Experiments on the effectiveness of marketing communications tactics to support ‘unappealing’ animals
Jie Meng
E. Cooper
Y. Sun
2134/38065
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/conference_contribution/Experiments_on_the_effectiveness_of_marketing_communications_tactics_to_support_unappealing_animals/9464411
This study was designed for investigating how effective different marketing communications
tactics are at influencing donations to animal conservation campaigns featuring ‘unappealing’
(non-flagship) species. Experiments were executed to evaluate the effectiveness of celebrity
endorsements, anthropomorphism, message framing, and personal incentives in fictitious
animal conservation adverts. Results showed that urgent message tone was not successful at
gaining support for non-flagship campaigns but combining anthropomorphism with positive
message did increase support for nonflagship causes. Celebrity endorsements were shown to
be successful at influencing willingness to donate, provided that the celebrity is highly
credible in the world of animal conservation. Offering personal incentives to influence
donations achieved its purpose when used in campaigns featuring ‘popular’ animals, but it
was not a successful marketing tactic when used to promote ‘undesirable’ animals.
Interestingly, the results revealed that participants were strongly influenced to donate to a
non-flagship campaign when they believed that it would result in wider environmental
benefits that would also be beneficial to humans. Overall, a participant’s prior knowledge or
preference for a specific species had a great influence over donation choice. However, this
study has revealed that through effective marketing participants can be swayed to support
‘undesirable’ animals instead of typically ‘preferred’ species
2019-06-21 08:57:54
Endorsement
Anthropomorphism
Rewarding