Journal of Service Research

http://jsr.sagepub.com The Role of Narratives in the Advertising of Experiential Services

Anna S. Mattila Journal of Service Research 2000; 3; 35 DOI: 10.1177/109467050031003 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jsr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/3/1/35

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JOURNAL OF SERVICE Mattila RESEARCH / ADVERTISING / August 2000 EXPERIENTIAL SERVICES

The Role of Narratives in the Advertising of Experiential Services

Anna S. Mattila
Pennsylvania State University

Service researchers have postulated that for many services, from the customers point of view, the service experience is the key perceptual event. For portraying and conveying experiences, narrative forms of communication tend to be uniquely effective. This experimental study examined whether consumer expertise interferes with the relative effectiveness of story-based appeals in print advertisements portraying experiential services. This study also sought insight into consumers affective responses to service ads, a nascent area of inquiry. Overall, this studys results suggest that consumers with relatively low familiarity with a service category might prefer appeals based on stories to appeals based on lists of service attributes. This relative advantage of narrative ads might be magnified when the novice consumer is in a happy rather than sad mood while encoding the information in the ad. Consumers with relatively high familiarity with the focal service category, however, might be unaffected by the format of the information presentation.

Several consumer behavior theories are based on the assumption that an individual evaluating a service or product first examines the implications of each feature of that service or product and then combines these implications to form an overall judgment. Such multi-attribute models (e.g., Fishbein and Ajzen 1975) form the foundation of most marketing strategies developed during the past two decades. However, for many purchase decisions, particularly those concerning experiential services, the consumer might try to imagine the overall sequence of events that
Journal of Service Research, Volume 3, No. 1, August 2000 35-45 2000 Sage Publications, Inc.

constitute the consumption experience rather than each individual feature of that experience. Much of the social information that people acquire in daily life is transmitted via narrative, that is, in thematically and temporally related sequences (Adaval and Wyer 1998). Furthermore, as Schank and Abelson (1995) argue, individuals may formulate judgments based on self-constructed narratives, that is, on stories constructed from personal experiences and later stored in memory to provide the basis for forming judgments about other people as well as about events and objects, including service experiences and consumptive products. Despite the importance of narrative in judgment formulation, academic researchers have largely failed to recognize its role in consumer decision making (for notable exceptions, see Adaval and Wyer 1998; Padgett and Allen 1997). In the current investigation, I argue that story-based communication might be highly applicable to services advertising. At the core of narrative psychology is the task of comprehending experience (Bruner 1986). Because narratives are uniquely effective in portraying and conveying experience (Boller 1988), story-based appeals might be especially effective for communicating the value of experiential services (Padgett and Allen 1997). However, in advertising and consumer research, the concept of service or product experience has been overlooked (Boller 1988). Recent research in advertising suggests that consumers actively construct the meaning of information presented in an ad (Graeff 1997). Yet, consumer involvement in the ad is a prerequisite for inferring meaning. Only ads that manage to adequately grab consumers attention are subject to further processing. The more subjective view of product

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comprehension might be particularly fruitful in services advertising because the perceptual event of many services is the consumer experience itself (e.g., Arnould and Price 1993; Otto and Ritchie 1995). Prior research in social cognition suggests that peoples interpretation of information depends on the currently activated knowledge structures (Higgings and King 1981; Wyer and Srull 1981). Because prior knowledge is a crucial element in information processing (Brucks 1985), novice and expert consumers are likely to infer different meanings from a service ad. Novices differ from more experienced consumers in terms of the amount, content, and organization of their domain knowledge (Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser 1981). Novices thus lack knowledge structures that would enable them to infer personally relevant consequences of advertised attributes (Graeff 1997). In this study, I postulate that accounting for consumer expertise might be necessary to fully understand the benefits of narratives in services advertising. The primary purpose of this study is twofold: first, to examine the merits of a narrative approach to advertising a service brand through print advertising stimuli and, second, to examine the impact of consumer expertise in the service category on consumer information processing of print advertising of experiential services. This study extends Adaval and Wyers (1998) findings in two important ways: (a) by introducing consumer expertise as a potential moderator of consumers information-processing strategies and (b) by measuring consumer emotions elicited by service ads. In Adaval and Wyers investigation, undergraduate students evaluated brochures describing vacations in India and Thailand. Hence, participants were likely to be highly unfamiliar with the two destination choices. Adaval and Wyer proposed that narratives are likely to elicit positive affective reactions to marketing stimuli and hence induce holistic processing of information. To examine the impact of affect on judgements, Adaval and Wyer manipulated the participants moods at the information-encoding stage. However, their dependent measures were restricted to an overall evaluation of a portrayed destination, whereas in this study, ad-invoked feelings are measured. Consequently, these measures should provide a more rigorous testing of the role of affect in influencing consumers information-processing strategies. Prior investigations of service advertising strategies have concentrated mainly on the strategies used to advertise professional services (Grove, Pickett, and Stafford 1997; Stafford 1996); the advertising of retail services has received scant attention (Tripp 1997). To bridge this gap, fine-dining restaurants were selected as the context for the current study. Prior research suggests that restaurants are characterized by (a) high levels of direction toward people rather than things, (b) high levels of customer-employee

