7. Conclusion
This research utilized the content analysis of B2B banks’ advertisements to establish what emotional appeals featured in such advertisements and semi-structured interviews to identify consumers’ perceptions of emotional appeals in bank advertisements. The results indicate that UK banks use emotional appeals to reach out to business consumers and that these appeals are acknowledged by the consumers. However, there was no evidence to support the effectiveness of aroused emotions on financial decision-making as such decisions are more likely to be based on rationally appealing information. There is, however, good evidence to support the effectiveness of emotional appeals in generating attention and interest in B2B bank advertisements which offers a starting point for more rationally based information search activities by consumers.
The study makes a theoretical contribution in enhancing the understanding of the role of emotions in B2B financial service advertisements by uncovering how meanings embedded within bank advertisements are understood by the target consumers. Whilst consumers recognise emotional advertising appeals, this study has found that decision-making about which banks to use, is based on more than emotions. This study supports the idea that “practitioners should consider the use of emotional appeals both for utilitarian and experiential services” (Mortimer, 2008, p. 110), as such appeals were found to be liked by business customers for banking services in this study. However, emotions played only a partial role in the decision-making, and after initial interest in an emotional advert, interviewees sought detailed information; hence, we suggest that the use of emotional appeals in advertisements for financial services needs to be coupled with providing detailed information either in an advertisement or in other promotional materials.
