Advertising effectiveness of threat appeals: an exploration of advertising for psychological counselling services

Abstract

The underlying study investigates the advertising effectiveness of a threat appeal for psychological counselling services. It focuses on the counselling target group of persons with a high level of anxiety. The study aims to determine the respondents' emotional and cognitive responses toward a threat appeal and their effect on advertising outcomes. The research contributes to the expansive but very inconsistent field of threat appeals in health campaigns. The use of highly threatening appeals is very common in this field, even if empirical studies have often confuted its effectiveness. The effectiveness of threat appeals aimed at the highly vulnerable target group of counselling services is questionable. The research was conducted in three steps. In the first step, a pre-test with 18 students aimed to develop a testable threat advertisement. In the second step, a pilot study with 135 students investigated possible emotional responses toward this advertisement. The objective was to develop an appropriate emotional response measurement for the advertisement. In the third step, an experimental study was conducted to investigate the emotional and cognitive responses toward the threat appeal of 162 undergraduate students and the advertising outcomes of these responses. The results showed that a strong threat appeal is not effective for counselling services. It led to defensive strategies among the target group, which inhibited the processing of the advertisement. The results however showed that positive emotions toward the advertisement and cognitive involvement have a positive impact on advertising outcomes, such as attitude toward the ad and behavioural intentions. Consequently, highly threatening messages should be rejected in favour of weaker threats or even purely positive appeals. The study could not take into account all possible advertising effectiveness variables. Future research should expand the conceptual model with those variables and apply it in a naturalistic setting.