The Problem❓
Narratives play a crucial role in advertising because it has been shown to aid brand recall and purchase intentions in consumers. To improve marketing strategies, it has become imperative to recognize the importance of culture and ethnicity on consumers’ attitudes towards an advertised product. With population growth projections of previously ignored ethnic groups, marketers recognize the potential success inherent in meeting the needs of underrepresented groups.
Our study seeks to identify the interaction effect of narratives and influencer-audience ethnicity match on consumers’ attitudes.
The Approach✍️
We conducted a 2 x 2 experiment with 204 participants via Qualtrics. Participants are first provided with background information about the influencer, such as the number of followers and the number of posts in the influencer’s account. After reading the information, participants are instructed to view the message carefully and are exposed to the fictitious Instagram post, which incorporates a photo and some text description. All participants were randomly assigned to one of the four treatments, and each participant read one stimulus. On the next page, two comprehension questions are asked in order to check if the participants fully pay attention to the photo and the message: “What is the name of the brand presented in the preceding Instagram post? “What is the ethnicity of the photo presented in the preceding Instagram post?”. The participants who choose incorrect answers, had an incomplete survey are excluded from the final data. A questionnaire containing a measure of manipulation check (influencer and narrative), message attitude, and brand attitude is measured.
Implications
👍 Our findings suggest that when an advertiser combines narrative messaging with audience-influencer ethnicity match in their advertisement, the audience is most likely to have a favorable attitude towards the message.
Challenges
With limited time and resources, we were only able to create Caucasian American and African American stimuli.
The experimental design did not take Mixed-ethnicity participants into consideration.
Only Caucasian Americans and African Americans would have an equal chance of being assigned to one of the conditions, which may create sample bias.
Future Studies
We need to examine the interaction effect of narratives and influencer-audience ethnicity match on consumers’ attitudes with a more diverse sample.
Since the product, we used in the experiment was lipstick, which was not gender-neutral. We'll introduce product involvement and purchase intention to the model in future studies.
Examine cultural contexts outside of U.S. Studies have found ethnic minority groups may respond differently to the ethnic cue in the ad compared to an ethnic majority group. Our sample only comprises responses from Caucasian students, and the ethnic cue in the Instagram post is not salient to them because Caucasian-Americans are well represented in the U.S.