The Impact of Humor in Advertising on Consumer Purchase

Decision

Submitted To
Dr. A.K. Fazlul Haque Shah
Professor
Department Of Marketing

Faculty of Business Studies

University Of Dhaka

Submitted By
Markten
Section: B

21st Batch

Department of Marketing

Faculty of Business Studies

University of Dhaka

Date of Submission: 07th November, 2019

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 MARKTEN
Serial Name Roll CGPA Mobile Number
Number
1 Asif Kamal (L) 89 3.38 01945627180

2 Akib Mahmud 26 3.31 01677138430

3 Tanvir Hossain Tanim 119 3.35 01676897079

4 Abdullah Arafat 195 3.46 01625099360

5 Abdullah Al Noman 144 3.26 01845796377

6 Hridy Mustafa 29 3.18 01686813633

7 Mahadi Hasan 176 3.07 01869135478

8 Anika Nawar 44 3.32 01969356383

9 Novoraj Roy 95 3.43 01915075278

10 Syed Tanvir Muttaki 41 3.23 01621312989

11 Umme Hani Urmi 2108 2.88 01720644043

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Introduction:

Advertising is one of the critical marketing variables which marketers use to differentiate
products in a cluttered marketplace. In order to increase the effectiveness of advertising for a
product, advertising messages should be unique and meaningful. In order to achieve that, over
the years, advertisers have attempted a wide variety of advertising approaches. Nowadays, most
advertisements communicate with their audience by applying humor and the extent of its
creativity is beyond border. Humor has proven to be one of the best techniques for getting
attention and keeping it. There have been numerous researches proving that advertisement with
humorous appeal can gain consumers likability. A strong positive correlation is also found
between the degrees of how well an advertisement is liked with the likability to the brand
advertised. In short, adding humorous elements can enhance one’s likability of an advertisement
and eventually increase liking to the brand advertised. Many of the most memorable ad
campaigns around tend to be funny. Advertisers use this strategy to attract customers to their
product. Audiences like to be entertained, but not pitched. People will pay more attention to a
humorous commercial than a factual or serious one, opening themselves up to be influenced. The
key to funny advertising is assuring the humor is appropriate to both product and customer. The
fact that different media uses certain types of humor more often suggests that the effectiveness of
the type of humor may differ by medium. Different types of humor may be better suited for
different types of products as well. Opportunities and benefits of using humor as stimuli in
advertising is appealing to any advertiser and businesses as they all aim for boosting sales.
Consumer Decision process is the study of how individuals, groups, and organizations select,
buy, use, and dispose of goods, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy their needs and wants.
Consumer purchases are influenced by social, culture, personal and psychological factors. From
marketer’s point of view, these factors are uncontrollable, but they need to understand and put
them into account when making marketing decision. However, they influence consumer’
behavior by influencing their consumption. Marketers not only focus on identifying what their
customers want, they aim to make customers realize what they need.

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Statement of the Problem:

Every day people are exposed to a large amount of television advertisements. There are
thousands of products on the market and it would be interesting to find out why we respond to
certain advertisements and not to others. I thought that it could be interesting to concentrate on
humorous advertisements since they are a great part of advertising today. Therefore, the purpose
of this study is to provide a better understanding of humor in Bangladeshi television advertising.

