When and why do artifact emojis lead to backfire effects on consumer response?

Abstract

In online settings, firms have rapidly adopted emojis in their marketing messages. Thus, marketing research and practice have begun to examine emojis in recent years. However, while prior work has examined the impact of emojis that depict facial expressions and body movements (i.e., kinesic emojis), research into emojis that represent objects (i.e., artifact emojis) is scarce. The present research fills this void by showing that artifact emojis can negatively influence consumer response. Specifically, the authors demonstrate that the presence (vs. absence) of artifact emojis in broadcast marketing messages increases skepticism, as consumers infer the brand has ulterior motives for emoji use. Subsequently, they show decreased response to the brand's broadcast message on multiple marketing outcomes. Moderators that strengthen or weaken the observed effects are also examined: when emojis are less (vs. more) relevant to the text and when artifact emojis substitute (vs. supplement) the word they represent.