Fear is a negative emotional response to threats in the environment (LaTour and Rotfield, 1997). Witte, K (1994) defined fear appeals as “persuasive messages that arouse fear by depicting a personally relevant and significant threat, followed by a description of feasible recommendations for deterring the threat” (Williams C, 2012). Fear appeals can be grouped into physical and social fear appeals, physical fear can be characterised by threats that may cause harm to the body and social fear appeals can be categorised by threats that relates to social acceptance (Schoenbachler and Whittler, 1996; Laroche et al., 2001)
Cage, M (2013) According to LaTour and Zahra, “fear appeals have been used extensively in marketing” since the 1960s. Marketers …show more content…
“However by the 1970s, it began to be argued that marketing does not give sufficient attention to the possible use of fear, because studies had concluded that “the more the fear the less the effect”, and it was effectively an unused but readily available weapon. It is believed that if a consumer can be influenced to purchase a product when they feel a particular threat they will eventually get the product to feel of peace of mind. Fear appeal could be seen as a scare factor to scare people into buying a product or service even when they have no need for it. It was also argued from various research studies that there is a correlation between fear and persuasion so knowing the optimal level of fear can bring about effectiveness in the advertising campaign.
Threat appeals are said to be idiosyncratic to fear appeals as the same threat stimulus can result in different levels of fear depending on the various independent variables such as the perceived audience, topic and the context (Burnett and Oliver, 1979, Rotfeld,1988, Mukherjee A & Dube L,2012). Based on the encompassing nature of fear appeal it is recommended to be used rather than threat appeals as the threat of losing one’s teeth and the stigma it …show more content…
Also bearing in mind that since there are many contexts that violence occur and also varying levels of intensity of violence it makes it a very difficult area to be able to measure it effects on consumer behaviour in reaction to a violent images (Wilson et al., 2002). However in using violent advertising marketers have to understand consumer’s feelings, try to build a personal bond with the products and endeavour to not irritate them with their
Cage, M (2013) According to LaTour and Zahra, “fear appeals have been used extensively in marketing” since the 1960s. Marketers …show more content…
“However by the 1970s, it began to be argued that marketing does not give sufficient attention to the possible use of fear, because studies had concluded that “the more the fear the less the effect”, and it was effectively an unused but readily available weapon. It is believed that if a consumer can be influenced to purchase a product when they feel a particular threat they will eventually get the product to feel of peace of mind. Fear appeal could be seen as a scare factor to scare people into buying a product or service even when they have no need for it. It was also argued from various research studies that there is a correlation between fear and persuasion so knowing the optimal level of fear can bring about effectiveness in the advertising campaign.
Threat appeals are said to be idiosyncratic to fear appeals as the same threat stimulus can result in different levels of fear depending on the various independent variables such as the perceived audience, topic and the context (Burnett and Oliver, 1979, Rotfeld,1988, Mukherjee A & Dube L,2012). Based on the encompassing nature of fear appeal it is recommended to be used rather than threat appeals as the threat of losing one’s teeth and the stigma it …show more content…
Also bearing in mind that since there are many contexts that violence occur and also varying levels of intensity of violence it makes it a very difficult area to be able to measure it effects on consumer behaviour in reaction to a violent images (Wilson et al., 2002). However in using violent advertising marketers have to understand consumer’s feelings, try to build a personal bond with the products and endeavour to not irritate them with their