Literature Review

Advertising: The term “advertising” originates from the Latin word “advertere” which means “to
turn the mind towards”. Traditional definitions of advertising include a series of elements that
distinguish the field from others. Each innovation in communication has been used for
advertising, and in some way, each has changed advertising, which in turn has changed the set of
elements used in its definition. Consumers tend to think virtually every form of commercial
promotional activity, from concert sponsorship to telemarketing, is a form of advertising. Over
the years, advertising has been defined in many ways. Longe (2001) defined advertising as any
personal form of non-personal communication which is directed to the customers or target
audiences through various media in order to present and promote a product, service and idea.
Advertising is defined as ‘the activity or profession of producing advertisements for commercial
products or services” in order to “describe or draw attention to (a product, service or event) in a
public medium in order to promote sales or attendance” (New Oxford American Dictionary,
2010). Kotler (2010) pointed out in his study that advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal
presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. Advertising has
a psychological impact on consumers and influences the buying decisions of consumers. As a
marketing vehicle, one of advertising’s features is to aim at persuasion of potential customers
(Kotler, Armstrong 2010). A mean to achieve this ultimate goal is advertising appeal, which is a
force that stimulates customer mindset towards the product or service and initiates buying
decision. Advertising has a great influence on our lives. Today’s advertisements also inform and
guide many of the important decisions we make, not just the cars we drive but whether we take
entrepreneurial risks, choose to live a healthy lifestyle, plan ahead for retirement or donate to
charity. Berger (2001) pointed out that the way in which advertisements are affecting and
shaping our attitudes, lifestyles and culture are too many to tally. Research testifies that
advertising has a direct effect on firm performance, such as sales (Leone, 1995), profit (Erickson,
1992), brand equity and firm value (keller, 1998).

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Humor:

Humor is a universal phenomenon that is easy to spot and enjoy, often triggering laughter. It is
also an elusive entity that is difficult to define and analyze. A dictionary definition of humor is
the quality of being amusing or comic, the ability to express humor or amuse other people, a
mood or state of mind (Oxford dictionary). Tellis (1998) defined humor as painless incongruity
between two elements that the communicator brings together. The response from the target
audience is firstly surprise because of the unexpected and unusual combination of the two
elements. The incongruity can arise from incongruous events and images, a pun or word with
two meanings. Humor as an advertisement appeal is getting popular in many countries.
According to Fletcher (1995) society nowadays simply shops for pleasure, enjoyment and fun,
where in most case; humor is the suitable choice of appeal. Many of the most memorable ad
campaigns tend to be funny. However, for an advertisement to be successful, consumers need to
do more than enjoying and laughing when they see a magazine advertisement or a TV
commercial. The advertisement should change consumer’s behavior and attitudes. It also has to
make them remember the product, so that when they make a purchase the product or the brand
will come to their mind (Clow, 2007). Consumers as a whole enjoy advertisements that make
them laugh, Something, that is funny has intrusive value and can grab attention (Clow & Baack,
2002). One reason for success of humor in advertising may be that the population is aging.
According to Abraham Maslow, people tend to develop a more comedic view of life as they
mature. Also, humor helps individuals adjust to situations they cannot control and to cope with
life’s problems. Laughing allows individuals to escape from reality. Comedy central, comedy
bars have grown in popularity over the past decade. Consequently, humor is an effective
approach for reaching a wide audience. The success of humor as an advertising tactic is based on
three factors. Humor causes consumers to: 1) watch, 2) laugh and most importantly, 3)
remember. To be successful, the humor should be connected directly to the products benefits. It
should tie together the product’s features, the advantage to customers and the personal values of
the means-ends chain (Clow& Baack, 2002)

The Impact of Humorous Advertising:

People use humor every day as a communication tool. Humor tends to relax the audience, break
the ice and create a connection between the communicator and the audience (Tellis, 1998). Thus,
many public speakers often open their speech with a joke. Humor helps setting a good mood to
transfer message and gain acceptance. For this reason, humor is used in about 24 percent of
prime -time television advertisements and 35 percent of radio ads (Clow, 2007). Some academic
researchers have shown that advertisements using humor draw more attention and liking than
advertisements that do not (Speck, 1991). However, the efficiency of humor in advertising is
elusive because humor is a complex topic that is affected by wide variety of factors (Weinberger

