AD IB ICE

A group of researchers were investigating the effect of advertising on impulse buying (IB). After
doing an extensive lit review and quali research, they came to the conclusion that humour appeals
would engender IB. The literature also said that IB is different for vice and virtue products. So the
objective of the research was to study the impact of humour appeals on vice and virtue products.
They conducted an experiment – a 2*2 fully crossed factorial. The factors were humour appeal (lo
and hi) and two products – vice (chips) and virtue (curds). The procedure was as follows:

Subjects were given a survey first, unrelated to this study. Then they were shown one of the above 4
ads (which I will show you soon/have already shown you). Then they were instructed to go to
another room, but before this, go to a photocopy shop, to pick up a questionnaire that they need to
fill. In the photocopy shop, various products and brands of chips, curds (along with paratha etc),
biscuits were displayed. They were told that they could pick up any one of the products displayed
(for free) as a token of appreciation for participating in the survey. This was the IB measure.

The specific hypotheses were

H1: There is a positive relationship between the humour content of the ad and urges to buy
impulsively.

H2: Compared to virtue products, there would be greater incidence of IB in vice products.

H3: For vice products, the effect of humour on urges to buy impulsively would be higher, compared
to virtue products.

H4: There is a positive relationship between urges to buy impulsively and IB.

The scales to measure the various constructs were:

Level of Humour (Cline, Altsech and Kellaris, 2003)

Please indicate the extent to which you agree with the following statements by circling the
appropriate numbers in front of every statement.

The advertisement I just saw was

Statements 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Not humorous (1)…….Humorous (7)
Not funny (1)………Funny (7)
Not amusing (1)……..Amusing (7)

Vice

I would say chips/curds are

Virtue Product (1) ___ ____ _____ _____ _____ ______ _____ Vice Product (7)

Urge to buy: Beatty & Ferrell (1998)

Indicate your agreement on a scale of 1-7 for the statements given below:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Strongly Disagree Somewhat Neutral Somewhat Agree Strongly
Disagree disagree agree agree

Statements 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
I experienced a sudden urge to buy chips/curds which I had not
planned to purchase initially
I experienced no strong urges to make unplanned purchase of
chips/curds
I am feeling a sudden urge to buy chips/curds now

The data are in the file “AD IB data.sav”.

Please answer the following questions:

1. Did the manipulations work?

2. Are the hypotheses supported?
3. What would your advice to a packaged goods manufacturer that wants to engender IB be?