IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v85y2018icp271-280.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Men hate it, women love it: Guilty pleasure advertising messages

Author

Listed:
  • Lancellotti, Matthew P.
  • Thomas, Sunil

Abstract

The concept of a guilty pleasure has become a cultural touchstone, and messaging employing the concept has been increasingly used in advertising to gain consumers' attention and enhance the perceived value of the product. However, the present research finds guilty pleasure messages have strikingly different effects in men vs. women, for both physical and service products. Such messages result in more negative attitudes and lowered likelihood of purchase in men, yet higher attitudes and purchase likelihood in women. Using a mediated moderation model, this research shows these differential gender effects are driven by imagery generation via the experience of low agency emotions.

Suggested Citation

  • Lancellotti, Matthew P. & Thomas, Sunil, 2018. "Men hate it, women love it: Guilty pleasure advertising messages," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 271-280.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:85:y:2018:i:c:p:271-280
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.01.021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296318300225
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.01.021?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bozinoff, Lorne & Ghingold, Morry, 1983. "Evaluating guilt arousing marketing communications," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 243-255, June.
    2. Shiv, Baba & Huber, Joel, 2000. "The Impact of Anticipating Satisfaction on Consumer Choice," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 27(2), pages 202-216, September.
    3. Robert J. Fisher & Laurette Dub, 2005. "Gender Differences in Responses to Emotional Advertising: A Social Desirability Perspective," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 31(4), pages 850-858, March.
    4. Ran Kivetz & Anat Keinan, 2006. "Repenting Hyperopia: An Analysis of Self-Control Regrets," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 33(2), pages 273-282, July.
    5. Georgie D. M. Hyde, 1988. "The Role of Women," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: South Korea, chapter 6, pages 100-113, Palgrave Macmillan.
    6. Brennan, Linda & Binney, Wayne, 2010. "Fear, guilt, and shame appeals in social marketing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 140-146, February.
    7. Cotte, June & Coulter, Robin A. & Moore, Melissa, 2005. "Enhancing or disrupting guilt: the role of ad credibility and perceived manipulative intent," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 361-368, March.
    8. Kirsten Passyn & Mita Sujan, 2006. "Self-Accountability Emotions and Fear Appeals: Motivating Behavior," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 32(4), pages 583-589, March.
    9. Dass, Mayukh & Kohli, Chiranjeev & Kumar, Piyush & Thomas, Sunil, 2014. "A study of the antecedents of slogan liking," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(12), pages 2504-2511.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Saintives, Camille, 2020. "Guilt online vs. offline: What are its consequences on consumer behavior?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    2. Margarita De-Miguel-Guzmán & Carlos Ronquillo-Bolaños & Alexander Sánchez-Rodríguez & Gelmar García-Vidal & Reyner Pérez-Campdesuñer & Rodobaldo Martínez-Vivar, 2020. "Analysis of the Effectiveness of Advertising Messages. Comparison by Media, Typology, and Schedule of Advertisements," Tržište/Market, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, vol. 32(1), pages 27-46.
    3. Jorge Mejia & Anandasivam Gopal & Michael Trusov, 2020. "Deal or No Deal? Online Deals, Retailer Heterogeneity, and Brand Evaluations in a Competitive Environment," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(4), pages 1087-1106, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tejaswi Patil & Zillur Rahman, 2023. "A bibliometric analysis of scientific literature on guilt in marketing," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 73(3), pages 1385-1415, September.
    2. Cesare Amatulli & Matteo Angelis & Alessandro M. Peluso & Isabella Soscia & Gianluigi Guido, 2019. "The Effect of Negative Message Framing on Green Consumption: An Investigation of the Role of Shame," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 157(4), pages 1111-1132, July.
    3. Nagpal, Anish & Lei, Jing & Khare, Adwait, 2015. "To Choose or to Reject: The Effect of Decision Frame on Food Customization Decisions," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 91(3), pages 422-435.
    4. van Rijn, Jordan & Barham, Bradford & Sundaram-Stukel, Reka, 2017. "An experimental approach to comparing similarity- and guilt-based charitable appeals," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 25-40.
    5. Renaud Lunardo & Camille Saintives & Damien Chaney, 2021. "Food packaging and the color red: How negative cognitive associations influence feelings of guilt," Post-Print hal-04455590, HAL.
    6. Sarah Steenhaut & Patrick Kenhove, 2006. "The Mediating Role of Anticipated Guilt in Consumers’ Ethical Decision-Making," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 69(3), pages 269-288, December.
    7. Ioannis Kareklas & Darrel D. Muehling, 2014. "Addressing the Texting and Driving Epidemic: Mortality Salience Priming Effects on Attitudes and Behavioral Intentions," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(2), pages 223-250, June.
    8. Lunardo, Renaud & Saintives, Camille & Chaney, Damien, 2021. "Food packaging and the color red: How negative cognitive associations influence feelings of guilt," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 589-600.
    9. Aristeidis Theotokis & Emmanouela Manganari, 2015. "The Impact of Choice Architecture on Sustainable Consumer Behavior: The Role of Guilt," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(2), pages 423-437, October.
    10. Nguyen, Hoang Sinh & Laufer, Daniel & Krisjanous, Jayne, 2020. "The effectiveness of guilt and shame appeals on health communications: The moderating role of self-construal and personal cultural orientation," Australasian marketing journal, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 310-324.
    11. Saintives, Camille, 2020. "Guilt online vs. offline: What are its consequences on consumer behavior?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    12. Malhotra, Gunjan & Ramalingam, Mahesh, 2022. "Does impact of campaign and consumer guilt help in exploring the role of national identity and purchase decisions of consumers?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    13. Kamatham, Sri Harsha & Pahwa, Parneet & Jiang, Juncai & Kumar, Nanda, 2021. "Effect of appeal content on fundraising success and donor behavior," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 827-839.
    14. Fatima, Johra Kayeser & Di Mascio, Rita & Sharma, Piyush, 2020. "Demystifying the impact of self-indulgence and self-control on customer-employee rapport and customer happiness," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    15. Yanyan Chen & Dirk C. Moosmayer, 2020. "When Guilt is Not Enough: Interdependent Self-Construal as Moderator of the Relationship Between Guilt and Ethical Consumption in a Confucian Context," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 161(3), pages 551-572, January.
    16. van Rijn, Jordan & Quinones, Esteban J. & Barham, Bradford L., 2017. "An Experimental Test of Gender Differences in Charitable Giving: Empathy Is at the Heart of the Matter," Staff Paper Series 586, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    17. Ronald Conlin & Steven Bauer, 2022. "Examining the impact of differing guilt advertising appeals among the Generation Z cohort," International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, Springer;International Association of Public and Non-Profit Marketing, vol. 19(2), pages 289-308, June.
    18. Antonetti, Paolo & Baines, Paul & Jain, Shailendra, 2018. "The persuasiveness of guilt appeals over time: Pathways to delayed compliance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 14-25.
    19. Ein-Gar, Danit & Goldenberg, Jacob & Sagiv, Lilach, 2012. "The role of consumer self-control in the consumption of virtue products," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 123-133.
    20. S. Steenhaut & P. Van Kenhove, 2006. "The Mediating Role of Anticipated Guilt in Consumers’ Ethical Decision-Making," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 06/370, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:85:y:2018:i:c:p:271-280. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.