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Showcase the smiles or the tears? How elicited perspectives determine optimal charity appeal content

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Abstract

Some charitable communications employ deprived beneficiary (DB) appeals (showcasing the distressing circumstances of suffering victims), while others feature satiated beneficiary (SB) appeals (depicting the improved state of victims after receiving help). We propose and demonstrate that the relative efficacy of these appeals depends on the perspective viewers are prompted to take. Across three incentive-compatible experiments, we demonstrate that while DB appeals are more effective in increasing donation behavior when an ad evokes a beneficiary-perspective (i.e., asking viewers to imagine how a beneficiary feels), SB appeals are more effective when an ad evokes a self-perspective (i.e., asking viewers to imagine how they themselves would feel if they were in the beneficiary’s position). We also provide evidence for the affect-based mechanism theorized to underlie this basic interaction, and proffer a managerially actionable, ad copy-based moderator.

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Notes

  1. We calculated the minimum desired sample size for our studies based on the size of the interactive effect between appeal type and elicited perspective that we observed on a previously collected but unreported study. This calculation assumed a desired alfa of 5%, desired power of 90%, and an expected average effect size (the observed eta squared was .17).

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The authors declare that they did not receive any external funding and that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial, financial, or other relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, CUNY, New York, NY, USA

    Diogo Hildebrand

  2. Associate Professor of Marketing at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Rhonda Hadi

  3. Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Professor of Corporate Integrity and Governance and Professor of Marketing at the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, CUNY, New York, NY, USA

    Sankar Sen

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  1. Diogo Hildebrand
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Correspondence to Diogo Hildebrand.

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APPENDIX

APPENDIX

Marketplace example of charity appeal with a self-perspective prompt

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Hildebrand, D., Hadi, R. & Sen, S. Showcase the smiles or the tears? How elicited perspectives determine optimal charity appeal content. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-024-01013-0

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