The pathway from advertising appeals to behavioral intention: rainbow LGBTQ + ads and self-expressive

Abstract

The explosion of information technology has created new marketing trends and advertising appeals from brands. These brands have also become diverse often defending the equality of the LGBTQ + group as a societal issue which garners attention in the modern era. Many firms frequently depict members of the LGBTQ + community in their advertising to demonstrate their position on this issue. We create a model in the context of the fashion industry, drawing on the Stimulus Organism Response Theory (SOR), to investigate how the rainbow element affected the correlation between advertising appeals, (inner and social) self-expression, and behavioral intention when comparing Vietnamese and U.S. Data from the experimental survey were collected from 472 respondents, including Vietnamese and U.S. The finding indicates that rainbow LGBTQ + ads only moderate the relationship between advertising appeals and self-expressive in the U.S. case, while the Vietnamese case does not. Self-expressive partially mediates the link between advertising appeals and behavioral intention. By comprehending the behavioral traits of both domestic and U.S. consumers, this study seeks to broaden existing research models and provide suitable recommendations to improve the commercial operations of firms.