Advertising Effect on Consumer Emotions, Judgements, and Purchase Intent

Advertising has been found to induce consumer reactions, including emotions and judgements, which in turn are believed to relate to important outcomes, such as purchase intents. Marketing researches seek to understand these consumer reactions and their decision-making processes to influence purchase intents. This study focuses on the information role of emotion in understanding advertising effects and influencing consumer choices. Individuals use affective responses to evaluate information and to form judgements, which are critical in the decision-making process. This research further expands the Informative Strategy Model by adding judgement as a mediator. The results of a multiple mediation analysis provide support that consumers’ positive emotions directly influence their purchase intent, while consumer judgements partially mediate the effect of individuals’ emotions on purchase intents. Research findings benefit marketing and advertising professionals by providing empirical evidence for the effect of advertising, including controversial advertising on consumer purchase intent. The challenge with controversial advertising is that if individuals experience negative emotions and judgements, advertisers may have limited or potentially negative influence on consumer purchase intents.