Narrative persuasion in social media: an empirical study of luxury brand advertising

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of social media communication in luxury brand advertising from a narrative persuasion perspective. Specific purposes are to examine how characteristics of a message giver (i.e. comprehension fluency, imagery fluency) and message receiver (i.e. transportability, need for affect) influence the narrative persuasion process which further affects consumers’ subsequent responses (i.e. positive affect, brand social networking services SNS attitudes and intentions) within the luxury hotel industry. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was performed via Amazon MTurk. A total of 193 usable responses from SNS users were obtained. The structural equation modeling approach was used to test the proposed model. Findings Results show that comprehension fluency and imagery fluency as message-giver factors and transportability as a message-receiver factor positively affect narrative transportation. In addition, narrative transportation leads to positive affect, brand SNS attitudes and visit intentions, while positive affect also influences brand SNS attitudes and visit intentions. Furthermore, additional analyses indicate that narrative transportation mediates the effects of comprehension fluency on affect and brand SNS as well as the effects of transportability on positive affect, brand SNS attitude and visit intention. Originality/value Characteristics of a message giver and message receiver altogether are not well understood in the current literature. Empirical evidence in this study contributes to the social media marketing and brand advertising research fields.