Effects of typographic factors in advertising‐based persuasion: A general model and initial empirical tests

Abstract

Advertisers are constantly seeking ways to increase the persuasive power of their ads. To that end, advertisers are encouraged to match their advertising's executional elements (e.g., spokespersons, visuals, etc.) with their consumer's motivation, opportunity, and ability (MOA) to process brand information from advertising. A lessconsidered approach is to select executional elements that will increase consumer motivation, opportunity, and ability. Following this approach, the current study examines typography, a potentially critical but relatively underinvestigated executional element. Typography is a major executional element of word-driven advertising (e.g., print and internet), and has the potential to significantly influence motivation, opportunity, and ability to process advertising messages. Given the potential importance of typography, it is surprising how little research has been conducted to examine its effects in a persuasion context. One reason for this paucity of research may be the lack of an organizing framework delineating the macrolevel relationships between typographic dimensions, typographic outcomes, and the effects of those outcomes

Testing consumers' motivation and linguistic ability as moderators of advertising readability

“…See McCarthy and Motherbaugh (2002) for application of many of these variables in an advertising context. In summary, semantic and syntactic levels of complexity impact on two different stages on the reading comprehension process.…”

Characteristics of English, Chinese and Arabic Typefaces

“…According to the psychologists, typography is defined as the "art of using typeface, layout, and color to convey the meaning of text" (Smart et al, 2000), or as "the form, spacing, and layout of words and sentences in the text of a written or displayed communication message" (McCarthy & Mothersbaugh, 2002). In general, typography is the tool that creates words from characters for example 26 basic in English on paper or screen.…”

Helvetica as a type convention for the youthful and trendy image: A consumer response to designer safe option

“…Subsequent studies were concerned about typeface appropriateness (Schiller, 1935;Brumberger, 2003a), impression management or connotative meaning (Tannenbaum et Morrison, 1986;Rowe, 1982), semantic quality of type (Bartram, 1982;Childers and Jass, 2002), persuasive e ect (McCarthy and Mothersbaugh, 2002) and persona (Secrest, 1947;Brumberger, 2003b;Fox et al, 2007;Mackiewicz and Moeller, 2004). On the other hand, McCarthy and Mothersbaugh (2002) believe that print advertising executional elements can be matched with consumer's motivation opportunity and ability, hence the choice of a typeface can in uence the persuasive e ect of the message. In their view, this aspect has been neglected in research studies due to the lack of an organizing framework.…”