transportation and WOM
intention.
1.5 |Narrative preference
Scholars have acknowledged that people use both analytical and nar-
rative thought processes when they interpret information by relating
it to personal experience (i.e., Bruner, 1986; Escalas, 2006). A tradi-
tional elaboration-based persuasion model emphasized the impor-
tance of logical thinking. However, persuasion is not always made
solely based on fact-based arguments. Slater and Rouner (2002) noted
that sensation-seeking personality traits elicit preference for story-
based messages. High sensation-seekers are more responsive to mes-
sages that are high in narrative elements such as drama, emotion, and
event (Everett & Palmgreen, 1995). Although this study does not
mainly explore differences in personal traits in narrative processing,
the research team decided to test one variable, narrative preference,
exploring its impact on emotional responses and WOM intention.
H2a.Narrative preference has a positive impact on participants'
emotional responses toward advertising content.
H2b.Narrative preference has a positive impact on WOM intention.
H2c.There is a mediation effect of emotional responses toward
advertising content between narrative preference and WOM intention.
1.6 |Identification
Identification has long been understood as factor in the potential impact
of a mediated message (i.e., Bandura, 2004). Social cognitive theory posits
that individuals tend to mimic behaviors that they have seen modeled
more than behaviors that have been recommended. People more readily
accept messages demonstrated by models they like or want to be like.
Thus, identification has been often conceptualized as perceived similarity
or wishful identification (Moyer-Gusé, 2008; Murphy et al., 2013). The
concepts of perceived similarity and likability are compatible with the
credibility of the endorser in advertising literature. Advertising has
involved diverse spokespersons such as celebrities, experts, CEOs, and
customers. Likability and expertise of the spokesperson play vital roles in
influencing consumers' purchase decisions (Till & Busler, 2000), which is
why celebrities and experts are recognized as desirable speakers in a tradi-
tional ad. However, a new format of ad, storytelling advertising, employs
CEOs and customers because the audience is more likely to accept them
as characters in a story. For example, some CEOs have adventurous
stories of how they started their businesses. Ideally, consumers would
wish to be like the CEOs in such stories (wishful identification).
On the other hand, customers share their experiences of products
in a story format. Consumers perceive peer customers to be like them-
selves (perceived similarity) because the peers are believed to care for
consumers' interest, not for corporate profits. A spokesperson would be
identified as a character in a storytelling ad. Thus, with both a CEO and
a customer character, there is a theoretical basis on which to ascertain a
relationship between likability and listener favorability toward an ad's
content, but there are notable differences between the two. It is for this
reason that we chose both a CEO and a customer as characters in the
design of advertising stimuli, with the idea of testing the effectiveness
of both and gaining at least preliminary insights into which is more
effective. Previous research has found that identification with narrative
characters showed a positive association with affective and cognitive
involvement, and thus facilitated interpersonal discussion (Sood, 2002).
Thus, this study develops the following hypotheses.
H3a.Emotional responses toward the ad content differ on the story-
teller types in the ad that participant hears.
H3b.WOM intention differs depending on the storyteller types that
the participant hears.
H4.There is an interaction effect between storyteller types and nar-
rative transportation on (a) emotional responses toward the ad content
and (b) WOM intention.
H5.There is an interaction effect between storyteller type and narra-
tive preference on (a) emotional responses toward the ad content
(b) WOM intention.
2|METHODS
2.1 |Participants
We conducted a web-based experiment using the platform of
Qualtrics. Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) online panel was used
KANG ET AL.49
to recruit the research participants because online recruiting and test-
ing are regarded as a valid procedure. Casler, Bickel, and Hackett
(2013) found that the MTurk online samples are more socioeconomi-
cally and ethnically diverse compared to other types of samples such
as in-lab participants and social media recruits. The researchers also
noted that the test results across the three samples were indistin-
guishable, which is consistent with prior research (i.e., Buhmester,
Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). In recruiting the MTurk panel, we allowed
participation only by those who currently live in the US and whose
MTurk “approval rate”is 97% or above. A total of 300 participants
were recruited in February 2018, of whom 149 (49.7%) were male,
and 151 were female (50.3%). The average age of the participants was
38.8, ranging from 18 to 73.