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and Gulas, 1992). According to Clow (2007), Weinberger and Gullas (1992), humorous
advertisements grab attentions and attracts viewer’s interest by its ability to cutting through
clutter. In a test of attention effects, Speck (1987) compared humorous ads what non-humorous
controls on four attention measures: initial attention, sustained attention, projected attention and
overall attention. It was found that humorous ads outperform non-humorous ads on each of the
attention measures. As mentioned, humor is often executed by using incongruity, the initial
response may be a cognitive recognition of discrepancy. When the meaning of humor is
resolved, the consumers generate a response by laughter and amusement. That is one of the aims
of marketers when using humorous advertisements to communicate with their target consumers.
Humor can solve the distance among people in communication and it can reduce the resistance to
the message (Tellis 1998). In the scenario where consumers already hold negative beliefs and
resistance to the product type, they may resist to accept information about it. Like a person,
humorous advertisements approach them by making them laugh. The laughter can distract the
consumer from their existing judgments and opinions and make an effort to introduce the central
message. Several researches also show that humor can enhance liking of the advertisement and
the advertised brand. (Weinbeger and Gullas 1992, Shimp 2010) Most of the ads that became
viral are humorous ads. Many advertisements have the power of lasting in consumer’s memory
for an impressively long period. Figure 1 presents a part of Nielsen Global Survey of Trust in
Advertising, polled more than 29000 respondents in 58 countries showed that humorous
advertising resonated most. 17 | P a g e Fugate (1998) provides a list of humor’s benefits in
advertising that has also been shown and proved by many other studies. a) Humor grabs
attention. b) Humor encourages people to remember the ad and therefore the message. c) Humor
shows we are human – we can laugh and smile with the rest of humanity. d) Humor makes
people like us – and by extension improves our brand image. Weinberger and Gulas (1992) state
that humor cannot assure more successful in advertising by simply attach humor into an
advertisement. Humor related directly to the product works more effectively than the unrelated
humor (Fatt, 2002) In spite of the increasing numbers of humorous advertisement, it is important
to understand that humor can be appropriate and effective in some situations. Humor varies in
their effectiveness and perceived differently across demographic groups, cultures and even
among individuals. Shimp (2010) included in his text that many evidences show that humorous
ads are more effective than non-humorous ads only when consumers’ evaluations of the
advertised brand are al-ready positive. With the recognized impact of humor in attracting
attention and influence customer’s attitudes positively, Shimp (2010) suggests that this chain of
effects can create brand awareness. He also produced a list of tentative generalizations that was
generated from researches on humor. Humor is an effective method of attracting attention to
advertisements, Humor can elevate consumers’ recall of message points in advertisements,
Humor enhances liking of both advertisement and advertised brand, Humor does not necessarily

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harm comprehension and may in fact increase memory for advertising claims if the humor is
relevant to the advertised brand, Humor does not offer an advantage over non humor at
increasing persuasion, Humor does not enhance source credibility.

Variables from Related articles:

Name of Articles Variables

Effects of Humorous Advertising on Brand
Recognition. By Billal Mustafa Khan and
Saima Khan (2013)
Humor Effect on Memory and Attitude:
Moderating Role of Product Involvement. By
Hwiman Chung and Xinshu Zhao (2015)
Humorous Advertisements and Their
Effectiveness Among Customers with
Different Motivational Value. By Dr. S.M
Hegner and Dr. A. Fenko (2013)
The Influence of Humorous Advertising on
Brand Popularity. By Wan Yu Chang and I
Ying Chang (2014)
Humorous advertisements catch consumers
attention more fruitfully than other
advertisements. The surprise elements in the
advertisements also increases the probability
Positive and significant relationships between
humorous advertisements on memory and
attitude were found through multiple
regression analysis, which increases the
recallability of the brand. Furthermore, results
show that humorous advertisements are more
effective in lowinvolvement products in terms
of memory and attitude towards the
advertisement.
Humorous advertisements will lead to more
positive attitude towards the brand and a
higher level of purchase intention.
Humorous advertisements will create more
positive brand awareness which will
eventually affect consumer purchase decision.

Research Objectives:

Objectives can be developed under the aspect of broad objective and specific objective. The
Broad objective of this study is to measure the effectiveness of humor in advertisement. Specific
objectives are:

I. To determine the attention creation of humorous advertisements.

II. To determine the recall ability of brand through humorous advertisements.

III. To determine the positivity creation about the brand through humorous advertisements.

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IV. To determine the brand image improvement through humorous advertisements.

