Personal Biography as Brand Story of Charity Organization: Narrative Persuasion and Moral Emotion

Abstract

Many charity organizations were founded by or in memory of great personalities. In story marketing research, however, the larger than life stories of founders used as the brand stories of charity organizations were seldom addressed. This study filled this research gap. Based on narrative transportation and moral emotion research traditions, this study investigates the narrative persuasive effect of personal biography as brand story on the mediating role of compassion, the negatively valenced and other-directed moral emotion, and subsequent altruistic intentions of viewers. The results showed that narrative transportation was positively related to compassion, compassion was positively related to charitable message attitude, and both were positively related to donation and message forwarding intentions. Need for affect is a trait that was correlated with both transportation and compassion.