The power of facial expressions in branding: can emojis versus human faces shape emotional contagion and brand fun?

Almeida, Pedro; Rita, Paulo; Pinto, Diego Costa; Herter, Márcia

doi:10.1057/s41262-024-00357-w

J Brand Manag

2024

DOI: 10.1057/s41262-024-00357-w

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The power of facial expressions in branding: can emojis versus human faces shape emotional contagion and brand fun?

Pedro Almeida,

Paulo Rita,

Diego Costa Pinto

et al.

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2024

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Cited by 1 publication

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Smile or Not Smile: The Effect of Virtual Influencers' Emotional Expression on Brand Authenticity, Purchase Intention and Follow Intention

Jiang,

Qin,

Deng

et al. 2024

J of Consumer Behaviour

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Virtual influencer (VI) has become a new tool for brand promotion. The existing researches mainly focus on VI's external feature cues, such as identity, appearance, and sensory factors. In addition to carefully curated images, VI can also display emotions like a human influencer. Emotional expression as a non‐verbal social cue, is a key factor influencing consumers. This research focuses on VI's emotional cues and their impact on consumers' behavioral intentions. Based on emotional contagion theory (ECT) and elaboration likelihood model (ELM), this paper discusses the emotional contagion effect of VI emotional display (smiling vs. non‐smiling) and its matching effect with brand stereotypes. The results of three online experiments (N = 691) show that: firstly, VI's smiling emotion has a stronger primitive emotional contagion. Secondly, VI emotional expression has a positive impact on brand authenticity, purchase intention, and follow intention through affective empathy and cognitive empathy. Finally, this study found that VI's smile does not always produce a more positive effect than not smiling. In advertising situations that highlight brand competence, VI without a smile is more persuasive. Our results provide a new explanation mechanism for the influence of VI emotional expression on consumers' behavioral intention and provide a new perspective and advertising strategy for VI marketing practice.

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Smile or Not Smile: The Effect of Virtual Influencers' Emotional Expression on Brand Authenticity, Purchase Intention and Follow Intention

Jiang,

Qin,

Deng

et al. 2024

J of Consumer Behaviour

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

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The power of facial expressions in branding: can emojis versus human faces shape emotional contagion and brand fun?

Cited by 1 publication

References 57 publications

Smile or Not Smile: The Effect of Virtual Influencers' Emotional Expression on Brand Authenticity, Purchase Intention and Follow Intention

Smile or Not Smile: The Effect of Virtual Influencers' Emotional Expression on Brand Authenticity, Purchase Intention and Follow Intention

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