Nature of the Research

This research is both qualitative and quantitative. The design of the research was primarily based
on qualitative research where descriptive research follows administering a questionnaire to
measure the effectiveness of humor as a persuasive technique reflects in consumer’s purchase
behavior.

Hypothesis Development:

Based on the research objectives mentioned, the following hypotheses are formed:

Test 1 H0: Humor does not attract attention.

H1: Humor attracts attention.

Test 2 H0: Humor does not enhance recall ability.

H1: Humor enhances recall ability.

Test 3 H0: Humor does not create positivity about the product.
H1: Humor creates positivity about the product.

Test 4 H0: Humor does not improve brand image

H1: Humor improves brand image.

Constructs:

The construct of questionnaire is based on the conceptual model. Each of four constructs
attention creation, recall ability, positivity creation, and positive brand image are covered. To
know about the demographic profile of consumer brand users and usage rate, questions about
demographic information and usage rate were also included in the questionnaire

Questionnaire Design and Pretest Data:

The questionnaire for the respondents is used in 5 points likert scale ranging from 1(strongly
disagree) to 5(strongly agree) to obtain their opinion

Justification of Qualitative Research and Quantitative Research:

The respondents need to watch the advertisements and react according to this. To know how they
are reacting to those advertisement and knowing their opinions about those advertisements we
need qualitative research. Respondents do not answer exactly because of some reasons like they
feel insecure, shy, or their unwillingness to share. So, doing survey people can easily express
their opinion. Respondents can fill up the survey form according to their free time. in the

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quantitative research it takes less time so it is preferable for the respondents and correct opinions
can be known by the research.

Conceptual Model
Attention
Creation

Humorous Consumer
Recall Ability
Purchase
Advertisement
Decision

Creates
Positivity

Improves Brand
Image

Data Analysis Technique:

Multiple regression analysis will be conducted to measure the effectiveness of humorous
advertising. Humor ads are effective to develop attention, recall ability, positivity and brand
image of a product. So, hypothesis testing will further strengthen our findings. In conducting
multiple regression analysis, effectiveness of humorous ad (consumers purchase decision) is
considered as dependent variable and attention, recall ability, positivity and brand image are
considered as independent variables.

First, we will examine the co-relations between dependent and independent variables
individually. Then we will examine the overall relationship among the variables. Multiple
regression analysis will mainly focus on Model Summary which includes correlation coefficient
(R), coefficient of Determination (R2 ), and Adjusted R

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 Questionnaire

1. Humor Attracts Attention

Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

Disagree

2. Humorous Advertisements are effective

Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

Disagree

3. It is easier to remember contents having humor

Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

Disagree

4. Humor is more useful with existing products rather than new products

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 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree
Disagree

5. Humor creates a positive feeling about the product

Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

Disagree

6. Humor improves brand image

Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

Disagree

7. It is easy to recall the brand which use humorous advertisements under purchase
situation

Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

Disagree

8. Can humorous content create negative brand image?

Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

Disagree

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References

Aaker D. et al. 2003. Marketing research.

Wiley. Berger, W. 2001, Advertising today, Phaidon Press Limited, London.

Catanescu, C., Tom, G. 2001. Types of humor in Television and Magazine advertising. Review
of Business, Vol. 22 Issue 1/2.

Clow, Kenneth E. 2007. Integrated advertising, promotion & marketing communication. 3rd
edition. Pearson: Prentice Hall.

Fugate, D 1998. The advertising of services: what is an appropriate role for humor? Journal of
services marketing, Vol 12 No 6.

Gruner, R. 1997. The Game of Humor.

New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Gulas et al. 2006. Humor in advertising.

M. E. Sharpe, Inc. Hawkins/ Mothersbaugh 2010. Consumer behavior – building marketing

strategy. McGrawhill.

Kotler, P., Armstrong, G. 2004. Principles of Marketing. New Jersey: Pearson Education.

Malholtra, N. 1999. Marketing Research: An Applied Orientation. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

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