Huang, R., Ha, S., & Kim, S.H. (2018). Narrative persuasion in social media: an empirical study of luxury brand advertising. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 12(3), 274–292. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIM-07-2017-0059
Social media posts from luxury brands can be perceived by viewers as narratives, and these posts cause narrative transportation, when a person is immersed in an object or context and feels like they are truly experiencing it. Narrative transportation is good for marketing because it fosters learning and recall and reduces counterargument. This ultimately creates positive brand attitudes and willingness to take an action. To help facilitate narrative transportation, posts should include characters with which the audience can identify and have a plot that is plausible and easy to imagine. The message-giver should have both comprehension fluency, the ability to make easily understandable messages, and imagery fluency, the ease with which consumers can develop mental images from messages.
While this study focused on luxury brands, narrative transportation can be pursued through any brand’s social media content. The content characteristics that facilitate narrative transportation require tailoring posts to the viewer, underscoring the importance of understanding your social media audience. This research gives me the tools to create content for my social media audiences that results in narrative transportation.
Learning Outcome 6: Create and deliver elegant messages appropriate to audience, purpose, and context.
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