Believe It or Not: Persuasion, Manipulation and Credibility of Guilt Appeals.

Coulter, Robin Higie; Cotte, June; Moore, Melissa Lunt

This paper presents a framework for understanding the relationship between consumers' persuasion knowledge, their cognitive and emotional reactions to an ad, and their attitudinal and intentional responses resulting from exposure to a guilt appeal. We adopt an active reader perspective for why some guilt ads "work," while others do not. Specifically, we suggest that when consumers see a guilt ad, they draw upon their persuasion knowledge and make cognitive evaluations, assessing ad credibility and advertiser motivations. Additionally, they experience emotional reactions--the intended emotion (i.e., guilt) and/or unintended emotions (e.g., annoyance), as well as form Aad and behavioral intention.

GUILT (Psychology); PERSUASION (Psychology); CONSUMER psychology; ADVERTISING & psychology; CONSUMER attitudes; MARKETING strategy; PSYCHOLOGY

Advances in Consumer Research, 1999, Vol 26, Issue 1, p288

0098-9258

Conference Proceeding