Portraying product or cause in charity advertising: how execution style and appeal type affects prosocial attitudes by enhancing perceived personal roles

Abstract

Across two studies, the purposes of this research are two-fold: (1) to examine the moderating role of appeal types on charity campaign attitudes, including temporal distance and spatial distance in the sub-dimension of psychological distance; and (2) to test the mechanism on these effects of the perception of personal roles in helping a cause. The results show that when charities are far from accomplishing their goals or are targeting international recipients, charity campaign attitudes will be higher when the images featured in their advertising are cause-focused rather than product-focused. In contrast, when charities are close to reaching their goals or are targeting local recipients, charity campaign attitudes will be higher when the images featured in their advertising are product-focused rather than cause-focused. Furthermore, perceived personal roles partially mediate the interaction between execution style and appeal type for predicting charity campaign attitudes. A match (vs. mismatch) between the execution style and appeal type leads to persuasion effectiveness of charity advertising. This research provides guidance to marketers for nonprofit organizations which are interested in communicating with donors and persuading them to take an interest in their campaigns.