contact, and (c) considerable customization (Bowen 1990), thus indicating that fine-dining restaurants have many characteristics in common with other experiential services. Furthermore, the study required a context that ensured participants interest in the product class so that they would process advertising information (Yi 1993). The following section provides a brief overview of the literature concerning story-based advertising appeals, consumer expertise, and affect.

PRESENTATION FORMAT AND CONSUMER EXPERTISE The primary goal of the comprehension process is to form personally relevant meanings to be used in evaluating advertising information (Graeff 1997). Boller (1988) argued that the meaning consumers create in response to a print advertisement involves not only the message but also its presentation format. The facts of an experience are constituted by its sequence of events. The act of narrating provides subjective interpretations that bind these facts into a coherent pattern that is a gestalt representing the experience (MacIntyre 1981). In advertising, narrative is used to describe selected experiences involving the consumption of services or the use of products. Narrative can be used to convey meanings about the abstract, intangible benefits associated with service consumption. This conveyance of meaning can be accomplished by presenting a story in which characters are portrayed as consuming the service (Padgett and Allen 1997). According to Adaval and Wyer (1998), the organization of information in an advertising narrative might influence the consumers choice of an appropriate information-processing strategy: Consumers arrived at more positive evaluations of vacations described in a narrative than of vacations described by a list of attributes. Adaval and Wyer attributed this advantage of narrative communication to two factors: (a) narratives structural similarity to information acquired through daily life experiences and (b) consumers use of a category-based or holistic strategy in judgment formation, that is, matching the incoming information with prior knowledge structures. Because prior knowledge is a crucial element in information processing (Brucks 1985; Sujan 1985), I suggest that consumer expertise may serve as another factor that prompts category-based or holistic processing. Prior knowledge has been shown to influence the way consumers process information in product evaluations (Alba and Hutchinson 1987; Bettman and Sujan 1987; Brucks 1985; Park and Lessig 1981). Individual consumers choose different information-processing strategies, possibly reflecting the different degrees of specific knowl-

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edge about the focal consumption category possessed by each individual (Bettman and Sujan 1987; Johnson 1988). In general, peoples interpretation of information depends on the currently activated knowledge structures (Higgings and King 1981; Wyer and Srull 1981). Novices domain-specific memory structures tend to be composed of limited information and of few interconnections, whereas experts memory structures are more elaborate, thus allowing for complex inferential processing (Peracchio and Tybout 1996). Furthermore, a more elaborate knowledge structure encourages conceptually driven processing, whereby new information is related to prior memory structures (Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser 1981; Honeck, Firment, and Case 1987). Consequently, consumers with high levels of product familiarity use their prior knowledge structures to extract meaning from advertisements; as a result, they more quickly comprehend the newly presented product information (Rathneswaran and Chaiken 1991). By evaluating the message information in relation to prior knowledge, expert consumers are thought to elaborate on that information (Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser 1981). Consequently, the recall of information presented in an ad tends to be higher among expert rather than novice consumers (Brucks, Mitchell, and Staelin 1984; Fiske, Kinder, and Larter 1983; Voss, Vesonder, and Spilich 1980). Information processing may be composed of two steps: matching and holistic processing (Fiske and Pavelchak 1986; Sujan 1985). In the first step, individuals attempt to match the attributes of the new information with their existing knowledge structures. If the information fails to correspond with prior knowledge structures, then schema updating is likely to occur. Conversely, if the matching attempt is successful, the second step, holistic information processing, is likely to occur. Because expert consumers tend to have well-defined, domain-specific knowledge structures (e.g., Alba and Hutchinson 1987), these consumers are likely to attempt to match product attributes with their existing knowledge structures. Consequently, in the current study, I propose that expert consumers might rely on their prior knowledge structures regardless of the information presentation format used in an ad. If the new information cannot be easily understood in light of existing knowledge, the consumer is likely to attempt piecemeal information processing, separately evaluating each feature of the service or product (Adelson 1984). Because novice consumers tend to have less developed domain-specific knowledge structures (Mitchell and Dacin 1996), these consumers might not be prone to attempt to match the new information with their existing knowledge structures unless the information is presented in a format that prompts them to do so. Lacking the appropriate knowledge structures in memory, novice consumers

