Figuratively Bleeding or Just Bleeding? Exploring Consumers’ Personal Values and Emotions within Simple and Rhetorically Constructed Violent Ad Contexts!

Advertising is ubiquitous in the modern world. Indeed, individuals get bombarded with myriads of ad messages on a daily basis. In order to overcome the cluttered environment, ad practitioners often employ techniques grounded on controversial topics such as violence (e.g., Manceau and Tissier-Desbordes, 2006). At the same time, ad professionals intensify the use of rhetorical devices as an additional means to persuade (e.g., Phillips and McQuarrie, 2002). Nonetheless, the psychological determinants of viewers’ responses to such ad practices are still elusive. For example, despite the relevance of fundamental cognitive and affective constructs such as values and emotions within advertising (e.g., Holbrook and Batra, 1987; Homer and Kahle, 1988), no previous study has investigated their effects on controversial ad contexts employing rhetoric as a means to persuade.This void gives rise to a number of research questions. Do personal values and emotions determine consumers’ attitudinal reactions within analogous ad settings? In addition, are specific values and emotions more systematically related to specific combinations of controversial-rhetoric ad frames? Finally, which is the interplay between the respective cognitive and affective factors regarding their influence on consumers’ ad and brand attitudes toward non-rhetorical and rhetorical violent ads? The present study aims at filling the current knowledge gap in the literature by shedding some light to these important questions