SUGISAKAMASANORI

Journal of Robotics, Networking and Artificial Life
Vol. 10(3); December (2023), pp. 226–230
ISSN (Online): 2352-6386; ISSN (Print): 2405-9021
https://alife-robotics.org/jrnal.html

Research Article

Towards a New Approach to Increasing the Persuasion ofProduct Marketing: An Experimental Study
Pinkie Anggia1, Kaoru Sumi2

Graduate School of Systems Information Science, Department of Media Architecture, Future University Hakodate, Hakodate, Hokkaido 041-8655, Japan
Department of Media Architecture, Future University Hakodate, Hakodate, Hokkaido 041-8655, Japan12ARTICLE INFO
Article HistoryReceived 25 November 2022
Accepted 15 May 2024
Keywords
Persuasive technology
Affective computing
Human computer interaction
Interaction design

ABSTRACT

Modern marketing strategies that leverage technology to of-fer significant value for the client
have replaced conventional selling techniques in recent years. A conversational agent or dialoguesystem presents an interactive computing product as a means of influencing people’s opinions.
However, this expanding topic still had limits in the earlier study. To advance this field, the current
experimental study incorporates new elements that are re-quired to enhance the ability to persuadeand build a compelling case for product advertising. Research in the past has shown that emotional
branding is essential to strengthen the customer’s engagement. Therefore, in this study, we createdsix contents, conducted an experiment with Japanese participants, and analyzed how to persuade
them with emotional and cultural content using a sinking boat joke. A sinking boat joke is a joke
about convincing people to jump into the water when a boat is ready to sink, which incorporates
a cultural context. The experiment was conducted by recruiting Japanese students at a Japaneseuniversity. Contents were presented in a counterbalanced way. The goal is to ascertain which
emotion works best for advertising, to investigate cultural differences, and to analyze the content
effectiveness that successfully persuades the Japanese participants.
© 2022 The Author. Published by Sugisaka Masanori at ALife Robotics Corporation Ltd.
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

know-how is often not explicitly known. In this study, weanalyze how people are persuaded by videos. We
previously investigated the camera angles and emotions ofvirtual agents when they try to persuade people in a 3D
space. The results showed that people’s likelihood of being
persuaded differed depending on their emotions and camera
angles, depending on their personalities [2].
In this study, we analyze through experiments using
videos whether the effectiveness of persuasion differs
depending on emotion and cultural background. In recent
years, commercials, including videos on YouTube, have
had many different appearances. We will use videos that areinspired by YouTube videos and will also examine whether
there are differences in emotion and whether persuasion
differs depending on the culture of the viewer. We would
like to verify that a particular culture is said to be useful fora particular per-suasion. In this paper, we use subjects to try
to persuade through video and examine whether this isrelated to emotion and culture. In particular, we will
analyze whether Japanese subjects are more likely to agree

1. Introduction
In the prior study, the customer’s purchase decision isinfluenced by the emotional contents [1]. Bothconventional and modern marketing strategies objects oneof the same things: to influence their target audiences.
However, the first essential question is, what is theinfluence of emotional content on persuading customers?
Despite its mixed results of which the positive and negative
contents are successfully influence people’s perspective,
understanding the core determent factor will help marketers
to better target their audiences. In persuasive technology,
modern marketing can utilize a conversational agent ordialogue system that represents interactive computing
product advertising. It can be represented in virtual avatars,robots, embedded character in the computers or robots, oreven as simple as animated content with human-likecharacteristics that shows facial expressions, emotions, andcultural context. Commercial producers have the knowhow to persuade people to buy their products. However, thisCorresponding author E-mail: pinkie.anggia@outlook.jp, kaorus@fun.ac.jp URL: www.fun.ac.jp

226with a group that is said to be easily persuaded by Japanesepeople.
This paper is structured as follows: First, thebackground is defined. Section 2 examines the linked
studies. The experiment’s specifics are reported in Section
3. Section 4 summarizes the findings of the investigation,and Section 5 evaluates the theoretical contributions,limitations, and implications for future research. Section 6
brings the entire paper to a conclusion.