2.2 |Experimental design and stimuli
We used a posttest-only control design with two treatment groups
(storyteller types in the ad: a founder's story and a customer's story),
and one control group (a traditional informational ad). Regarding the
stimuli design, we created a fictitious travel luggage brand that has
never been on the market because a virtual product does not have
any prior reputation among consumers. To choose a product type and
message strategy, we consulted the Six-Segment Strategy Wheel,
developed by Taylor (1999), which establishes six types of purchasing
decisions and places them according to their level of consumer
involvement and the extent to which they are associated with infor-
mational or transformational messages. Since our control stimulus had
to be purely informational, it made sense to create messages on the
informational side of the model. In terms of involvement, our research
team determined that we should choose a product category for which
a purchasing decision is important enough that a consumer would be
inclined to seek detailed information, but not such high involvement
as to make it unrealistic that the person would make a purchase based
on a 30-s commercial. Therefore, we chose the acute need segment of
the strategy wheel and luggage as the product category. It was plausi-
ble for a character to tell a story of an acute need involving luggage
and for a narrator in a nonstory form to describe product characteris-
tics that would meet such a need.
In the design of story plot for the ad, we included one main char-
acter and one event, which is the minimum element of a story
(Genette & Levonas, 1976; Hong & Cho, 2016). Then, three different
versions of the ad were created. The appendix presents the full scripts
of the stimuli. A male professional narrator recorded the three stimuli,
and the same background music was used. All three stimuli were care-
fully edited so only the manipulated variables were different among
the three versions of the commercial. Each ad included the fictitious
brand name three times. The word counts of the ads were 102 for the
founder's story, 107 for the customer's story, and 87 for the informa-
tional ad, but the running time of all three ads was identical because
the same length of background music was used, controlling a poten-
tially confounding factor of different ad lengths. The reason for the
varied word counts was that the informational ad did not include plot
or story elements and could not be embellished without adding infor-
mation not indicated in the story versions. Also, in the customer's
story, the speaker introduces himself as “here to talk to you about…”
instead of “the founder of…,”which accounts for the word count dif-
ference between those two stimuli.
2.3 |Measures
2.3.1 |Narrative transportation
Seven items were used to measure narrative transportation based
on previous studies (Green & Brock, 2002; Brechman, 2010). How-
ever, we edited the wording according to the purpose of our study.
The items were used as follows: (a) While I was listening to the ad, I
could easily picture what was described,(b)While I was listening to
the ad, I could picture myself experiencing what was described,(c)I
was mentally involved in the ad while listening to it;(d)I had a hard
time keeping my mind in listening to the ad (reversed),(e)My atten-
tion was focused on the ad,(f)It was easy to follow the action and
events taking place in the ad,and (g) I could easily image myself in a
similar situation to what is described in the ad:M= 4.16, SD = .65,
Cronbach's alpha = .863.
2.3.2 |Narrative preference
One item was newly created to measure narrative preference: In gen-
eral, I prefer to receive information in the form of a story:M= 3.47,
SD = 1.01, Cronbach's alpha = n/a.
2.3.3 |Types of storytellers in the ad
This study tests three different types of advertising by storyteller
(Hong & Cho, 2016): (a) founder (CEO's story), (b) consumer's story,
and (c) nonstory informative advertising.
2.3.4 |Emotional response toward the advertising
content
The current study addresses the impact of positive emotion as an
advertising effect. While both positive and negative responses
have potential impact on ad effectiveness, the particular types of
ads tested in this study focus on efforts to manipulate listener
responses to become more favorable toward a product. Thus, all
eight items in emotional response reflect positive aspects of emo-
tion. The items asked if the contents of the ad are (a) interesting,
(b) creative,(c)impressive,(d)different,(e)touching,(f)meaningful,
(g) believable and (h) convincing. Cronbach's alpha was .914
(M=3.29,SD =.87;range1[stronglydisagree]–5 [strongly
agree]).
KANG ET AL.
50
2.3.5 |WOM intention
The WOM intention construct used three items as follows: (a) I would
like to talk to people about the product, (b) I would recommend the lug-
gage to my friends, and (c) I would like to tell the story of the ad to people
around me. Cronbach's alpha was for the reliability check was .911
(M= 2.61; SD = 1.07; range: 1–5).
