HOW THE MICROFILM MARKETING STRATEGY STIMULATES CONSUMERS' PURCHASE INTENTION

We integrated the determinant persuasive messages of microfilms with the elaboration likelihood model to examine consumers' affective and cognitive attitude change and purchase intention. Participants were 316 Taiwanese consumers who had seen "House of Little Moments," a successful microfilm marketing campaign in Taiwan. The empirical results of confirmatory factory analysis with structural equation modeling revealed that argument quality predicted cognitive responses and story plot predicted affective responses; celebrity effect and microfilm popularity had positive effects on both affective and cognitive responses; and purchase intention was affected by both cognitive and affective responses, with affective responses having the stronger effect. These results imply that the extent of consumers' emotional reaction to persuasive messages has a particularly important influence on purchase intention in story-based advertising. Therefore, understanding the effect of persuasive messages in microfilm marketing is essential for both advertisers and marketers.