Product, personality or prose? Testing functional matching effects in advertising persuasion

Despite calls for research on the use of utilitarian versus identity appeals more than a decade ago, few advertising studies have examined which appeal may be more persuasive for whom. Guided by the functional matching effects thesis, our two experiments test the separate and interactive roles of product function (social identity-SI, utilitarian-UT), personality (self-monitoring), and advertising copy (socially adjustive-SA, utilitarian-UT) on advertising persuasion. In a within-subject design, Study 1 demonstrated significant product-based, but not personality-based, functional matching effects. Participants preferred the UT advertising copy for the UT product (condom) and the SA copy for the SI product (beer). In a between-subjects design, Study 2 revealed a complex interplay among personality, product, and advertising appeals. Limited yet significant interaction effects indicate that high/low self-monitors formed more favor able attitudes toward the ad and purchase intent when the ad for beer employed the SA/UT copy. Together, our findings suggest that the theoretical premise of the functional matching effects may be promising for advertising persuasion. They also highlight the importance of considering both product and audience characteristics together when selecting advertising appeals.