Abstract

This research elaborates the impact of experience appeal and argument quality on the persuasion of self-referencing advertisements. The authors conducted a three-factor between-subject factorial experimental design, namely 2 (emotional/non-emotional selfreferencing) x2 (positive/negative experience)x2 (strong/weak argument). Results from analysis of variance suggest that (1) argument quality will not influence the persuasion of an emotional self-referencing advertisement with positive experience appeal; (2) strong arguments perform better than weak ones in an emotional self-referencing advertisement with negative experience appeal; (3) for non-emotional self-referencing advertising, regardless of positive or negative experience appeal, argument quality positively influences persuasion of advertising; (4) there exists an emotion/non-emotional self-referencing x experience appeal interaction effect. Research findings of this study will shed light on the incongruous findings of previous self-referencing studies and provide practitioners with rich marketing implications.