tend to rely on attribute-based processing (Bettman and Park 1980; Van Raaij 1976). The results of Adaval and Wyers (1998) investigation suggest that the list format encourages piecemeal information processing in which the evaluative implications of each attribute are considered and integrated into an overall judgment (Anderson 1981; Fishbein and Ajzen 1975). Alba and Hutchinson (1987) suggested that helping novices become aware of connections between various bits of knowledge might enhance their learning. Bettman and Sujan (1987) reported that attempts to manipulate the salience or framing of product attributes produced greater effects on novice consumers than on their more expert counterparts. Adaval and Wyer (1998) proposed that new information presented in a narrative format is easy to understand because it is structurally similar to life experience. (For a more detailed discussion on the facilitation effects of structural similarity, see Gentner and Markman 1997.) Consequently, I propose that presenting information in a narrative format would help novice consumers comprehend the ad message, resulting in more holistic information processing by these consumers. Conversely, I propose that presenting information in list format would result in an absence of structural similarity for novice consumers and thus not aid novice consumers in comprehending the ad message. Overall, the following is hypothesized: Hypothesis 1: Novice consumers will give significantly lower ratings to service ads when the information is conveyed in a list rather than narrative format. No differences are expected among expert consumers.

AFFECT Padgett and Allen (1997) held that consumers view positive feelings and emotions as benefits that may be derived from the consumption experience. Hence, gaining a deeper understanding of the emotional responses elicited by advertising presentation formats might be fruitful in advancing our knowledge of services advertising. Adaval and Wyer (1998) proposed that the relative advantage of narratives over lists might be due to the intensity of the affect that they elicit. This positive affect elicited by narrative information might in turn influence consumers information strategies. Recent research in psychology suggests that happy moods are associated with heuristic information-processing strategies, whereas sad moods are associated with systematic elaboration of information (for a review, see Clore, Schwarz, and Conway 1994). Positive affect has been reported to induce less systematic attention to stimulus information and greater reliance on top-down inferences (Forgas 1998). Conversely,

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negative affect is likely to result in more careful and systematic processing of information (Clore, Schwarz, and Conway 1994; Schwarz 1990; Schwarz and Bless 1991). To account for the differential impact of mood on information-processing strategies, three theories have been offered. The first of these, the cognitive capacity explanation (Isen 1987; Mackie and Worth 1989), is based on the assumption that good moods limit processing capacity because a large amount of interconnected positive material is stored in memory. Recent research in brand learning, however, casts some doubt over the capacity limitation theory (Lee and Sternhal 1999). The second account, the mood motivation explanation (Isen 1987; Wegener, Petty, and Smith 1995), proposes that happy people avoid investing in cognitive efforts unless doing so promises to maintain or enhance their positive moods. Finally, the affect-as-information hypothesis (Schwarz and Clore 1983) is based on the assumption that positive affect signals the absence of a particular problem (Bless et al. 1996) and that individuals lacking a particular requirement to be vigilant may not be motivated to expend cognitive effort unless it is called for by other goals (see Schwarz 1990). The affect-as-information hypothesis assumes that negative affect signals that the environment poses a problem (Bless et al. 1996) and consequently leads to more detail-oriented and systematic information processing. Adaval and Wyer (1998) proposed that a narrative format of information presentation might generate more positive affective reactions to marketing stimuli and hence induce consumers to adopt more holistic processing strategies. In such cases, the extraneous affect elicited by the narrative could be expected to facilitate consumers processing of the narrative information and also to interfere with any computational efforts associated with the use of a list format. To test this hypothesis, I needed to apply mood manipulations at the information-encoding stage. Because happy moods tend to result in greater reliance on top-down processing, when the ad information is presented in a narrative format, the induced positive mood should magnify the ads ability to invoke emotional responses. Conversely, as proposed, ad-invoked positive feelings might be minimized when information is presented in a list format. In other words, simply listing service features or benefits in an ad might result in piecemeal information processing, which is in conflict with the heuristic processing mode induced by the positive mood. Because sad moods could be expected to prompt systematic processing regardless of the presentation format, I propose that, for customers in a sad mood, the emotions evoked by story-based ads and list-based ads would not differ. The following is hypothesized: Hypothesis 2: Positive mood states at encoding will result in lower levels of ad-induced feelings when the

