Marketing with social vs. personal appeal

Abstract

We explored the possibility that innovative products can be marketed in two main ways- with a social appeal and a personal appeal. A social appeal is one wherein the consumers are made aware of their responsibilities towards their nation or the environment, thus appealing to their emotional self. Personal appeal on the other hand focusses purely on functional benefits derived from the product. We anticipated that consumers would hold a favourable attitude towards innovative products with a social appeal compared to the ones with a personal appeal. We selected eight products and presented a survey to respondents wherein we randomly assigned the blocks of social and personal advantages for each product. Three filler products were also introduced so that survey pattern recognition would become difficult. Despite the people being equivalent on multiple demographic and psychometric indicators, we found that for low priced products, social appeal outweighs the personal appeal significantly. But when it comes to high priced products, personal appeal outweighs social appeal indicating the price sensitive nature of the target segment- typical Indian middle class consumer