Understanding the impact of humour on the purchase decision of customers

Abstract

The marketers are constantly looking for new content which can be used to keep the customers engaged and hooked up to the brand and their products. Humorous content is one segment which is growing fast in the adoption rate due to its unique stickiness. There are various kinds of humorous contents which can be used, and the most trending one is memes on social media. Given the kind of engagement scores this type of content provides, it becomes a huge opportunity for any company or brand to use it in their advertisements or campaigns. The study was done for 5 Star brand in order to gauge the brand awareness and purchase intention for the product and also effect of social media engagement was measured on purchase decision of the brand. Through literature review (qualitative exploratory research) we found that this type of content is able to give a traction to the company through factors like brand awareness and social media engagement. The results were then used as inputs for quantitative research which was done using hypothesis creation and testing (exploratory cum descriptive research). A survey was floated to collect data, and we received 104 responses for the same. We further used regression and mediation techniques to find relations between the variables. From our analysis, we were able to identify the correlation between the factors. Firstly, humorous content helps in creating a buzz around the brand and helps in increasing brand awareness for the product. This is because of the connect the customers feel and the laughter they share while watching the advertisements. This increase in brand awareness (and also brand recall) will increase the purchase intention towards the product. Secondly, using more of humorous content (especially on social media) helps the company to interact with the customers. Social media engagement for the brand increases if there is an element of humour in their posts. This creates a positive impact on the purchase decision of the customers. Hence, marketers should try to include various different types of humorous content in their communications to increase the purchase intention of the product.