information is presented in a list rather than narrative format. No differences are expected for sad mood states. To summarize, I suggest that expert consumers, due to their well-developed prior knowledge structures, might be unaffected by the way in which information in a service ad is presented. When processing this information in a holistic manner, expert consumers would be likely to rely on their domain-specific knowledge. Novice consumers, on the other hand, could be expected to process information in a piecemeal fashion unless the narrative presentation format aided their understanding of information. Finally, I propose that happy moods at encoding would further magnify consumers propensity to use the heuristic processing mode associated with narrative advertising. Conversely, ads employing list presentation, I propose, would generate less positive emotions toward the ad because the piecemeal information-processing mode induced by the presentation format would be incongruent with the heuristic information-processing mode associated with positive mood.

METHOD Participants and Design A 2 2 2 (Mood Consumer Expertise Ad Format) factorial, between-subjects design was employed to test the hypotheses. A total of 222 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of the eight experimental conditions. More than half (58%) of these participants were female. The average age of the participants was 21 years. Participants were relatively frequent users of fine-dining restaurants: 43% indicated having dined at non-fast-food restaurants between 3 and 5 times during the previous month, and 23% reported having done so between 6 and 12 times during the previous month. Moods were induced by asking each participant to provide a vivid written report of either a happy or a sad life event, purportedly to help with the construction of a life event inventory (see Bless et al. 1996 for this manipulation technique). Participants were asked to recall and write about a personal experience as vividly and in as much detail as possible. Half of the participants received instructions that asked them to think about an event that occurred that made them feel very happy and that continued to make them feel this way whenever they thought about it. The other half of the participants received identical instructions for a sad life event. Consumer expertise was manipulated via the type of restaurant portrayed in the ad, either Mexican or Thai. Pretesting had indicated that students at the focal university were highly familiar with Mexican res-

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taurants but relatively unfamiliar with Thai restaurants. Consequently, ads portraying a Mexican restaurant were employed to present consumer expertise in the restaurant category, and ads promoting a Thai restaurant were employed to present nonexpertise in the restaurant category. One half of the participants were exposed to ads containing a narrative message format, and the remainder were exposed to ads listing the salient attributes of the restaurant. Data analysis included several scales run as covariates: Need for Cognition (Cacioppo and Petty 1982), Consumer Involvement Profile (Laurent and Kapferer 1985), and Verbal/Visual Processing Style (Childers, Houston, and Heckler 1985). Stimulus Development The advertising stimuli employed in this study were based on real-life service advertisements portraying theme restaurants. To avoid the confounding effects of pictures (e.g., see Childers and Houston 1984; Miniard et al. 1991), the restaurant ads used in the current study each included a color picture from a real-life print ad. For both the narrative and list presentation formats, information content was similar. The ads employing the narrative format stressed the temporal relatedness of the elements of the service experience, as is illustrated in the following example: Upon entering the Patara restaurant you can immediately sense the truly exotic atmosphere of Thailand. The whole restaurant, enhanced by an eye-catching mezzanine reserved for private parties, is a spectacular temple dedicated to Thai gastronomy. The smiling waitress brings you to your table and hands you a menu. The soothing Eastern music is a perfect match for the relaxed atmosphere. The menu points to the essential fresh ingredients flown in weekly from Bangkok to create the flavors of our Royal Thai cuisine. In contrast, ads employing the list format began with a simple list of attributes, as shown in the following example: Nachos Mexican Bar & Restaurant can offer you the following . . . A truly exotic atmosphere Reasonable prices Spacious mezzanine floor for private parties World-famous Margaritas Fresh ingredients flown in direct from Mexico every week Relaxed surroundings with a fiesta atmosphere Authentic, mouth-watering dishes Smiling waitresses