– To the French, “Please do NOT jump into the water.” Yep.
Nice reverse psychology.
– To the English, “At a time like this, a true gentleman
would jump.”– To the German, “According to the regulations, all the men
must jump into the sea.”– To the South African, “Before the braai we’re going for aswim.” Braai = ultimate barbeque.
– To the Australian, “Don’t be a wuss, all your mates aredown there in the drink.”– To the New Zealander, “Strap on this bungee cord- she’ll
be right!”– To the Chinese, “Check out that juicy, delicious-looking
fish over there. And the yummy fins on that shark.”– To the Japanese, “Everyone else has already jumped.” –To the South Korean, “The Japanese guy has alreadyjumped.”– To the North Korean, “This is your chance to defect!” –To the guy from Kansai, “The Hanshin Tigers won!!!”2. Related Works
According to [3], people or “subjects” will respond to any
computer program in accordance with generally acceptedsocial norms, which has significant ramifications for
persuasive technology and persuasion. A smart system canprovide a number of social cues that elicit social reactions
from human users in order to promote certain products inthe contemporary environment. An interactive agent is one
example of how technology can be used to persuade people.
Persuasive interactive agents have been discovered tobe influential in a variety of industries, including healthcare,coaching, marketing, and so on. A higher skill in social
communication with the user was found to be closely
correlated with the persuasive effectiveness of the agent [4].
A trusting collaborative relationship between the agent andthe user was found to be the foundational brick in
persuasiveness even more than the appropriateness of thedecision-making.
Emotions are prevalent in marketing [5]. Consumption
experiences and product usage can elicit emotional
responses in customers both during and after consumption,
influencing purchase decisions and post-buy behaviors [6].
Customers’ emotional responses to store surroundings [7],e-store designs [8], and commercials [9] have been shownto influence their subsequent purchase decisions. Therefore,
the experiment in this study was designed to determine
which emotional content was closely associated tocustomer purchasing decisions. A sinking boat joke is ajoke about convincing people to jump into the water whena boat is ready to sink. It incorporates a cultural context.
Therefore, it is a culturally relevant joke about persuadingpeople that connect to their national characteristics, culture,backgrounds, or typical country’s stereotype. Ambiguity isfrequently viewed as something to be avoided or eradicatedin consumer or marketing related research. This joke
demonstrates that one of ambiguity’s most distinctive
manifestations, humor, can be found everywhere [10].
Understanding the cultural context and how convincing thecreated contents are will thus be advantageous whenemploying this strategy. The joke examples are as follows:– To the American, “If you jump, you’ll be a hero!” (cuesuperman pose, and big splash)– To the Russian, “All the vodka was washed overboard, I
can see the bottles floating past. . . if you’re quick you cangrab it.” (glug glug glug)– To the Italian, “See that beautiful woman with theluxuriant underarm hair swimming past? You can reallymake a splash and impress her.”

3. Experiment
The emotional contents were represented in six video that
aim to persuade the Japanese participants to purchase ahealth supplement with animated emotional facial
expressions and narratives. A cloud-based animated video
creation tool called Vyond with AI-generated expressive
face expressions and AI-text-to-speech narration, was used
to create these contents. The videos introduced the six
primary emotions according to [11], which were anger,
happy, fear, sad, surprise, and disgust.
In the culturalpart, the narratives from the animation were trying toapproach the viewers related to the Japanese culture’s
sinking boat joke method, which was, “Everyone else has
already jumped.” In our case, we try to approach theparticipants by mentioning that everyone is alreadyconsumed the supplements, is convinced by the effects, andso on. Moreover, we try to design the character that similar
to what is usually seen or normal in Japan, as well as using
female voice like other usual marketing content in Japan.
We published each content along with 15-seconds
neutral video and some questions in each Google Form.
Thus, there are six forms spreads in a random order to thestudents. A counterbalanced presentation of the content wasused. The experiment was carried out by recruiting a totalof 17 Japanese students from the Japanese university. Allof these students watched the content Google Forms. The
study aims to research cultural differences, identify theemotion that best persuades Japanese participants, andanalyze the effectiveness of the content.
4. Results and Discussions
The demographics of the participants in the study on healthsupplements among all Japanese students are shown in
Table 1. Only a few of them are interested in using healthsupplements, and the majority of them have never tried any
before. It is interesting to note that participants come froma variety of faiths, where there were people who do notseem to have a fixed religion, despite their country of origin
227

and ethnicity being homogeneous. Fig. 1 shows the sixemotions.
Table 1. Participant’s Demography

Participants
Number of participants
AgeCountry
EthnicityAnswers
17 people
18-24 years oldJapan (100%)
Asian (100%)
No religion (66.7%),
Religion
Buddhist (22.2%),
Shinto (5.6%),
Others (5.6%)
Tried health supplements before Yes (27.8%), No (72.2%)
Interested in health supplements 11.1%

Fig. 5 Analysis of Happiness Emotion

Fig. 6 Emotional Content of Fear

Fig. 1 Overview of Six Emotional ContentFig. 2 Emotional Content of AngerFig. 7 Analysis of Fear Emotion