2.4 |Procedure
2.4.1 |Pretest
A pretest was conducted in two steps. The first one was conducted
among college students (n= 25) to correct inappropriate wording or
ambiguous terms. The second was launched with a small set of
MTurk panelists (n= 30) to double-check any possible issues in the
flow of the online questionnaire through MTurk recruitment. After
the second pretest, we inserted two safeguards to make sure partici-
pants did not skip listening to one of the stimuli before answering
the questions, and whether the participants carefully read the ques-
tionnaire. The administration of the pretest took approximately
4.5 minutes. Those who could not listen to the audio advertising
stimuli, or who failed to answer the validity check question correctly,
were screened out and not allowed to complete the rest of the
questions. The responses of 11 people out of 311 were excluded
from the analysis.
2.4.2 |Main procedure
The invitation to our study was sent only to qualified MTurk
panelists. Once the panel agreed to participate in our study, the
participants were randomly assigned to one of the three stimuli.
Then, they continued to answer our questions. The random
block design function in Qualtrics was used to set a random
assignment.
2.4.3 |Manipulation check
The manipulation check demonstrated our story design was per-
ceived in the way we intended (χ
2
= 461.341, df =4,p=.00),with
95.1% (n= 98 out of 103) of the respondents who were exposed to
the founder's story correctly perceiving the story as the one with
the founder speaking. Also, 83% (82 out of 99) who listened to the
customer's story correctly answered that the story was a customer's
testimonial. Finally, 97% (95 out of 98) of the respondents who lis-
tened to the informational ad responded that the story only con-
veyed information. In the main analysis, we only used the data of
the respondents who correctly perceived the storyteller in the
advertisement. Therefore, the total number of valid responses was
reduced to 275 from 300.
3|RESULTS
Our research team used Hierarchical Regression Analysis for Hypoth-
eses 1 and 2, analysis of variance (ANOVA) for Hypothesis 3, and mul-
tivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) for Hypotheses 4 and
5. First, Hypotheses 1a and 1b examine the impact of narrative trans-
portation on participants' positive emotional responses toward the ad
content and WOM intention. Hierarchical regression analysis showed
that both narrative transportation (H1a: β= .495, p< .001) and narra-
tive preference (H2a: β= .336, p< .001) lead to stronger emotional
response and WOM intention respectively at the statistically signifi-
cant level (Table 1).
Second, Hypotheses 2a and 2b tested the impact of narrative
preference on emotional responses and WOM intention. Hierar-
chical regression analysis demonstrated that narrative preference
has a positive impact on participants' emotional responses (H2a:
β= .274, p< .001) and WOM intention (H2b: β= .251, p< .001),
respectively.
H1c and H2c examined mediation effects of emotional responses
toward the advertising content between (H1c) narrative transporta-
tion and (H2c) narrative preference, and WOM intention. Two multi-
ple regressions were conducted to see the mediation effect of
emotional response, and gender and age effects were controlled. The
first analysis showed that both narrative transportation (β= .495,
p< .001) and narrative preference (β= .274, p< .001) have a positive
effect on participants' positive emotional responses toward the ad
(R
2
= .39, p< .000). However, the effect of narrative transportation
and narrative preference became insignificant when the multiple
regression was conducted with both narrative factors and emotional
response level on WOM intention. Instead, only the effect of emo-
tional response toward the ad content was found to be significant
regarding WOM intention (β
narrative transportation
= .06, p= n.s.; β
narrative
preference
= 1.36, p= n.s.; β
emotional responses
= .671, p< .001; R
2
= .473).
Therefore, H1c and H2c found that emotion toward the ad content
has a mediation effect between narrative engagement and WOM
intention. In sum, all H1s and H2s were confirmed.
Hypothesis 3s examined whether the types of storytellers in the
advertisement would yield different levels of positive emotional
responses toward the advertising content and WOM intention.