To ensure both the effectiveness of the mood manipulation task and the appropriateness of the choice of restaurant types for the study, a pretest was conducted using a sample of 44 members of the focal studys participant pool. The results of this pretest indicated that the studys participants were significantly more familiar with Mexican restaurants than with Thai restaurants (M = 6.2 and M = 2.3, respectively; p < .001). The participants liking of the pictures employed in the ads did not differ significantly between the two restaurant types. Furthermore, participants in the narrative condition were better able to imagine themselves in the consumption situation than were their counterparts in the list-format condition, t = 2.4, p < .05. For the pretest, differences in the participants assessments of the decision-making process were observed. The narrative-format group placed greater focus on the sequence of events in the experience than did the list-format group (t = 2.11, p < .05). Conversely, those in the list-format group were more prone to independently evaluate the restaurant attributes (t = 1.9, p = .07). Because the ratings on the five-item emotions scale differed significantly between the happy and sad groups, mood manipulation was deemed successful (p < .01 for each item). Dependent Measures and Manipulation Checks Traditional measures of ad effectiveness, such as recall, attitude toward brand, and purchase intention, are primarily designed to assess argumentative ads. Some theorists (e.g., Wells 1987) have postulated that narrative ads often convey affective or emotional meanings. Therefore, in the current study, both attitudes and emotions were considered relevant indicators of ad effectiveness. The following three measures were employed to analyze ad effectiveness: 1. Attitude toward ad. This measure was a five-item, 7-point scale whose bipolar anchors were bad/good, dislike/ like, not interesting/interesting, irritating/not irritating, and unconvincing/convincing (Cronbachs alpha of .81). 2. Future purchase intention. This measure was a three-item purchase intention scale (see Yi 1993), with anchors of likely/unlikely, possible/impossible, and probable/improbable. The internal reliability coefficient for this scale was .91. 3. Ad-induced feelings. This measure was a 7-point bipolar rating scale anchored by does not make me feel at all and makes me feel very strongly. The listed mood states were happy, fearful, pleasant, angry, interested, disgusted, and surprised (see Plutchik 1980 for the development of this scale). The scale had adequate internal reliability, with a Cronbachs alpha of .72.

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Upon completing the section on dependent measures, the participants were introduced to a free-recall task. They were asked to describe the ad as accurately as they could. At the end of the experimental session, participants were asked several questions about their decision-making processes. First, they were asked to estimate, on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 = not at all difficult and 10 = very difficult), the difficulty they had imagining themselves in the consumption situation. Second, for assessment of participants perceptions of their processing strategies, they were asked to indicate whether they imagined an overall sequence of events or thought about individual aspects of the restaurant portrayed in the ad. Familiarity with Mexican and Thai restaurants was measured on a 10-point semantic differential scale (1 = not at all familiar, 10 = highly familiar). Participants were asked to assess their perceived familiarity relative to the average student at the focal university.

FIGURE 1 Presentation Format by Expertise Interaction (attitude)