Fig. 8 Emotional Content of Sad
Fig. 3 Analysis of Anger Emotion

Fig. 4 Emotional Content of HappinessFig. 9 Analysis of Sadness Emotion

228stated that other individuals use the supplement. They are
not motivated to buy the product, though, since they believethat too much positive emotion scares them. Furthermore,they are not lured to the emotion, which was pleased, after
seeing the video since they are distrustful of thecommercials in the first place.
The emotional content of fear in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7
resulted in viewers not feeling terrified of the emotion
provided there, as well as not trusting the content. Some ofthem also believe that frightening the audience is too severe,and that they cannot be swayed as a result. This contradicts
the majority of previous research evaluations on the fear
emotion, which claimed that fear is the most effective
emotion for influencing consumers in health-related
marketing content.
Some participants in the sad emotional content video in
Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 above were influenced by the negativeemotion. They stated that if they have anxiety disorders,
they will buy the supplement after seeing the advertisement.
However, users who were not easily swayed by the sadsentiment stated that they could not think that unpleasantmoods could be solved with merely medication, making
them skeptical of the content.
In Fig. 10 and Fig. 11, some viewers were affected by
the pleasant surprise feelings that they could feel some luckor good things were about to happen if they purchased thesupplement, based on the emotional content of surprise
discussed above. However, similar to previous comments
about credibility, they longed for additional facts topersuade them, so they could trust the effects after taking it.
The results of Fig. 12 and Fig. 13 of disgust emotional
content were interesting. Regarding the influenced byemotion element, some participants were disgusted,
indicated that they could smell the terrible odor just by
watching the video, felt sympathy for the character who wasexperiencing a poor experience, and, strangely, felt theopposite emotions, which were humorous and funny.
Regarding the other features, they believed they could trust
the content, that it was effective, credible, and reliable.
They said the visuals, storytelling, and overall content wereeasy to understand. We can conclude from this that disgustis the emotion that performs well for this experiment.
Anger and disgust were the two main emotionalvariances across all six contents. In contrast to the disgust
emotion, the participants in the anger emotion did notappear to show empathy or to be readily persuaded by thecontent. The participants were effectively persuaded,effective, intriguing, realistic, confident, reputable,
assertive, serious, friendly, and empathetic by the disgust
emotion.
From the animation, the emotions of anger, happiness,and surprise (positive surprise) show the most confident
impression on the participants. The emotion of disgust
shows the most realistic impression, while surprise(positive surprise) shows the friendliest one.
Overall, disgust was the only emotion from the six
animated video contents that was most effective inpersuading Japanese participants in the health-related
narrative to purchase a supplement.

Fig. 10 Emotional Content of SurpriseFig. 11 Analysis of Surprise Emotion

Fig. 12 Emotional Content of Disgust

Fig. 13 Analysis of Disgust Emotion
In Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 about emotional content of anger,
some viewers’ doubts the reliability of the product being
marketed, which was a health supplement. However, they
were successfully influenced by the unpleasant feeling ofanger in this clip. When they watched the video, they felt
uneasy, negative, or angry. Additionally, they wished somegraphs or data that could provide more information about
the supplement. The only persuasive feature fromparticipant responses in this angry emotion was that thecontent appears the most confident.
According to Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 about the emotional
content of happy, some viewers raised their trust in theproduct as a result of the good mood, and some narratives229

5. Conclusion

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This study investigates the unique compliance criteria for a
persuasive marketing content that can improve future
research. However, the results should be under-stood inlight of the limitations.
First, our experimental research was conductedprimarily with homogeneous target participants (e.g.,
Japanese university students in a comparable age range).
This study can be expanded to include more samples from
non-homogeneous participants to generate more accurate
data.
Second, deciding to use rigorous criteria yields limited
outcomes. These findings could have been different if we
had used broader inclusion criteria. Despite theseconstraints, we are optimistic that consequences will assist
scholars in addressing these critical tasks. Future researchshould base persuasive content on a more comprehensive
understanding of experience, according to ourrecommendations.
Adapting the narratives, animated facial expressions,and other possible elements to the selected subjects is also
vital, as [2], [11], [12], [13] stated that the matching
between the personalities of the subjects and the facial
expressions of the agents increases the effectiveness ofpersuasion.
This study proposes empirical
recommendations for any marketing-related content using
technology, emotional perspective, and cultural context. It
focuses on a single, original idea in order to advance andconvey perspectives on a certain research subject.
Disgust is the feeling in these six emotion-inducing
videos that most effectively persuades the viewers. They
were swayed and followed the stories’ logic to the last detail.
They occasionally described their feelings and possible
smells after simply watching the content. In order to takegood care of their health and avoid certain health issues as
described in the video, they felt the need to change theiraction, which was to make a purchase of the supplement.
This research collects and statistically analyzes datafrom our experiment with Japanese students at the Japaneseuniversity. The study’s findings, in conclusion, can be used
to any dynamic emotional branding and persuasive
technology-related trials. The cutting-edge information
provided by this study is a critical first step toward a more
unified involvement in content marketing.

Authors Introduction
Mrs. Pinkie Anggia
She is a Doctoral student in the Graduate
School of Systems Information Science,
Future University Hakodate, Japan. She
received her Master’s degree from theUniversity of Indonesia. Formerly, sheworked at Goethe-Institut Indonesien, theU.S. Embassy Jakarta, and the Universityof Indonesia.
Prof. Kaoru Sumi

She is a professor in Future University
Hakodate, Japan. She received her Ph.D.
in engineering from the University ofTokyo. She is currently working on
Human Agent Interaction, Persuasivetechnology, Artificial Intelligence inEducation, Affective Computing, Digitalstorytelling. She previously worked atATR MI&C Research Laboratories,
Communications Research Laboratory, and OsakaUniversity, where she researched human-computerinteraction, knowledge engineering, and the application ofartificial intelligence. After Prof. Sumi worked on media
informatics and human-agent interaction at the National
Institute of Information and Communications Technology(NICT), and Hitotsubashi University. She was a visiting
professor in British Columbia, Canada.

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