Question 15.33

15.33 The effect of humor.

In advertising, humor is often used to overcome sales resistance and stimulate customer purchase behavior. One experiment looked at the use of humor as an approach to offset the negative feelings often associated with website encounters.13 The setting of their experiment was an online travel agency, and they used a three-factor design, each factor with two levels. They were humor (used, not used), process (favorable, unfavorable), and outcome (favorable, unfavorable). For the humor condition, cartoons and jokes about skiing were used on the site. For the no-humor condition, standard pictures of ski sites were used. Two hundred and forty-one business students from a large Dutch university participated in the experiment. Each was randomly assigned to one of the eight treatment conditions. The students were asked to book a skiing holiday and then rate their perceived enjoyment and satisfaction with the process. All responses were measured on a 7-point scale. The following is a summary of the results for satisfaction.

Treatment
No humor-favorable process-unfavorable outcome 27 3.04 0.79
No humor-favorable process-favorable outcome 29 5.36 0.47
No humor-unfavorable process-unfavorable outcome 26 2.84 0.59
No humor-unfavorable process-favorable outcome 31 3.08 0.59
Humor-favorable process-unfavorable outcome 32 5.06 0.59
Humor-favorable process-favorable outcome 30 5.55 0.65
Humor-unfavorable process-unfavorable outcome 36 1.95 0.52
Humor-unfavorable process-favorable outcome 30 3.27 0.71
  1. Plot the means of the four treatments that did not use humor. Do you think there is an interaction? If yes, describe the interaction in terms of the process and outcome factors.
  2. Plot the means of the four treatments that used humor. Do you think there is an interaction? If yes, describe the interaction in terms of the process and outcome factors.
  3. The three-factor interaction can be assessed by looking at the two interaction plots created in parts (a) and (b). If the relationship between process and outcome is different across the two humor conditions, there is evidence of an interaction among all three factors. Do you think there is a three-factor interaction? Explain your answer.

15.33

(a) There appears to be an interaction effect. For the unfavorable outcome, there is no difference in satisfaction between the favorable and unfavorable process; both scored equally low. For the favorable outcome, those with a favorable process scored substantially higher than those with an unfavorable process. (b) There doesn’t appear to be an interaction effect. Overall, the favorable outcome means were only slightly higher than the unfavorable outcomes means. But both favorable process means were generally quite high, much higher than both unfavorable process means, regardless of whether or not the outcome was favorable or not. (c) Yes, there appears to be a three-factor interaction effect. Particularly for those with an unfavorable outcome and a favorable process, the humor group scored much higher than those with no humor. Also, for those with unfavorable outcome and unfavorable process, the humor group scored worse than those with no humor.