Advertising Inauthentic Experiences Based on Attitude Functions

In practice, more and more inauthentic experiences are designed and marketed in order to serve a degree of expected utility while minimizing the costs or punishments for the consumers. We use the theoretical lens of attitude functions in delving into the motivations and persuasion for inauthentic/replica experiences. Thus, this study is an attempt to empirically demonstrate the relationship between attitude functions, experience types and how these are reflected in effective ad appeals. In a series of experiments, we showed that attitude functions influence the way individuals evaluate genuine versus iconic experiences. More specifically, we demonstrate that individuals have more favorable evaluations of iconic experiences compared to genuine experiences when utilitarian attitude functions are salient. On the other hand, there are no significant differences in evaluations of iconic versus genuine experiences when value-expressive attitude functions are salient. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that individuals find appeals promoting iconic experiences more persuasive when an advertisement emphasizes value-expressive functions rather than utilitarian functions.