How Mood and Ad-Self-Congruency Affect the Relative Influence of Hedonic Ad Appeals and Utilitarian Ad Appeals on Product Evaluations

This study argues that participants’ affective states determine the relative influence of hedonic ad appeals and utilitarian ad appeals on participants’ evaluations of dual function products. Specifically, this study shows that a positive affective state, in comparison to a neutral affective state, increases participants’ reliance on their attitudes toward hedonic ad appeals in developing their product evaluations. As a result, ads featuring congruent selfconcepts generate more favorable ad and product evaluations when participants are in positive affective states as opposed to in neutral affective states. Moreover, this study demonstrates that the relative influence of hedonic ad appeals and utilitarian ad appeals on brand evaluations is a function of participants’ affective states, as well as the congruency of image portrayals in the hedonic ad with participants’ self concepts. The two most dominant types of advertising appeals are believed to be the hedonic (value-expressive or image) appeal and the utilitarian (functional) appeal (Johar & Sirgy, 1991; Snyder & DeBono, 1985). However, past literature does not provide sufficient information regarding how different contextual factors may affect the influences of different ad appeals on brand evaluations. What is better known is that, for a product that provides mainly hedonic satisfaction, a hedonic ad appeal is more persuasive, whereas for a product that is primarily evaluated on the basis of its functional attributes, a utilitarian ad appeal is more effective (Rossiter & Percy, 1987). Unfortunately, there has been a notable lack of attention paid to the question of which type of ad appeal is more effective for a dual-function product, one that offers hedonic satisfaction in addition to fulfilling utilitarian functions. This study, therefore, will specifically explore the influence of hedonic ad appeals and utilitarian ad appeals in different contexts for a dualfunction product. Adaval (2001) has proposed that participants’ affective states may either confirm or disconfirm their responses to product-related information, thereby altering the weight of the piece of information that is being taken into account, a phenomenon known as the affectconfirmation effect. According to Adaval’s theorization, happy individuals may allocate more weight to favorable information than to unfavorable information when they make judgments, because the valence of the former is congruent with the individuals’ affective states and the valence of the latter is incongruent with their affective states. As Adaval’s affect-confirmation effect theory suggests, the argument that affective states encourage heavier weighting of hedonic product attributes will only hold true if the hedonic ad information generates favorable evaluations which are similar in valence to the participants’ affective states. It is important to note that literature examining the effectiveness of hedonic ad appeals from the self-congruency perspective has clearly suggested that the effectiveness of an ad appealing to user image is a function of the way participants perceive themselves on the same image dimension. To the extent that participants’ self-concepts are congruent with image portrayals in a hedonic ad, consumers will generate more positive affective responses. Thus, it is reasonable to argue that, under the condition in which positive affective states are induced, positive affective responses evoked by self-congruent ad messages will encourage affect-confirmation and bias participants’ evaluation of ads and brands positively. Adaval (2001) has further demonstrated that affect-confirmation effects occur only when consumers base their product evaluations on hedonic criteria, (criteria that pertain to affective responses), not when they develop their product evaluations based on utilitarian criteria, (criteria that mainly concern product performance and are not directly linked to affective consequences). This study carries Adaval’s theory one step further by arguing that when both utilitarian and hedonic product information is available for a dual-function product, a product that can be judged either on the basis of its hedonic qualities or its utilitarian functions, participants’ positive affective states can increase the relevancy of hedonic product information and thus alter the weight participants assign to hedonic messages when they evaluate the product. In addition, this study proposes, that the relative importance of hedonic ad appeals and utilitarian ad appeals in rendering judgmental influence on product evaluations also hinges on the congruency of the portrayed images with participants’ self-concepts. Yet, when the portrayed image is incongruent with participants’ self-concepts, participants are motivated to elaborate on messages. Therefore, their product beliefs and their evaluations of the utilitarian ad become important judgmental inputs for brand evaluations.