The Influence Of Visual Symbols On Advertising Effect:Engagement As A Mediator

"Engagement" is widely used in different fields.As the interaction between consumers and brands or advertisements is getting increasingly important for business,Engagement is attracting more attention from Marketing scholars.Engagement,which is one of the most abstract concepts,has been misused in many advertising studies.The overwhelming discussion on the causes and effects of Engagement and similar concepts leads to the ignorance for the concept itself.In addition,most researches focus on the interaction between consumers and brands,companies or media at a macro level,but very few in-depth researches have been done on advertisements at a micro level.Therefore,based on the print advertisements,where visual symbols can be taken as the analysis objects at a micro level,the present study explores the mechanism that engagement is triggered and then influences the effect of advertisements.This study is divided into two parts.The first part is symbol analysis.The author used Visual Grammar Framework developed by Kress and Leeuwen(2006)and Painter et al.(2013)to analyze WeChat information flow advertisements collected from WeChat platform.With the advantage of media interactivity,a qualitative research was conducted to examine how symbols affected engagement and advertising effect.The second part is experiments.The author used general print advertisements as experiment materials,established causal connection between symbols and engagement and advertising effects.This method was carried out to test how symbols,the hidden "hook" in advertisements,"hook" consumers,thus to form positive attitudes towards advertisements,brands and to increase purchase intention.The within-subjects experiment was conducted due to the difficulty of engagement manipulation,and the possible impact of individual differences on the results,as well as the emphasis on comparison.The results showed that:? There were significant differences in the manipulation of engagement between the two types of symbols,which were perspective and modality;?Compared with objective perspective,subjective perspective in advertising images performed better in triggering engagement and thus produced better advertising effects,the mediating effect of engagement was significant;?Compared with low modality,high modality in advertising imagesperformed better in triggering engagement and thus produced better advertising effects,the mediating effect of engagement was significant.Based on the results of symbol analysis and experiments,the following explanations are proposed though literature review:?In an advertising image with a subjective perspective,there is usually a "hidden person" who does not present or shows part of his body in the picture.By "attaching" to the "hidden person",the viewers share his perspective of viewing the goods or space in the advertisement.?Advertising pictures with high modality are more realistic in terms of color and details and are more natural than those with low modality.It is easier for viewers to be "immersive" in advertising pictures with high modality as if they were in the real world.This study was an attempt in manipulating Engagement at a micro level of symbols.The author tried to establish a causal connection between symbols and engagement and advertising effects by a quantitative research method.The study explored the mechanism of how symbols affect advertising effects by triggering engagement in print advertisements,which contributed to the development of advertisements design practice.The author tried to put Engagement in Chinese native context,which had enriched the studies of Chinese researchers in this field.