RESULTS Manipulation Checks Participants ratings on the mood manipulation scale were significantly lower for participants in the negative affect condition than for those in the positive affect condition (t = 8.86, p = .000), indicating that the mood manipulation phase had been successful. A paired t test of the participants self-declared familiarity with Mexican and Thai restaurants also was significant (t = 16.8, p = .00). Moreover, participants assessments of their information-processing strategies differed significantly between the information presentation conditions. Participants in the narrative condition were better able to imagine the overall sequence of events than were participants in the list condition (t = 3.8, p < .05). Participants in the narrative condition also found it easier to imagine a dining experience in the restaurant than did their counterparts in the list condition (t = 1.8, p = .06). As expected, the number of items recalled was significantly lower for novice consumers (Thai restaurant) than for experts (Mexican restaurant) (t = 2.05, p < .05), thus reflecting differences in their domain-specific knowledge structures. Taken together, the results of these manipulation checks suggest that the experimental manipulations were successful. Attitude Toward Ad The main effect for presentation format was significant, F = 6.5, p < .05. However, this main effect was qualified by a significant interaction between presentation format and consumer expertise factors, F = 5.04, p < .05. Figure 1 illustrates this interaction effect. No other main or interaction effects reached statistical significance. An investigation of the cell means indicated that expert consumers were indifferent to the presentation format (M = 4.9 for list format, M = 5.18 for narrative format). Conversely, novice consumers showed significantly less favorable attitudes toward list-format ads (M = 4.4) than toward narrative-format ads (M = 5.18), implying that the list format failed to aid these novice consumers in information integration, in turn resulting in less favorable attitudes toward the ad. These findings support Hypothesis 1. Ad-Induced Feelings Participants emotional responses to the focal print ads were analyzed as functions of induced mood, presentation format, and consumer familiarity with the restaurant category. An analysis of covariance revealed a significant main effect only for presentation format, F(1, 206) = 6.55, p < .05. This main effect was qualified by two interaction effects: F = 4.3 for presentation format by mood interaction and F = 5.5 for presentation format by expertise interaction, with p < .05 for both effects. For participants in the negative mood condition, presentation format had a minimal effect (M = 2.94 for list format and M = 3.08 for narrative format). For participants in the happy mood condition, the list-format ads generated significantly lower levels of emotional responses (M = 2.7) than the narrative ads (M = 3.22). Figure 2 presents these results graphically. Taken together, these results suggest that happy moods might interfere with the piecemeal processing strategy generally associated with list-format presentation of information. Consequently, positive mood combined with list format resulted in less positive emotional reactions to ads

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FIGURE 2 Presentation Format by Mood Interaction (ad-induced feelings)

FIGURE 3 Presentation Format by Expertise Interaction (ad-induced feelings)

than did positive mood combined with narrative format. These findings are consistent with Hypothesis 2. An examination of the cell means for presentation format (narrative or list) by expertise interaction indicated that the presentation format failed to influence the level of ad-induced feelings of the expert consumers (M = 3.07 for list format and M = 3.15 for narrative format). In other words, for these expert consumers, the two formats were equally effective in invoking positive emotional reactions toward the ad. However, presentation format did have significant impact on the level of ad-induced feelings among consumers less familiar with the service category (M = 2.59 for list format, M = 3.12 for narrative format). This interaction effect is shown in Figure 3. The low cell mean for list format in the novice condition suggests that participants who lack domain-specific knowledge structures experienced difficulty in integrating the information and thus had lower less positive emotional reactions to the ad. These results provide additional support for Hypothesis 1. Future Purchase Intention In terms of the behavioral intention variable, significant main effects were observed for presentation format (F = 7.43) and for consumer expertise (F = 5.86). Future purchase intentions were generally higher for the narrativeformat ads (M = 5.05) than for the list-format ads (M = 4.5) and for the familiar restaurant category (Mexican restaurant, M = 5.01) than for the unfamiliar restaurant category (Thai restaurant, M = 4.56). To ensure that the participants behavioral intentions were influenced by their reactions to the focal ad, a regression analysis was conducted with attitude toward ad and

TABLE 1 Multiple Regression Analysis of Future Purchase Intention on Attitude Toward Ad and Ad-Invoked Emotions
Independent Variable Attitude Emotions R square = .37 F(2, 219)= 90.23* *p < .01. B .650 .361 Beta .521 .170 T 8.87* .289*

ad-invoked emotions as predictor variables. The results of this analysis are provided in Table 1. As shown by the regression coefficients in Table 1, both predictor variables were significant in explaining future behavioral intentions toward the service organization.

