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Contents
1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 2
2. Humor classification and mechanisms .............................................................................................. 2
3. Impact of humor appeal to advertising success ................................................................................ 5
3.1. Humor appeals and attitude changes ........................................................................................ 5
3.2. Humor and attention .................................................................................................................. 6
3.3. Humor and comprehension ........................................................................................................ 6
3.4. Humor and Persuasion ............................................................................................................... 7
3.5. Humor and Source Credibility .................................................................................................. 7
3.6. Humor and Liking ...................................................................................................................... 8
4. Factors influencing the impact of humor on advertising success ................................................... 8
4.1. Placement factors ........................................................................................................................ 8
4.2. Audience Factors ......................................................................................................................... 9
4.3. Product Factors .........................................................................................................................10
5. Conclusion .........................................................................................................................................10
Reference .................................................................................................................................................... 11
1
1. Introduction
Humor is widely adopted in designing advertisements as an efficient way to deliver advertising
message to target audiences all over the world. In the early 1990s, Weinberger and Campbell
(1991) estimated that humor advertisements accounted for approximately 30% of total
advertising programs on American radio channels while Biswas et al. (1992) announced that
about 10% of print advertisements in France and the US were humor one. The latest study on
print advertising across the US, China and France by Laroche et al. (2011) revealed humor
appeal took a proportion of 16 to 24 percent in total print advertisements. On global basis, 20%
was the estimated proportion of humor messages in all advertising types (Beard, 2008).
According to Schwarz et al. (2015), humor is believed to effectively create positive feelings,
therefore, has been adopted as a popular advertising appeal (Lee and Lim, 2008). There have
been many academic and empirical researches about the contribution of humor to the success of
creative advertising, however, the findings have been not consistent. A comprehensive literature
review on humor advertising by Weinberger and Gulas (1992) pointed out that while some
studies had confirmed the significant impact of humor on how the target audiences respond to
the advertisements, others had found that humor would not guarantee advertising success in all
cases.
This report will review different types of humor appeal, humor mechanisms, the impacts of
humor on consumers’ response to an advertisement as well as the factors that affect such impacts
upon different perspectives and professional practice.
2. Humor classification and mechanisms
Despite the widely agreement on the “surprise” impact that humor has on consumers’
psychology that lead to their positive response to the advertisements (Cline et al., 2003; Elpers et
al. , 2004; Eisend, 2009), Hatzithomaset al. (2011) has pointed out humor appeal comes in
different styles and each style have its own mechanisms to make laugh. As a result, how strong
the impact of humor on advertising success depends on which humor styles are adopted.
However, there have been various ways to classify humor appeal. Early study in the 1990s by
Duncan et al. (1990) divided humor into two types which are positive humor and negative one.
Specifically, negative humor works on the superior theory or disparagement theory which is
2
when people see others worse than them; they have a sense of superiority that will make them
laugh. On the other hand, positive humor is based on incongruity theory which stipulates that
people laugh due to the incongruence, in other words, unexpected, illogical or inappropriate
things usually happening at the end of the story.
Upon the findings of Duncan et al. (1990), Martin et al. (2003) has suggested another humor
classification in which humor styles incorporates four types which are affiliative, self-enhancing,
aggressive; and self-defeating humor styles. Specifically, affiliative humor style refers to joke
which are normally used in daily life to amuse others and related to positive cheerfulness, good
psychological status and social intimacy. An example of this humor style is commercial shows
by Dunkin’ Donuts featuring a cheerful man sitting in his car and Dunkin’ Donuts coffee is the
reason of such psychological well-being and funny behavior of the driver. In addition, self-
enhancing humor style is related to optimistic perspectives, self-esteem and positive and
satisfactory outlook in life. A commercial by Ameriquest is a typical example for this humor
style which features humble, heavy but very confident dancers on the stage. On the other hand,
aggressive humor advertising ridicules some ones by defeating or excluding them with mainly
two characters which are the “bad guy” and the hero. In which, the audiences will laugh at the
bad guy’s ridiculousness. This humor style was used by Federal Express in its commercial about
a self-confident young trainee, the bad guy who was forced to work in the shipping department
by the senior superior, the hero. The way that the supervisor handle the bad guy’s
overconfidence make the audiences laugh. Besides, humor advertising which uses self-defeating
style features the main character that makes himself the cause of others’ jokes by his
ridiculousness or low self-esteem and poor psychological state.