ANOVA test results showed that there was a significant difference in
terms of emotional responses (H3a: F= 3.56, df =2,p< .05) and
based on different storytellers. Post-hoc results demonstrated that
the founder's story elicited positive emotional responses more than
the nonstory (informational) advertisement (M
founder's story
= 3.47,
M
non-story
= 3.15, p< .05). An Additional ANOVA test led us to
observe how the different types of storytellers in the ads would elicit
different emotions. The results show that the founder's story was per-
ceived as more creative (F= 8.452, df =2,p< .001), touching
(F= 10.394, df =2,p< .001), and meaningful (F= 3.653, df =2,
p= .027 < .05) compared to the informational ad (control group). The
founder's story was also perceived as a more believable story com-
pared to the customer story (F= 3.525, df =2,p= <.05). Therefore,
Hypothesis 3a is confirmed.
KANG ET AL.51
Regarding Hypothesis 3b, an ANOVA test did not find different
WOM intention resulting from different storyteller types in the adver-
tising (F= 2.735, df =2,p= n.s.). Post Hoc test results, however, dem-
onstrated that participants who were exposed to the founder's story
showed the highest level of WOM intention (M= 2.81) compared to
the customer's story (M= 2.49, p< .05) and the nonstory format
advertising (M= 2.50, p< .05). Thus, Hypothesis 3b is partially
supported.
Hypothesis 4 tested interaction effects between storyteller
types and narrative transportation on (a) emotional responses
toward the ad content and (b) WOM intention. Since the results
of our hypotheses H1c and H2c indicated that emotional
responses toward the ad content and WOM intention were posi-
tively associated with each other, we concluded that a two-way
MANCOVA serves best to investigate an interaction effect
between storyteller type and narrative transportation. This test
demonstrated an interaction effect between narrative transporta-
tion and storyteller type on participants' positive emotional
responses toward the advertising content and WOM intention
(F[4, 532] = 2.86, p< .05; Wilks' Λ= .958). However, tests of
between-subject effects did not specify the interaction effect of
storyteller types and transportation on each of the emotional
responses and WOM in a separate way.
Hypothesis 5 examined interaction effects between storyteller
types and narrative preference on (a) emotional responses toward the
ad content and (b) WOM intention, respectively. Another MANCOVA
test demonstrated an interaction effect between storyteller type and
narrative preference on participants' positive emotional responses
toward the ad content and WOM intention (F[4, 532] = 3.12, p<.01;
Wilks' Λ=.955). Tests of between-subject effects provided detailed
snapshots of the interactions. In particular, an interaction effect
between narrative preference and storyteller type was found regarding
the emotional responses (F[2, 267] =6.246, p<.01, μ
2
=.045),noton
the WOM intentions. These findings are somehow consistent with the
results of H2s. Overall, the storyteller type of ad was found to be effec-
tive in eliciting emotional responses, when the participants preferred to
receive information in a story format (Figure 1: M
founders story
= 3.776,
M
customer's story
=3.602,M
non-story
= 3.194). However, nonstory format
advertising was found to be emotionally appealing to the experiment
participants (M= 3.096) more than the founder's story (M= 2.958)
and customer's story (M= 2.770). Overall, the results indicated that
the founder's story was the most appealing to those who like story
formats for information. These findings are consistent with the
results of H3a. From Hypotheses 3s and 5, we would conclude that
the founder's story elicits the most favorable results in terms of
emotional responses.
4|DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The current study explores in which context storytelling works best in
terms of advertising effectiveness. We verify that key concepts in
processing a narrative such as transportation and identification still
determine the storytelling advertising effect in a commercial context
just as they worked in a narrative-based public service announcement
(McQueen et al., 2011). At the same time, we studied the role of sto-
ryteller in advertising effectiveness, specifically whether it makes a
difference that the storyteller portrayed in an ad is the owner of a
company or its customer. This study particularly enhances our under-
standing of how emotion plays a role in the effectiveness of storytell-
ing advertising, as part of the framework of narrative persuasion. In
this sense, the current study adds empirical evidence to the claim that
narrative in storytelling advertising improves branding and promo-
tional efforts (Padgett & Allen, 1997).
We found that research participants differently interpreted
stories in advertising. The more they imagined themselves in the
scene of the story (transportation), the more likely they were to per-
ceive the ad as creative, touching, and meaningful. In this case, people
could easily feel empathy toward the main characters in the situation
of the plot. The emotions that the main characters carried in the ad
were transferred to the listeners. The main character's experiences
were perceived as something that the listeners could experience in
their lives, which would be explained by the concept of perceived simi-
larity in identification.