DISCUSSION Narrative appeal may represent a highly attractive message strategy for promoting experiential services (Padgett and Allen 1997). Nelsons (1970) framework-of-search, relating to experiential and credence-based services, suggests that experience qualities can be discerned only during consumption or after purchase (Zeithaml and Bitner 1996). Advertising strategies for promoting experiential services, such as provision of restaurant meals, hotel stays, or vacations, which consumers evaluate based on subjective criteria, tend to focus on portraying the consumption experience and conveying information about it. Because people need to comprehend their experiences and because people have a natural propensity to organize information

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about people and their actions in a story format (Bruner 1986), extending the concepts of story-based communication to services advertising seems logical (Boller 1988). Adaval and Wyers (1998) empirical study of consumer behavior indicated that narratives might more efficiently induce positive evaluations than the attribute lists commonly used in print advertising. They attributed their results to two factors: (a) the structural similarity of narratives to life events and (b) the use of holistic information processing by consumers exposed to narrative ads. In the current study, I proposed that a new moderating variable, consumer expertise, might be needed to better understand the impact of presentation format on consumer evaluations of experiential services. Previous examinations of consumer behavior (e.g., Alba and Hutchinson 1987; Bettman and Sujan 1987; Brucks 1985; Sujan 1985) have shown that consumer information processing might be influenced by the individuals level of domain-specific knowledge. In the current investigation, the interaction effect between presentation format and consumer familiarity with the service category indicated that expert consumers were unaffected by the way in which information was presented to them. These knowledgeable consumers gave similar ratings to narrative-format and list-format ads and reported similar emotional responses to both types of ads. Prior research has indicated that expert consumers typically extract meaning from new information by relating it to prior knowledge structures (Higgings and King 1981; Rathneswaran and Chaiken 1991; Wyer and Srull 1981). Given their well-developed prior memory structures, expert consumers are likely to be successful in such a categorization process (Fiske and Pavelchak 1986; Sujan 1985). As a result of this matching effect, in the current study, presentation format likely played a minimal role in the ad evaluations of expert consumers. Novice consumers exhibited significantly less favorable attitudes toward the list-format ads than the narrative-format ads and also reported significantly lower levels of positively valenced ad-induced feelings for the list-format ads. A plausible explanation for this finding is offered by novice consumers lack of domain-specific knowledge. List-format presentations of information seem to encourage piecemeal information processing (Adaval and Wyer 1998). In the piecemeal information-processing mode, the evaluative implications of the service features listed in an ad must be integrated into a coherent overall judgment (Anderson 1981). Novice consumers, having poorly defined prior knowledge structures, must expend considerable effort to make sense of new information presented in an ad (Mitchell and Dacin 1996). In the current study, the novice consumers lack of appropriate personal experience with the service category made it harder for them to

integrate the evaluative implications of attributes listed in the ad. Hence, it is not surprising that these consumers experienced less positive emotions as a result of exposure to list-format ads and less positive attitudes toward these ads. When these novice consumers encountered a narrative-format ad, however, that ads story-based appeal made it easy for them to imagine themselves in the consumption situation. In other words, the structural similarity of the message to life experience (Adaval and Wyer 1998) aided the novice subjects understanding of the information. This facilitation effect on nonexpert consumers is consistent with prior research in consumer behavior. For example, Alba and Hutchinson (1987) proposed that novice consumers could be aided in learning new product information by enhancing their ability to make connections between the various product attributes. Bettman and Sujan (1987) postulated that novice consumers are more affected by framing than are expert consumers. In the current investigation, story-based ad appeals aided the information integration process of the novice consumers. As a result, these consumers liked the narrative-format ads more than the list-format ads and experienced higher levels of positive feelings as a result of exposure to the narrative-format ads. The results of this study also shed some light on the impact of consumer mood at the information-encoding stage. Contrary to the findings of Adaval and Wyers 1998 study, in this study the mood state at the time of the evaluation task influenced participants reactions to advertising stimuli. Considerable evidence suggests that positive mood states typically prompt holistic information processing, whereas negative mood states typically lead to more systematic information processing (Clore, Schwarz, and Conway 1994; Forgas 1998). In the current study, significant interaction occurred between presentation format and mood state, suggesting that the manner in which information is conveyed in a service ad might influence emotional responses to that ad. Unlike Adaval and Wyers (1998) study in which overall evaluations were restricted to participants wanting to visit a country or their comparative judgments between two exotic travel destinations, we specifically measured ad-invoked feelings. This measure of emotions elicited by the ad should provide a more stringent testing of potential mood effects. In this study, consumers in happy moods reported lower levels of positively valenced ad-induced feelings when exposed to list-format ads than when exposed to narrative-format ads. This finding suggests that the piecemeal information processing generally associated with list-format ads might have interfered with the holistic processing typically induced by positive mood. People tend to like to maintain their good moods (Isen 1987; Wegener, Petty, and Smith 1995). Thus, in this study, consumers in the positive mood condition were not well disposed to the list-format ads that prompted

