Online advertorial attributions on consumer responses: materialism as a moderator

Purpose Based on the Mehrabian–Russell theory, the purpose of this paper is to view the attributes of advertorial information as a stimulus in an online environment to examine the emotional states of consumers and their sequential behavioral responses. Moreover, materialism is proposed as a moderator in the relationship between advertorial attributions and emotion. Design/methodology/approach By adopting a quantitative approach, 421 consumers with browsing forums or blog experience participated in the study. SEM techniques were adopted for the formal data analysis. Findings There was a causation found among control, arousal and pleasure. Advertorial attributes influenced the consumers’ emotional states via control, and emotional states directly affected the information acceptance and purchase intention. Materialism partially moderated the relationship between the advertorial information attributions and emotional states. Practical implications Advertorial editors should provide detailed product information with credible sources in a positive manner and should attach videos or interesting pictures to avoid boredom and attract reader attention, especially in the case of materialists. In addition, editors should also provide some related hyperlinks for consumers to stimulate their further reading and then should observe the number of clicks and shares to estimate the popularity of the advertorial, so adjustments can be made if necessary. Originality/value This paper confirmed the causation of pleasure, arousal and the validity of the dominance (PAD) emotional model and found a partially moderating effect of materialism on the relationship between the attributes of advertorials and the emotional states of consumers.