Storytelling and Brand Attitude: The Role of Consumers’ Level of Involvement and Available Time

Storytelling is a powerful tool in which brands communicate their story to build a relationship with a consumer. Some research has been done regarding the effects of a brand story on consumers’ attitude towards the brand. However, the assumption being made here, is that consumers are involved with the story and have time to elaborate on it. According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model, these are two important factors to become persuaded. In practice, consumers are exposed to thousands of advertising messages and will not extensively process all the messages. Therefore, consumers’ level of involvement and available time need to be taken into account when explaining the effect of a brand story on brand attitude. No research has examined these factors in the context of storytelling yet.

A total of 159 consumers participated in the research. Participants were randomly divided among 5 conditions: high involvement/no time restriction, high involvement/time restriction, low involvement/no time restriction, low involvement/time restriction and a control group. They received different instruction letters, and were asked to read a story about a sock brand “Alfredo Gonzales.” Afterwards, questions followed that assessed consumers’ attitude towards the brand. The results showed that differences in brand attitude between conditions exist. High involved consumers who have time available are more positive towards the brand after reading the story than consumers that lack motivation and/or time. For lowly involved consumers, factual information about the brand is equally effective. Furthermore, the level of involvement moderates the effect of time on brand attitude. The more involved the consumer is, the more important it is that they have time to elaborate on the brand story.