Basically, these four human styles are based on the mechanisms featured in the incongruity and
disparagement of Duncan et al. (1990). The following figure depicts how these styles are related
to positive and negative humor mechanisms.
3
Speck (1991) represents another scholar in classifying humor processes. Specifically, humorous
mechanisms can be categorized into incongruity resolution, arousal safety and humorous
disparagement. In more details, incongruity resolution humor creates incongruity in audiences’
minds by featuring playful confusion or contrast in their perception in the advertisements that in
turn bring them the sense of uncertainty or surprise and leave them to resolve on their own.
There will be two cases happening: if the audiences can resolve the incongruent situation that
require cognitive ability, they will feel it humorous and attach positive perception towards the
advertisements (Alden and Hoyer, 1993); otherwise, such impact will not be achieved (Speck,
1991). On the other hand, arousal safety is a type of humor process which works mainly on relief
theory as an affective mechanism theory (Spielmann, 2014). According to Speck (1991), this
humor process evokes humor experience by creating affective uncertainty first using stress-
causing stimulus in which the main characters are put in the danger. Some sentimental images
are often used to call for empathy from the audiences. When the uncertainty or stress is resolved,
the audiences have a sense of relief and feel the advertisement as humorous (Beard, 2008). The
third humor process in advertising is humorous disparagement, also known as social humor
which is based on the disparagement theory and must incorporate with either the incongruity
4
resolution or arousal safety. This humor process only works in a social context. Moreover, the
three humor mechanisms can work either alone or combine to each other. As a result, there are
five humor styles formed with different names including comic wit under incongruity-resolution
process only; sentimental humor under the arousal-safety process only; satire under both
incongruity-resolution and humorous disparagement; sentimental comedy under both arousal-
safety and incongruity-resolution processes full comedy under arousal-safety, incongruity-
resolution and humorous disparagement processes.
Based on Speck’s (1991)’s works, there is another scholar which classifies humor into two main
categories including technique typologies and content typologies. In which, technique typologies
refer to the use of pun or slapstick to make laugh (Buijzen and Valkenburg, 2004) while content
typologies create an experience with the multi-phase mechanisms that trigger the cognitive sense
of humor (Speck, 1991). Speck’s (1991) has proposed humorous message taxonomy in which the
human experience is evoked by the content typologies according to two phases. At first, the
advertisement creates an unexpected surprise or a puzzle. After that, when the ambiguity is
resolved and the audiences understand the meaning behind the advertisement, they finally have a
feeling of humor.
3. Impact of humor appeal to advertising
success 3.1.Humor appeals and attitude changes
Humor mechanisms contribute much to trigger customers’ reactions and facilitate attitude
changes. This impact can be explained by the Elaboration Likelihood Model proposed by Petty
et al. (1983). According to this model, elaboration refers to the consumers’ response to an
advertisement upon two types of behavior which are mental activity or emotional reaction. In
more details, mental activity means the audiences use cognitive effort to think about the meaning
of the advertisement behind the advertising story, pictures or image emotional reaction involves
expressing emotion towards the advertisement. Elaboration likelihood is the possibility that the
customer will elaborate the marketing message and the magnitude of this possibility depends on
three factors which are motivation, opportunity and ability (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The model
presents two routes for the audiences to process information and change attitudes after being
exposed to the advertisement: the central route and the peripheral route. On the central route, the
audiences will pay attention to the content of the advert and elaborate it upon rich mental
5
activities. However, when the motivation and ability to process the advertising information is not
high enough, the peripheral route occurs in which the customer will still form their attitude
towards the advert but upon advertising stimulus without thoughtful consideration. Since
customers’ engagement in case of the central route is higher and more active than that in the
peripheral route, according to Petty & Cacioppo (1986), “Attitude changes that result mostly
from processing issue-relevant arguments (central route) will show greater temporal persistence,
greater prediction of behavior, and greater resistance to counter persuasion than attitude changes
that result mostly from peripheral cues”. Since humor appeals come in different styles and
