Abstract
Brands are communication-based strategies where consumer expectations confront with company values, goals and promises. Developing successful branding strategies enables strengthened personal bonds with target groups. Stories have always captivated people and a company can tell its own story to reflect the brand value and the company vision. In the current social media era, narrative advertising has become a favorite tool of communication in reaching the target groups as a persuasion technique by making the audience feel involved and be part of the stories. In this context, collective tendencies are adapted to be the hosting medium for the slogan of the brand or any related information regarding the branding strategies. On the other hand, collective inertia, which develops as a side effect of these cultural tendencies, allows the new approaches as a source of interest if and only if they pass the high threshold. In these circumstances, narrative advertising is one of the most appropriate methods that can be used for a successful marketing strategy to overcome the inertia resistance.
TopBackground For Narrative Advertising
Experiential marketing requires consumers to get influenced by remarkable and memorable elements, and sufficient information to enable them to make purchase decisions (Gilmore & Pine, 2002). In this manner, it is possible to interact on a personal level and develop clearly differentiated product presentation methods. Impressive experiences that stimulate emotions have a positive impact on consumer attitudes and behaviors (Frost et al., 2008). With the opportunities offered by digital communication, narrative advertising has attracted significant interest and has been proposed as an effective tool to generate positive attitudes about a brand (Kozinets et al., 2008; Keng et al., 2011; Singh & Sonnenburg, 2012; Ching et al.,2013) and such technological developments have enabled marketers to build more effective narrative advertisements through the upgraded features and advanced capabilities of internet. The physical properties of the website that addresses the consumer's feelings and encourages the target audience to buy have a significant impact on purchase tendencies (Constantinides et al., 2010; Mandel & Johnson, 2002). Narrative advertising involves storytelling about product consumption and related experiences that occur in a series of events and affects the feelings of the target groups to convince them (Mick, 1987; Swatman et al., 2006). Besides, consistent stories can allow consumers to connect with the characters and such experiences affect consumer’s purchase intentions (Bagozzi et al., 1999).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Information Age: The current era, in which relatively much larger amounts of information are widely available generally through network platforms.
Inertia: the resistance to change, and the persistence of cultural tendencies in societies.
Lifestyle: Distinguishable patterns of consumer behavior associated with different segments of society.
Cultural Branding: Generating meaning by guiding the development of brands into cultural tendencies.
Brand Promise: The determined way through branding strategy to fulfill the need of the target market.
Culture: A set of distinguishable patterns of human behavior that is built through social learning.
Brand Shaming: Sudden decline in brand value in case the content and presentation elements of the branding strategy do not match the cultural tendencies of audiences.