TABLE 1 Hierarchical regression analysis of narrative transportation and narrative preference on emotional response and word-of-mouth
Independent variables
DV: Emotional response toward ad content DV: Word-of-mouth (WOM)
βR
2
change βR
2
change
Step 1 1. Age .146*3.7** .061 .00
2. Gender .145*.061
Step 2 Narrative transportation .495*** 39.0*** .336*** 21.7***
Narrative preference .274*** .251***
Step 3 Emotional response toward ad content N/A .671*** 25.6***
Total R
2
(%) 42.7*** 47.3***
Notes:n= 275; gender (0 = female; 1 = male).
*p< .05.
**p< .01.
***p< .001.
KANG ET AL.
52
However, our study also demonstrated that persuasive messages
in a narrative format might be effective with certain types of people.
Not surprisingly, the results of our study reported that storytelling
advertising is more effective for those who prefer to receive informa-
tion in a story format. Our study, however, did not explore which
types of individuals prefer story format information compared to non-
story format information such as rational arguments and reasoning. In
fact, such analytical and narrative thinking processes are regarded as a
different “route”of information processing (Bruner, 1986), but it
would not necessarily mean that those thought processes are mutu-
ally exclusive. Therefore, future studies could address how the analyti-
cal and narrative thought processes work together or separately in
the interpretation of story based advertising messages. Future studies
also could explore the characteristics or personalities of those who
prefer story format information.
Second, our study found that emotion played a crucial role in
motivating individuals to talk about the ads (WOM), which is consis-
tent with previous research findings in narrative persuasion literature
(Green & Brock, 2002). Consumers are more likely to be persuaded by
affective outcomes rather than by strong arguments from the infor-
mation provided in an ad (Escalas, 2006). The mediation effect
observed at H1c and H2c suggested that the storytelling ad did not
yield a behavioral outcome intention without creating emotional reac-
tions among the advertising listeners. Such a finding could be note-
worthy to advertising producers who want to use a story format in
their ads. Thus, we propose a storytelling advertising effect model
(Figure 2), which provides a comprehensive framework in which story-
telling formats work with narrative levels and emotion. Since testing
the model goes beyond the scope of the current study, we suggest
future studies elaborate and test the model.
Third, our study also brought an interesting finding that the founder's
story is more likely to create positive emotions compared to the cus-
tomer's story or purely informational ad. Our literature review supported
the idea that recognition of the CEO in the ad would be related to the
concept of wishful identification and the customer in the ad would appeal
to perceived similarity. Our findings seem to support the audiences'
tendency to prefer a special character like a founder in the story, rather
than a customer character just like oneself (perceived similarity). Therefore,
the results provide practical implications that a company, whose CEO has
an interesting story could strategically use the story in branding and pro-
motion. However, the current study did not address which characteristics
in the founder or customer of the adelicited different emotional out-
comes. It will be meaningful if future studies explore how a storyteller's
perceived traits such as credibility and attractiveness of the storyteller
produce different outcomes in ad effects.
Lastly, our additional statistical analysis indicated that women
were more likely to have positive emotions toward the founder's story
compared to the customer's story or the informational advertising.
Although gender was one of the control variables in this study, litera-
ture notes that women are more likely to be open-minded in
expressing their emotion (Simon & Nath, 2004). Nevertheless, the
findings among the female audiences should be considered in the con-
text that our study used a male voice for the advertising stimuli.
Therefore, the effect of gender differences among audience members,
story characters, and narrators in storytelling advertising needs to be
tested with a comprehensive approach within theoretical frameworks.
4.1 |Limitations
Although our study has several contributions to the body of knowl-
edge on storytelling effects in advertising, there are limitations worthy
FIGURE 1 The interaction effect between
narrative preference and storyteller types on
positive emotional responses toward the ad
content
FIGURE 2 Proposed model of storytelling advertising effect
KANG ET AL.53
[Colour figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]
[Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
of consideration in future studies. First, our experiment tested adver-
tising for only one product. Also, the message was created within the
category of acute need in Taylor's (1999) advertising message strategy
wheel, so it is possible other types of ads or other types of purchasing
decisions might yield different results. Lastly, we only focused on
WOM intention as a behavioral outcome in this study and did not
observe purchase intention as an advertising effect. WOM is regarded
as one of the most credible indicators of purchase behavior in con-
sumer research (Sundaram, Mitra, & Webster, 1998), but further study
is needed in order to contextualize the results of the present study.