mechanisms as discussed above some of which induce cognitive processes and therefore lead the
audiences through the central route while others just create affective impact through advertising
stimuli, therefore, engage peripheral routes. Besides, some humor appeals evoke both the central
and peripheral routes that enhance the elaboration likelihood and the persistence of attitude
change
3.2.Humor and attention
There have been numerous empirical studies presenting evidences of significant impacts that
humor appeals have on consumers’ attention in advertising contexts. Specifically, various studies
about the adoption of real humor appeals to different advertising advertisements such as the
actual research of Madden and Weinberger (1982) about magazine adverts, Stewart and Furse
(1986) about TV adverts and Weinberger & Campbell (1991) about radio adverts have found that
humor has a positive and significant effect on attention. Besides, the findings from experiments
in laboratory by Speck (1987) also revealed that humorous ads outperform non-humorous ads in
draw the audiences’ attention
3.3.Humor and comprehension
Researches on how strong the impact of humor has on comprehension is have shown inconsistent
findings. Specifically, both researches of Duncan, Nelson and Frontczak (1984); Stewart and
Fiorse (1986); Weinberger and Campbell (1991); Zhang and Zinkhan (1991) have found that the
humorous content of the advertisements helps increase their comprehension. On the contrast,
other studies by Cantor & Venus (1980); Gelb & Zinkhan (1986) as well as Sutherland &
Middleton (1983) pointed out that humor has a negative impact on comprehension of the
6
advertisements instead. This perpective is supported by 64% of American researchers working
for advertising agencies as presented by Stemthal & Craig (1973).
3.4.Humor and Persuasion
The literature in marketing communication has revealed the positive, negative and even no
relationship between humor and persuasion. Specifically, according to Speck (1987), there are
two dimensions measuring persuasion which are consumers’ intention to make purchase and
their perception’s changes towards product quality and humor advertising appeals help increase
the indicators of both two dimensions. Besides, Brooker (1981) conducted an experiment and
found the stronger impact of humor appeals than that of a fear appeals although there is no
significant difference between the impacts of humor appeal and straight forward approach on
persuasion. Another survey that support this perspective was done by McCollum Spielman
(1982) across different types of commercials revealed that 31% of advertisements which contains
humor were ranked above the average level in terms of persuasiveness.
On the contrast, a study by Stewart & Furse in 1986 found that humor has no effect on
persuasion. Besides, in the research by Weinberger and Campbell (1991), unrelated humor even
worsen the persuasion of the advertisement. This study also confirmed that although related
humor has more positive impact on persuasion than no-humor but this is only true in case of low
involvement-feeling products, no-humorous advertisements proved to be more persuasive in case
of selling high involvement ones.
3.5.Humor and Source Credibility
According to Speck's (1987), source credibility can be measured upon two dimensions which are
knowledgeableness and trustworthiness. His study about the impact of humor appeal to source
credibility revealed that while sources in advertisements with no humor were perceived as more
knowledgeable than those featured in humorous ads, the use of humor appeal may enhance the
trustworthiness of the sources but only in case of sentimental comedy which incorporates both
arousal safety and incongruity resolution processes in the advertisements.
7
3.6.Humor and Liking
In contrast to source credibility which require cognitive consideration, liking refers to liking
towards either the source, the advert or the brand featured in the advert which is induced by non-
cognitive affect. According to Haley & Baldinger (1991), liking is an important indicator of sales
success resulted from the advertisements.
The literature about the impact of humor appeal on liking has confirmed the significant positive
relationship between the use of humor appeal and the liking and there is no research that pointed
out the negative relationship between them. Specifically, in advertising context, humor appeal
has been found to not only strengthen the liking of the source (Sternthal and Craig, 1973) but
also the liking of the advertisement (Belch & Belch, 1984; Duncan & Nelson 1985; Speck, 1987)
and the liking towards the brand (Gelb & Zinkhan, 1986; Duncan & Nelson, 1985).
The inconsistency and mix in findings about the impact of humor appeal may be resulted from
not only the executional factor or the humor types which are adopted but also differences in the
media where the advertisements are placed and characteristics of audiences to whom the
advertisements are exposed. The following part discusses the factors that have been found
significantly influence on how the humor appeal affects advertising success.
