Peculiar or puzzling? How curiosity type influences image and text advert responses

Abstract

This research demonstrates the effect of sensory (or perceptual) and intellectual (or epistemic) curiosity on consumer attitudes about products, brands and advertisements and their purchase behaviours in response to text and image-based advertisements. It supports two important findings: (1) those with inherent intellectual curiosity are more likely to experience more favourable attitudes towards a brand, advertisement or product when exposed to image-based advertisements; and (2) those with inherent sensory curiosity are more likely to experience higher attitudes and purchase intentions in general, but this effect may weaken or even reverse when exposed to image rather than text-based advertisements. These findings suggest that advertisers could be more effective if they tailored their use of image and text-based communications (eg text vs image ads, posts and text or image-dominant channels) to the type of curiosity that is most prominent in the segments they target.