Abstract

The first purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of advertising appeals and advertising spokespersons on advertising attitudes and purchase intentions. The second purpose was to compare the effectiveness of the influences of different types of advertising appeals and different types of spokespersons on purchase intentions. A 2*2 factorial experiment design method was adopted. The cell phone industry was selected as the research object, and print advertisements were used in the experimental design. The samples were chosen from five universities in northern Taiwan. A total of 450 questionnaires were distributed, 411 effective questionnaires were collected, and the effective response rate was 91%. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), t-test, and regression analysis were used to test the hypotheses. The major findings are listed as follows: (1) advertising appeals have a significantly positive influence on advertising attitudes, and rational advertising appeals are more significant than emotional appeals; (2) spokespersons have a significantly positive influence on advertising attitudes, and celebrity spokespersons are more significant than experts; (3) the influence of the combination of rational advertising appeals and expert spokespersons on advertising attitudes is more significant than the combination of emotional advertising appeals and expert spokespersons; and (4) advertising attitudes have a significantly positive influence on purchase intentions.

Key words: Advertising appeals, advertising spokespersons, advertising attitude, purchase intention.