Rational VS Emotional Content in Mobile Advertising

Abstract

Advertising tries to find its place in the new consumer-centered paradigm for media communication. Consumers no longer are a uniform group, passive and powerless. Mobile technology has set some specific conditions that determine this particular sender-receiver relationship. In this context, there is a need for evidence about the effectiveness of traditional advertising strategies in this rather new channel. This study explores the relationship between the relevance of rational or emotional mobile advertising contents and the product’s target cognitive and affective attitude components. An experiment was carried out in which two types of short messages (rational/emotional) advertising an eBook were sent to two groups of participants, and questions about its content were asked through an online questionnaire. Participants had been previously screened according their new role in the communication process. Results indicate that the cognitive processing component is significantly better rated than the affective component. Thus the rational strategy is more effective than the emotional one when talking about mobile advertising.