Abstract:

In the era when commercial ads have practically invaded every aspect of our lives, it is hard for marketers to catch consumers’ eye. Therefore, they have to make lots of effort when designing ads and solely resort to unique ad form or creative ad content to draw consumers’ attention. One thing that the marketers often neglect is matching ad form and ad content to enhance ad persuasion. Based on this fact, the present research explores the effect of congruency between ad shape (one aspect of ad form) and ad appeal (one aspect of ad content) on ad persuasiveness. And we conducted two studies to exam the effect. study 1 adopted 2(ad shapes: angular / rounded )×2（ad appeal: competence/ warmth）between subject design . A total of 123 workers participated in study 1. They read a print ad of a fictitious gum and then rated ad persuasiveness. The results of study 1 reveals a two-way interaction between ad shape and ad appeal. Specifically, when ad shape is angular, competence appeal is more persuasive than warmth appeal, while when ad shape is rounded, warmth appeal is more persuasive than competence appeal. Study 2 used 2(ad shapes: angular / rounded )×2（ad appeal: competence/warmth）between subject design . A total of 140 workers participated in study 2. They read a print ad of a fictitious phone, then rated ad persuasion and filled agentic orientation scale and communal orientation. Finally, they rated brand image and product image. The results of study 2 replicates the results of study 1. Besides that, the results of study 2 shows that the nature of shape- appeal congruency is orientation-appeal congruency. Study 3 used 2(ad shapes: angular / rounded )×2（ad appeal: competence/warmth）between subject design . A total of 138 undergraduate students participated in study 3. They read a print ad of a fictitious hotel, then rated ad persuasion and information processing fluency. The results of study 3 verifies that information processing fluency is the underlying mechanism of shape- appeal congruency effect on ad persuasiveness. The process of study 4 was almost same with study3, except that the study design changed into 2(orientation: agentic / communal )×2（ad appeal: competence/warmth）between subject design. And the results of study 4 proved the complete model of this research.

Key words: Ad shape, Ad appeal, Ad persuasiveness, Agentic orientation, Communal orientation, Processing fluency