4. Factors influencing the impact of humor on advertising
success 4.1.Placement factors
Placement factors include type of medium, repetition of a humorous advertisement and the media
context. With regard to type of medium, there were many data about which media is thought to
be the most suitable for humorous adverts, specifically, according to studies by Weinberger &
Campbell (1991) and Weinberger & Spotts (1992), American advertisers believed that humorous
adverts worked the best on radio and television platforms, followed by print media. However,
there has hardly research about whether humor appeal will actually have the best effectiveness
when it is used for broadcast advertising rather than print advertising.
Besides, according to Gelb & Zinkhan (1985), humorous adverts wear out faster than non-
humorous ones due to advertising repetition. Nevertheless, Zinkhan & Gelb (1990) pointed out
that not all humorous adverts wear out. Especially, when the humorous adverts are exposed in a
8
social setting, in other words, received by a group, its wear-out speed will be reduced due to
group interaction’s effect (Zhang & Zinkhan, 1991)
Finally, media context which can be regarded by De Pelsmacker et al. (2002) as characteristics
of the program content in which an advertisement is placed. Since this factor influences on
motivations that make the audiences to pay attention, it is one of the most important executional
variables affecting humor effectiveness (Putrevu, 2014). According to Puccinelli et al. (2015)
and Waiguny et al. (2014)’s studies focusing on online advertising, humor effectiveness is
strengthened when the adverts are placed in positive mood programs and smooth breaks
4.2.Audience Factors
Gender
There are a lot of studies which confirmed the relationship between gender and humor
effectiveness. Specifically, Madden & Weinberger (1984) concluded that humor appeal worked
the best if the audiences are male. In more details, according to Whipple & Covirtney (1981),
men are better appealed by aggressive and sexual while nonsensical humor is the best effective
appeal to women
Culture
Since humor effectiveness depends much on the experiences and points of view being shared
between the humor originator and the humor receiver, culture has been found as an important
factor influencing on humor effectiveness.
Most of cross-cultural studies about the impact of humor appeal are based on four primary
dimensions of cultures (Hofstede, 1984) which are power distance; individualism-collectivism;
masculinity-femininity; and uncertainty avoidance. Leonidas H., Yorgos Z. and Christina B.
(2010) conducted a study which focused on print advertising to analyze the role of cultures on
the use of different humor types. The findings revealed that cultural diversity affected
significantly on the types of humor appeal used in UK and Greece. Specifically, in UK, the
country of individualistic cultures and low ranking on the uncertainty avoidance, humor appeal is
adopted in advertising more frequently in which humorous adverts are mostly aggressive, risky
and evoke arousal safety, sentimental humor or full comedy. In contrast, Greece features
9
collectivistic culture with high level of uncertainty avoidance cultures, therefore, humorous
advertisements are mostly neutral so as to be suitable and avoid being perceived as offensive.
Moreover, humor appeal is less popular in Greece and mainly comes in simply style such
incongruity resolution and comic wit
4.3.Product Factors
The literature has revealed that the nature of product affected on humor effectiveness. According
to Madden and Weinberger (1984), humor appeal works the best when the humorous
advertisements are designed for low involvement products such as fast consuming goods or
consumer non-durables, however, related humor will outperform either unrelated humor or non-
humorous adverts in case of advertising high involvement feeling products. In contrast, non-
humorous advertisements are the best suitable for high involvement thinking ones. The later
researches by Bauerly (1990) or Stewart & Furse (1986) also confirmed these findings.
Moreover, according to Stewart & Furse (1986), humorous adverts are more effective when
existing products are advertised rather than new ones.
5. Conclusion
Despite different perspectives and mixed findings, he literature review has confirmed the
contribution of human appeal in advertising success since humor has impact on not only attitude
changes but also the audiences’ attention, the advertisements’ comprehension, liking, credibility
and persuasion. Since humor appeal comes in various types and each humor style has its own
mechanisms to make laugh, besides, there are many factors affecting humor effectiveness such
as type of medium, advertising context, advertising repetition, gender, culture and the nature of
products, advertisers should consider about all of these factors when selecting suitable humor
types and designing a humorous advertisement so as to achieve the best effectiveness. It is also
interesting to note that there are still many gaps for future researches about the impact of humor
appeal and the factors that influence on humor effectiveness. Since most of existing research on
this field have been based on advertisers’ perspective and statistics of current usage of humor
appeal, future research should use more experiments to find out the real nature of humor appeal
as well as make consideration among different humor styles.
