Publication Date

Spring 2020

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Journalism and Mass Communications

Advisor

Nisha Garud-Patkar

Keywords

augmented reality, digital advertising, experiment, multimedia and technology, purchase intention, uses and gratifications

Subject Areas

Mass communication; Marketing

Abstract

Evidence shows that augmented reality (AR) technology is an effective advertising approach to raise a brand’s awareness, so many big brands implement AR into their marketing strategy. However, the effectiveness of AR mobile advertisements on consumers’ purchase intentions remains unclear. To fill this dearth in the literature, this study examined how message and audio modalities of AR mobile advertisements influenced consumers’ purchase intentions by surveying 120 participants in an online experiment. Based on the uses and gratifications perspective, this experiment manipulated the message type (emotional/factual) and audio-verbal appeal (present/absent) of AR advertisements to investigate their impact on consumers’ attitudes towards buying a watch. The results showed that audio-verbal appeal played a salient role in the emotional message to positively influence consumers’ perceived entertaining gratification and intention to buy the watch. However, the audio-verbal factual message negatively influenced consumers’ purchase intention and did not influence their perceived information gratification. Future research should test other multimedia such as images, video, or animations to better understand the interaction effect between AR mobile advertisements and consumers’ purchase intentions.

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