CONTENT ANALYSIS OF APPEAL IN JAPANESE TELEVISION ADVERTISEMENTS

Abstract

Although research shows that Japanese consumers’ purchase intensions and favorability depends more on the emotional than informational appeal of advertisements for vegetables, a typical low-involvement product, there exists no detailed research into high-involvement products. Therefore, we quantitatively measured the effect of emotional vs. informational appeal on purchase intentions and favorability for two high-involvement products, OTC drugs and laptops. Participants having viewed and evaluated the appeal of TV advertisements, a multiple regression analysis indicated that informational appeal such as “product features” enabled the prediction of purchase intentions for laptops, while “product features” and “feeling of safety” were both significantly correlated to purchase intentions for OTC drugs. Favorability for these two categories was also significantly correlated to the “interesting” variable. Finally we examined consumer reliability across different media choices. Consumers relied heavily on internet advertising when purchasing laptops, while considering TV advertising to be the most reliable information source for OTC drugs.