10
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14
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  • 1. Contents 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 2 2. Humor classification and mechanisms .............................................................................................. 2 3. Impact of humor appeal to advertising success ................................................................................ 5 3.1. Humor appeals and attitude changes ........................................................................................ 5 3.2. Humor and attention .................................................................................................................. 6 3.3. Humor and comprehension ........................................................................................................ 6 3.4. Humor and Persuasion ............................................................................................................... 7 3.5. Humor and Source Credibility .................................................................................................. 7 3.6. Humor and Liking ...................................................................................................................... 8 4. Factors influencing the impact of humor on advertising success ................................................... 8 4.1. Placement factors ........................................................................................................................ 8 4.2. Audience Factors ......................................................................................................................... 9 4.3. Product Factors .........................................................................................................................10 5. Conclusion .........................................................................................................................................10 Reference .................................................................................................................................................... 11 1
  • 2. 1. Introduction Humor is widely adopted in designing advertisements as an efficient way to deliver advertising message to target audiences all over the world. In the early 1990s, Weinberger and Campbell (1991) estimated that humor advertisements accounted for approximately 30% of total advertising programs on American radio channels while Biswas et al. (1992) announced that about 10% of print advertisements in France and the US were humor one. The latest study on print advertising across the US, China and France by Laroche et al. (2011) revealed humor appeal took a proportion of 16 to 24 percent in total print advertisements. On global basis, 20% was the estimated proportion of humor messages in all advertising types (Beard, 2008). According to Schwarz et al. (2015), humor is believed to effectively create positive feelings, therefore, has been adopted as a popular advertising appeal (Lee and Lim, 2008). There have been many academic and empirical researches about the contribution of humor to the success of creative advertising, however, the findings have been not consistent. A comprehensive literature review on humor advertising by Weinberger and Gulas (1992) pointed out that while some studies had confirmed the significant impact of humor on how the target audiences respond to the advertisements, others had found that humor would not guarantee advertising success in all cases. This report will review different types of humor appeal, humor mechanisms, the impacts of humor on consumers’ response to an advertisement as well as the factors that affect such impacts upon different perspectives and professional practice. 2. Humor classification and mechanisms Despite the widely agreement on the “surprise” impact that humor has on consumers’ psychology that lead to their positive response to the advertisements (Cline et al., 2003; Elpers et al. , 2004; Eisend, 2009), Hatzithomaset al. (2011) has pointed out humor appeal comes in different styles and each style have its own mechanisms to make laugh. As a result, how strong the impact of humor on advertising success depends on which humor styles are adopted. However, there have been various ways to classify humor appeal. Early study in the 1990s by Duncan et al. (1990) divided humor into two types which are positive humor and negative one. Specifically, negative humor works on the superior theory or disparagement theory which is 2
  • 3. when people see others worse than them; they have a sense of superiority that will make them laugh. On the other hand, positive humor is based on incongruity theory which stipulates that people laugh due to the incongruence, in other words, unexpected, illogical or inappropriate things usually happening at the end of the story. Upon the findings of Duncan et al. (1990), Martin et al. (2003) has suggested another humor classification in which humor styles incorporates four types which are affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive; and self-defeating humor styles. Specifically, affiliative humor style refers to joke which are normally used in daily life to amuse others and related to positive cheerfulness, good psychological status and social intimacy. An example of this humor style is commercial shows by Dunkin’ Donuts featuring a cheerful man sitting in his car and Dunkin’ Donuts coffee is the reason of such psychological well-being and funny behavior of the driver. In addition, self- enhancing humor style