Future research can take a more comprehensive approach to test the
effect of storytelling advertising on both communication and behav-
ioral levels. Nevertheless, our study is a step toward improving under-
standing of how storytelling in advertising leads to affective and
behavioral outcomes.
ORCID
Jin-Ae Kang https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2483-4598
Sookyeong Hong https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7620-1667
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Jin-Ae Kang is an associate professor of Communication at East
Carolina University. Her research has focused on the impact of
emerging media on PR strategies, and health-related crisis man-
agement. Her research areas also include the role of PR in building
community and social capital, community branding and environ-
mental communication. PR ethics and its role as an internal/exter-
nal change agent. Dr Kang has published in PR Review, Journal of
Communication Management, Journalism & Mass Communication
Educator and Journal of Disaster Studies among others. She is a
public relations concentration coordinator at the ECU school of
communication.
Sookyeong Hong received the doctor's degree in the School of
Communication & Information from University of Paris 2, France.
She is an associate professor at Hansei University, Korea and cur-
rently a visiting scholar at East Carolina University. Her research
field is a multicultural society, media content analysis, risk commu-
nication, and storytelling. She published over 40 research articles
and several books. She was a chair of the Department of Journal-
ism and Broadcasting at Hansei University and a board member
of the National Election Broadcasting Debate Commission
(2008–2017) and the Korea Press Arbitration Commission
(2011–2014). Also, she is a media critic and a writer.
Glenn T. Hubbard is an associate professor at East Carolina Uni-
versity in Greenville, North Carolina. He has published research
on the effects of production elements and locality of origination
and ownership on listener responses to radio and audio media.
Also, he has published on the subject of convergent journalism
education and mass media pedagogy. Before entering academe,
Hubbard was a large-market radio news anchor and reporter. He
also has a background as a producer and engineer in music, with
several albums to his credit. He teaches television production and
performance, as well as journalism history and media law.
How to cite this article: Kang J-A, Hong S, Hubbard GT. The
role of storytelling in advertising: Consumer emotion, narrative
engagement level, and word-of-mouth intention. J Consumer
Behav. 2020;19:47–56. https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.1793
KANG ET AL.55
APPENDIX A.
Stimuli: Audio advertising scripts
Founder story: Treatment 1
Traveling is hard enough without your luggage letting you down. I'm Dan, the founder of Dura. I learned the importance of good luggage on my
honeymoon trip to Hawaii. I had to pack for 2 weeks and could barely fit everything in my suitcase. The zipper broke in the airport and my stuff fell
all over the floor. Then, I almost fell down an escalator because a wheel jammed. I needed something different—and that's why I started a luggage
company…. Dura. Reliable, spacious, and built to last. I travel with confidence now, and so can you. For more information go to Dura.com. (102
words)
Customer story: Treatment 2
Traveling is hard enough without your luggage letting you down. I'm Dan, here to talk to you about Dura. I learned the importance of good luggage on
my honeymoon trip to Hawaii. I had to pack for 2 weeks and could barely fit everything in my suitcase. The zipper broke in the airport and my stuff
fell all over the floor. Then, I almost fell down an escalator because a wheel jammed. I needed something different—and that's when I found out
about Dura. Reliable, spacious, and built to last. I travel with confidence now, and so can you. For more information go to Dura.com. (107 words)
Non-story (informational) advertising: Control group
Traveling is hard enough without your luggage letting you down. The solution? Dura. Luggage that's spacious and flexible enough to fit everything in
for a long trip. Sturdy materials? It has them. Wheels that don't jam or break? Definitely. It even has a metal chain zipper—with teeth that interlock
perfectly—so it's extremely durable—and the inline skate polyurethane wheels are solid, resilient and flexible. You can travel with confidence now,
with Dura. Reliable, spacious, and built to last. For more information, go to Dura.com. (87 words)
KANG ET AL.
56
