Abstract

The first purpose of this study is to compare the effectiveness of pride (ego-focused emotion) vs. empathy (other-focused emotion) appeals in blood donation advertising for each of audience groups segmented by their negative perception of blood donation. The second goal of the study is to suggest effective differentiated marketing strategies of pride and/or empathy appeals in blood donation advertising for each of the audience groups. To obtain the goals, an online experiment using pride and empathy appeals in blood donation advertising was conducted with 583 males and females aged 19-69 years. The experiment offered the following results. First, on the basis of the negative perception of blood donation (distrust of and fear for blood donation), audience was divided into low distrust/low fear group, high distrust/high fear group and low distrust/high fear group. Second, for low distrust/low fear group holding stronger collectivistic cultural orientation than individualistic cultural orientation, empathy appeal in blood donation advertisement enhanced their attitude toward blood donation and their intention to donate blood more strongly than pride appeal in blood donation advertisement. However, for high distrust/high fear group and low distrust/high fear group whose individualistic cultural orientation was similar to collectivistic cultural orientation, there were no difference in their attitude toward and intention for blood donation between pride and empathy appeals in blood donation advertisements. Lastly, after selecting low distrust/low fear group as target audience group on the basis of the effectiveness of pride vs. empathy appeals in blood donation advertisements, the differentiated marketing strategies of blood donation advertising that matched the characteristics of the group (high proportion of males, high frequency to use interactive communication media and e-commerce media) was developed.