is related to optimistic perspectives, self-esteem and positive and satisfactory outlook in life. A commercial by Ameriquest is a typical example for this humor style which features humble, heavy but very confident dancers on the stage. On the other hand, aggressive humor advertising ridicules some ones by defeating or excluding them with mainly two characters which are the “bad guy” and the hero. In which, the audiences will laugh at the bad guy’s ridiculousness. This humor style was used by Federal Express in its commercial about a self-confident young trainee, the bad guy who was forced to work in the shipping department by the senior superior, the hero. The way that the supervisor handle the bad guy’s overconfidence make the audiences laugh. Besides, humor advertising which uses self-defeating style features the main character that makes himself the cause of others’ jokes by his ridiculousness or low self-esteem and poor psychological state. Basically, these four human styles are based on the mechanisms featured in the incongruity and disparagement of Duncan et al. (1990). The following figure depicts how these styles are related to positive and negative humor mechanisms. 3
  • 4. Speck (1991) represents another scholar in classifying humor processes. Specifically, humorous mechanisms can be categorized into incongruity resolution, arousal safety and humorous disparagement. In more details, incongruity resolution humor creates incongruity in audiences’ minds by featuring playful confusion or contrast in their perception in the advertisements that in turn bring them the sense of uncertainty or surprise and leave them to resolve on their own. There will be two cases happening: if the audiences can resolve the incongruent situation that require cognitive ability, they will feel it humorous and attach positive perception towards the advertisements (Alden and Hoyer, 1993); otherwise, such impact will not be achieved (Speck, 1991). On the other hand, arousal safety is a type of humor process which works mainly on relief theory as an affective mechanism theory (Spielmann, 2014). According to Speck (1991), this humor process evokes humor experience by creating affective uncertainty first using stress- causing stimulus in which the main characters are put in the danger. Some sentimental images are often used to call for empathy from the audiences. When the uncertainty or stress is resolved, the audiences have a sense of relief and feel the advertisement as humorous (Beard, 2008). The third humor process in advertising is humorous disparagement, also known as social humor which is based on the disparagement theory and must incorporate with either the incongruity 4
  • 5. resolution or arousal safety. This humor process only works in a social context. Moreover, the three humor mechanisms can work either alone or combine to each other. As a result, there are five humor styles formed with different names including comic wit under incongruity-resolution process only; sentimental humor under the arousal-safety process only; satire under both incongruity-resolution and humorous disparagement; sentimental comedy under both arousal- safety and incongruity-resolution processes full comedy under arousal-safety, incongruity- resolution and humorous disparagement processes. Based on Speck’s (1991)’s works, there is another scholar which classifies humor into two main categories including technique typologies and content typologies. In which, technique typologies refer to the use of pun or slapstick to make laugh (Buijzen and Valkenburg, 2004) while content typologies create an experience with the multi-phase mechanisms that trigger the cognitive sense of humor (Speck, 1991). Speck’s (1991) has proposed humorous message taxonomy in which the human experience is evoked by the content typologies according to two phases. At first, the advertisement creates an unexpected surprise or a puzzle. After that, when the ambiguity is resolved and the audiences understand the meaning behind the advertisement, they finally have a feeling of humor. 3. Impact of humor appeal to advertising success 3.1.Humor appeals and attitude changes Humor mechanisms contribute much to trigger customers’ reactions and facilitate attitude changes. This impact can be explained by the Elaboration Likelihood Model proposed by Petty et al. (1983). According to this model, elaboration refers to the consumers’ response to an advertisement upon two types of behavior which are mental activity or emotional reaction. In more details, mental activity means the audiences use cognitive effort to think about the meaning of the advertisement behind the advertising story, pictures or image emotional reaction involves expressing emotion towards the advertisement. Elaboration likelihood is the possibility that the customer will elaborate the marketing message and the magnitude of this possibility depends on three factors which are motivation, opportunity and ability (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The model presents two routes for the audiences to process information and change attitudes after being exposed to the advertisement: the central route and the peripheral route. On the central route, the audiences will pay attention to the content of the advert and elaborate it upon rich mental 5
