Narrative transportation and product involvement : how narrativity factors are used to enchance transportive experience in advertising for high vs. low involvement products

Abstract

This paper examines and presents how narrativity factors are used to enhance consumers‟ transportive experience when advertising for high and low involvement products. It specifically looks at processing experiences among Thai online consumers when viewing TV commercials available on a YouTube channel. The paper brings the theory of product involvement into a field of narrative transportation. Results show that narrativity factors should be used with the right balance across all narrativity levels, i.e. story, structure and discourse, to create relevance and story-brand connection. Moreover, brand should be well aware of their consumer‟s prior experience and expectation, particularly, when aiming for advertising a high involvement product. In contrast, advertising for a low involvement product should discuss as fewest product attributes as possible. Doing so allows brands to be able to correspond directly to the level of involvement that their consumers have toward the products, thus allowing the brands to enhance transportive experience among their consumers more effectively and successfully.