Breaking Harmful Social Norms: the Effects of Norm-Breaking Advertisements on Brand Image

摘要

Abstract: Current paper proposes a novel marketing approach that originates from the intersection of social and commercialmarketing, suggesting that social and commercial goals have the potential to be combined in advertisement by transgressingharmful social norms. The research was undertaken in order to tests the effects of advertisements breaking harmful social normscompared to advertisements following and reinforcing existing harmful social norms with regard to the beholder’s perception ofthe brand image. Two experiments were conducted by using the Dual mediation model as their basis, so as to examine potentialeffects of advertisements breaking harmful social norms concerning gender-roles and the traditional family-picture. The resultssuggest that affective reactions elicited and purchase intents are more positive when an advertisement includes norm-breakingelements. When integrating liberal values into the experiments, results indicate that people with higher levels of liberal values aremore favourable towards advertisements breaking social harmful norms than people with lower levels of liberal values. The studyhas theoretical, practical, and social contributions by suggesting that commercial companies can reach commercial success byincluding elements breaking harmful social norms in their advertisement, in particular if the target group consists of liberalpeople.