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them to shift to a more systematic elaboration mode. Consumers in sad moods, on the other hand, processed information in a systematic manner whether or not the information was presented in list format. Thus, for consumers in the negative mood condition, no differences were observed in ad-induced feelings. To summarize, the findings of this study suggest that conveying information in a narrative format might be a highly effective method of advertising services to nonexpert consumers. Story-based appeals help novice consumers to imagine the consumption situation and hence aid their understanding of the hedonic benefits to be derived from the consumption experience. However, the study results also suggest that the consumers mood state at the time of encoding might interfere with the relative effectiveness of the narrative format as compared to the list format. The use of attribute lists in the message format might be detrimental to ad effectiveness when the target audience is in a happy mood. Managerial Implications Service advertisers are faced with the challenge of communicating the intangible benefits of a service to their target markets. Yet, the real difficulty lies in choosing an appropriate message strategy (Mittal 1999). The findings of this study suggest that narratives might offer an effective way of communicating service intangibles to certain target markets. In narrative ads, the service benefits are embedded in realistic consumer life experiences. The story format is easy to understand, thus enabling novice or inexperienced consumers to integrate information in a coherent way. In this study, participants with limited familiarity of a restaurant category had more favorable attitudes toward the ad and more positive emotional reactions toward the ad when the information was presented in a narrative rather than list format. In addition, the likelihood of future purchases was higher with the story format. Expert consumers, on the other hand, were unaffected by the way in which information was presented. Gaining a deeper understanding of consumers affective reactions to advertising messages is important because these emotional responses tend to be directly linked to future behavioral intentions. If the goal of the advertising strategy is to induce trial, then service advertisers might benefit from using consumer episodes in the message strategy. Communicating hedonic product or service benefits in a narrative format might be particularly fruitful for advertising services high in experiential qualities, such as food and catering services, entertainment, and cosmetic surgery. Furthermore, narrative ads might be useful for service innovations when consumers, including current users, are

being asked to change their behaviors. Educating the customer about new procedures might be effectively conveyed in a consumer episode that relates the new information to real-life experiences. Training the customer to use information technology as part of the service delivery, for example, might be more effectively done via narrative ads than messages conveyed in a traditional list format. Clearly, future research is needed to substantiate these findings.

LIMITATIONS Several limitations of this study must be addressed. First, each of the print-ad stimuli employed in this investigation was accompanied by a color photograph. Prior research suggests that pictures magnify the relative advantage of the narrative format over the list format (Adaval and Wyer 1998). Hence, the conclusions to be drawn from this study are limited to print ads accompanied by pictures. Second, because this investigation was limited to a single study, replications and extensions to other types of experiential services are needed before managerial implications can be based on a solid foundation of empirical evidence. Knowledge manipulation was based on self-reported familiarity measures, and hence, it can be argued that the operationalization of product expertise was somewhat limited. Consequently, finding a context in which naturally occurring expert and novice groups could be exposed to narrative versus list formats could be highly revealing. Internet-based services might provide such a context for future research. Third, the participants in the present study were students who evaluated print ads in a classroom context. Real-life consumers exposed to ads in more natural settings might be less or more motivated than participants in this study to process information. For example, consumers choosing a restaurant for a special occasion such as a birthday or anniversary might be less prone to holistic processing of information than those who participated in the current study because an increase in processing motivation may result in a decrease in reliance on general knowledge structures (for reviews, see Fiske and Neuberg 1990; Kruglanski 1989). Thus, further research is necessary to fully understand the role of narratives in services advertising.

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Anna S. Mattila (Ph.D., Cornell University) is an assistant professor in the School of Hotel, Restaurant and Recreation Management at Pennsylvania State University. Her current research interests include services advertising, service encounters, and cross-cultural issues in services marketing. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including the Journal of Consumer Psychology, Psychology and Marketing, Journal of Services Marketing, International Journal of Service Industry Management, Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, and Cornell Hotel & Restaurant Administration Quarterly.

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