Need for Cognition as Determinant of Response to Rational and Emotional Ad Appeals

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Advertising communications are one way, they are also impersonal and receivers are not obliged to listen or even pretend to as they would in a personal exchange. They are free to ignore the message, remember it, or forget it as they please. This makes it imperative for advertisers to create messages that will intrude on the consumers' perceptual defences. Advertising hence, by necessity, must use powerful emotional and rational ad appeals to be noticed. While rational appeals would go down well with the left brainers (high on cognition), emotional appeals would be well received by the right brainers (high on feelings). Need for cognition represents the tendency of individuals to engage in and enjoy thinking. It may be described as the need to structure relevant situations in meaningful integrated ways and a need to undertsand and make sense out of the experiential world. It is helpful in understanding how argument strength and endorser attractiveness in advertisements may influence consumer attitudes. Insurance is universally acknowledged to be an institution that handles risk and provides security to an individual and his/her family. Given the fact that it also has a bearing on his/her future income (through the element of saving and investment); and offers him/her additional tax saving benefits; one may conclude that purchasing of insurance policy is a complex and high involvement decision for both emotional and rational reasons. An individual ranking high on a rational approach to a product and at the same time exhibiting a high degree of involvement would need more facts and evidences for making a decision. While, another individual taking a more emotional approach to the product and exhibiting the same high level of involvement would be influenced by strong emotional appeals. What should then be the stand of the advertisers when developing ads of insurance policy? What works best – an emotional approach or a rational appeal? The present paper is an attempt at investigating whether variations in the need for cognition makes individuals favour a particular type of appeal, especially in case of advertisements of insurance policy. The study is exploratory in nature with 2×2 factorial design, wherein need for cognition and types of appeals are independent variables and consumers response is the dependent variable, Independent variable of need for cognition has two levels high and low; whereas advertising appeal has two categories rational and emotional. The study proposes to examine whether there are significant variations in the responses of individuals having high and low need for cognition towards emotional and rational ad appeals, in case of advertisements of insurance policy. The findings of the study would enable marketers and advertisers in developing suitable ads for insurance policy.