The Relationship between Humor in Advertising and Intention to Purchase

Effectiveness in advertising mostly focuses on customer inner feeling which he/she gets from information. Humor can be defined as conceptual responses of people. In this study the structural modeling of the relationship between perceived humor in advertising, attitude toward advertising, attitude toward the brand and purchase intention are investigated. This study has been conducted in two phases. The first step was choosing sixteen advertising related to four international brands which were shown to ten art specialists. Then humor level of each advertisement was measured by using questionnaire. Eventually four advertising which have the most humor sense were selected among all sixteen ads. In second phase these advertising videos have been shown to 300 students during a twenty minute animated movie. Data analyzing through path diagram method (structural equation modeling) by using Lisrel software, indicate that the relationships between perceived humor and attitude toward advertising, attitude toward advertising and attitude toward brand, attitude toward brand and purchase intention were significant but the relationships between perceived humor and attitude toward brand, perceived humor and purchase intention, attitude toward advertisement and purchase intention were not significant.