Financially constrained consumer responses toward attribute- and goal-framed advertisements

The global outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic has placed considerable financial constraints on people’s lives, which may have changed their attitude toward advertising. This study explored the differential persuasiveness of attribute- versus goal-framed advertising on consumers with various financial constraints. The results of two studies (ns = 93 and 79, respectively) showed that consumers with higher (vs. lower) financial constraints were more responsive to attribute-framed (vs. goal-framed) advertisements for a fictional airline, and that this relationship was mediated by processing fluency. This research contributes to the literature on message framing and offers guidance for marketers looking to improve their targeting through developing more tailored advertisements.