  • 6. activities. However, when the motivation and ability to process the advertising information is not high enough, the peripheral route occurs in which the customer will still form their attitude towards the advert but upon advertising stimulus without thoughtful consideration. Since customers’ engagement in case of the central route is higher and more active than that in the peripheral route, according to Petty & Cacioppo (1986), “Attitude changes that result mostly from processing issue-relevant arguments (central route) will show greater temporal persistence, greater prediction of behavior, and greater resistance to counter persuasion than attitude changes that result mostly from peripheral cues”. Since humor appeals come in different styles and mechanisms as discussed above some of which induce cognitive processes and therefore lead the audiences through the central route while others just create affective impact through advertising stimuli, therefore, engage peripheral routes. Besides, some humor appeals evoke both the central and peripheral routes that enhance the elaboration likelihood and the persistence of attitude change 3.2.Humor and attention There have been numerous empirical studies presenting evidences of significant impacts that humor appeals have on consumers’ attention in advertising contexts. Specifically, various studies about the adoption of real humor appeals to different advertising advertisements such as the actual research of Madden and Weinberger (1982) about magazine adverts, Stewart and Furse (1986) about TV adverts and Weinberger & Campbell (1991) about radio adverts have found that humor has a positive and significant effect on attention. Besides, the findings from experiments in laboratory by Speck (1987) also revealed that humorous ads outperform non-humorous ads in draw the audiences’ attention 3.3.Humor and comprehension Researches on how strong the impact of humor has on comprehension is have shown inconsistent findings. Specifically, both researches of Duncan, Nelson and Frontczak (1984); Stewart and Fiorse (1986); Weinberger and Campbell (1991); Zhang and Zinkhan (1991) have found that the humorous content of the advertisements helps increase their comprehension. On the contrast, other studies by Cantor & Venus (1980); Gelb & Zinkhan (1986) as well as Sutherland & Middleton (1983) pointed out that humor has a negative impact on comprehension of the 6
  • 7. advertisements instead. This perpective is supported by 64% of American researchers working for advertising agencies as presented by Stemthal & Craig (1973). 3.4.Humor and Persuasion The literature in marketing communication has revealed the positive, negative and even no relationship between humor and persuasion. Specifically, according to Speck (1987), there are two dimensions measuring persuasion which are consumers’ intention to make purchase and their perception’s changes towards product quality and humor advertising appeals help increase the indicators of both two dimensions. Besides, Brooker (1981) conducted an experiment and found the stronger impact of humor appeals than that of a fear appeals although there is no significant difference between the impacts of humor appeal and straight forward approach on persuasion. Another survey that support this perspective was done by McCollum Spielman (1982) across different types of commercials revealed that 31% of advertisements which contains humor were ranked above the average level in terms of persuasiveness. On the contrast, a study by Stewart & Furse in 1986 found that humor has no effect on persuasion. Besides, in the research by Weinberger and Campbell (1991), unrelated humor even worsen the persuasion of the advertisement. This study also confirmed that although related humor has more positive impact on persuasion than no-humor but this is only true in case of low involvement-feeling products, no-humorous advertisements proved to be more persuasive in case of selling high involvement ones. 3.5.Humor and Source Credibility According to Speck's (1987), source credibility can be measured upon two dimensions which are knowledgeableness and trustworthiness. His study about the impact of humor appeal to source credibility revealed that while sources in advertisements with no humor were perceived as more knowledgeable than those featured in humorous ads, the use of humor appeal may enhance the trustworthiness of the sources but only in case of sentimental comedy which incorporates both arousal safety and incongruity resolution processes in the advertisements. 7
  • 8. 3.6.Humor and Liking In contrast to source credibility which require cognitive consideration, liking refers to liking towards either the source, the advert or the brand featured in the advert which is induced by non- cognitive affect. According to Haley & Baldinger (1991), liking is an important indicator of sales success resulted from the advertisements. The literature about the impact of humor appeal on liking has confirmed the significant positive relationship between the use of humor appeal and the liking and there is no research that pointed out the negative relationship between them. Specifically, in advertising context, humor appeal has been found to not only strengthen the liking of the source (Sternthal and Craig, 1973) but also the liking of the advertisement (Belch & Belch, 1984; Duncan & Nelson 1985; Speck, 1987) and the liking towards the brand (Gelb & Zinkhan, 1986; Duncan & Nelson, 1985). The inconsistency and mix in findings about the impact of humor appeal may be resulted from not only the executional factor or the humor types which are adopted but also differences in the media where the advertisements are placed and characteristics of audiences to whom the advertisements are exposed. The following part discusses the factors that have been found significantly influence on how the humor appeal affects advertising success. 4. Factors influencing the impact of humor on advertising success 4.1.Placement factors Placement factors include type of medium, repetition of a humorous advertisement and the media context. With regard to type of medium, there were many data about which media is thought to be the most suitable for humorous adverts, specifically, according to studies by Weinberger & Campbell (1991) and Weinberger & Spotts (1992), American advertisers believed that humorous adverts worked the best on radio and television platforms, followed by print media. However, there has hardly research about whether humor appeal will actually have the best effectiveness when it is used for broadcast advertising rather than print advertising. Besides, according to Gelb & Zinkhan (1985), humorous adverts wear out faster than non- humorous ones due to advertising repetition. Nevertheless, Zinkhan & Gelb (1990) pointed out that not all humorous adverts wear out. Especially, when the humorous adverts are exposed in a 8
  • 9. social setting, in other words, received by a group, its wear-out speed will be reduced due to group interaction’s effect (Zhang & Zinkhan, 1991) Finally, media context which can be regarded by De Pelsmacker et al. (2002) as characteristics of the program content in which an advertisement is placed. Since this factor influences on motivations that make the audiences to pay attention, it is one of the most important executional variables affecting humor effectiveness (Putrevu, 2014). According to Puccinelli et al. (2015) and Waiguny et al. (2014)’s studies focusing on online advertising, humor effectiveness is strengthened when the adverts are placed in positive mood programs and smooth breaks 4.2.Audience Factors Gender There are a lot of studies which confirmed the relationship between gender and humor effectiveness. Specifically, Madden & Weinberger (1984) concluded that humor appeal worked the best if the audiences are male. In more details, according to Whipple & Covirtney (1981), men are better appealed by aggressive and sexual while nonsensical humor is the best effective appeal to women Culture Since humor effectiveness depends much on the experiences and points of view being shared between the humor originator and the humor receiver, culture has been found as an important factor influencing on humor effectiveness. Most of cross-cultural studies about the impact of humor appeal are based on four primary dimensions of cultures (Hofstede, 1984) which are power distance; individualism-collectivism; masculinity-femininity; and uncertainty avoidance. Leonidas H., Yorgos Z. and Christina B. (2010) conducted a study which focused on print advertising to analyze the role of cultures on the use of different humor types. The findings revealed that cultural diversity affected significantly on the types of humor appeal used in UK and Greece. Specifically, in UK, the country of individualistic cultures and low ranking on the uncertainty avoidance, humor appeal is adopted in advertising more frequently in which humorous adverts are mostly aggressive, risky and evoke arousal safety, sentimental humor or full comedy. In contrast, Greece features 9
  • 10. collectivistic culture with high level of uncertainty avoidance cultures, therefore, humorous advertisements are mostly neutral so as to be suitable and avoid being perceived as offensive. Moreover, humor appeal is less popular in Greece and mainly comes in simply style such incongruity resolution and comic wit 4.3.Product Factors The literature has revealed that the nature of product affected on humor effectiveness. According to Madden and Weinberger (1984), humor appeal works the best when the humorous advertisements are designed for low involvement products such as fast consuming goods or consumer non-durables, however, related humor will outperform either unrelated humor or non- humorous adverts in case of advertising high involvement feeling products. In contrast, non- humorous advertisements are the best suitable for high involvement thinking ones. The later researches by Bauerly (1990) or Stewart & Furse (1986) also confirmed these findings. Moreover, according to Stewart & Furse (1986), humorous adverts are more effective when existing products are advertised rather than new ones. 5. Conclusion Despite different perspectives and mixed findings, he literature review has confirmed the contribution of human appeal in advertising success since humor has impact on not only attitude changes but also the audiences’ attention, the advertisements’ comprehension, liking, credibility and persuasion. Since humor appeal comes in various types and each humor style has its own mechanisms to make laugh, besides, there are many factors affecting humor effectiveness such as type of medium, advertising context, advertising repetition, gender, culture and the nature of products, advertisers should consider about all of these factors when selecting suitable humor types and designing a humorous advertisement so as to achieve the best effectiveness. It is also interesting to note that there are still many gaps for future researches about the impact of humor appeal and the factors that influence on humor effectiveness. Since most of existing research on this field have been based on advertisers’ perspective and statistics of current usage of humor appeal, future research should use more experiments to find out the real nature of humor appeal as well as make consideration among different humor styles. 10
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