Advertisement is a kind of communicative marketing tool to influence consumers’ cognition, attitude, and behavior towards the product or brand being advertised (Ducoffe, 1996). In recent years, to make the ads more appealing, attractive and distinctive, more and more companies use animation in the advertisements (Kim, 2016). Animation is the process of making the motion image by changing the sequence of static images rapidly, the outcome of this process is a motion picture (D’souza & Taghian, (2005). These animated advertisements give consumers a natural feeling about the brand. The advancement of the new media has also facilitated the development of the animation application (Ying et al., 2018).
Previous research suggested that animated contents can enhance consumers’ awareness about the product or brand advertised (Zhou et al., 2016). Animation is an important tool for advertisers (Kim, 2016), because it draws consumers’ attention to specific product features and generates consumers’ actions, behaviors and feelings, (Zhou et al., 2016). Owing to the growing role of animation, some research has conducted on animation in advertising effects. For example, Applequist & McAllister (2019) explored how Direct-to-Consumer advertising uses animation to construct medical conditions, branded products and potential effects. Cook & Thompson (2019) propose that animation has been fundamentally shaped by its use for advertising. They revise famous names of animation history in light of advertising work, including Pixar, Anime, Disney, and so on. Goel and Upadhyay (2017) used literature review to understand the basic concepts related to animation and its use in advertising.
In addition, improving environmental protection has become an important issue (Klöckner, 2013). Due to the increasing number of eco-friendly customers, companies are forced to pay attention to environmental protection activities (Deng and Yang, 2021), and many start to focus on eco-friendly products and advertising to fulfill the needs of consumers (Chen, 2008). In this context, green advertising has rapidly expanded (Kim et al., 2019). Green advertising has positive results for business because it can deliver eco-friendly information to consumers (Kao & Du, 2020), hence shaping consumers’ orientation toward sustainable consumption (Yoon et al., 2016). With the growing role of green advertising, some research are conducted. For example, Agarwal & Kumar (2020) proposed a comprehensive overview of the current status of research in green advertising. The study is the only review on the topic of green advertising. Shen et al. (2020) confirmed the important roles of advertising creativity and appeal type on green advertisements.
From related studies, we can observe there are numerous studies exploring animation advertising effects and green advertising. However, although the necessity and importance of green animation advertising continue to increase, research on the green animation advertising has been relatively insufficient. If we can understand the role of green animation advertising influencing customers’ attitude and behavior, it will be beneficial for companies to conduct suitable marketing strategy.
To fill this gap, this research used the theory of stimulus-organism-response to test the role of green animation advertising influencing green brand love and green customer citizenship behavior. This theory suggests that external stimulus are cues that influence a person’s internal evaluation and then produces a response (Deng and Yang, 2021). Therefore, we explored the effect of green animation advertising on green brand love and green customer citizenship behavior. In this study the participants are those who having the experience of seeing the Apple’s animation advertisement “Earth Day” in China. Apple is a typical case because Apple cares for environmental protection and launches a series of green animation advertisements in recent years. This study advances our knowledge via the following contributions. First, the research extends the understanding about the effect of animation advertising in green context. Second, the study examines the possible relationships between green animation advertising, green brand love and green customer citizenship behavior in China’s setting, the result can give us a deeper understanding the role of green animation advertising influencing consumers’ attitudes and behaviors.
Literature review and hypothesis
Green advertising refers to advertisement stressing eco-friendly and environmentally responsible behavior (Patel & Chugan, 2015). The effect of green advertising can generate consumers’ attitudes and behaviors in related activities (Ongkrutraksa, 2003). Woohyuk and Seunghee (2021) proposed that the attributes of green advertising comprise the three notions, reliability, attractiveness and informativity. Specifically, reliability refers to the attribute in advertising that consumers can trust it (Kim & Yoon, 2014), and the credibility of advertising can strongly influence customers’ reaction to advertisements and the advertised brands (Woohyuk & Seunghee, 2021). Attractiveness means the design attractiveness and creativity of the advertising can draw consumers’ attention and strengthen their attitude and response to eco-friendly advertisements (Rahim et al., 2012). Informativity means that customers can access relevant information from a detailed description of the advertising product (Lee, 2009). The power of advertising rests in providing information to maximize consumers’ satisfaction with purchasing products (Woohyuk & Seunghee, 2021). Extending the concept of green advertising in animation context, green animation advertising refers to the animation advertising stressing eco-friendly and natural issues. Therefore, in this study the concept of green animation advertising can be addressed from reliability, attractiveness and informativity. In this study, reliability means that consumers can trust the attribute in animation advertising. Attractiveness refers to the design attractiveness of the animation advertising to draw consumers’ attention. Informativity means that customers can gather related information from a detailed description of the animation advertising.
Brand love is a type of relationship that consumers establish with brands, encompassing “multiple interrelated cognitive, affective, and behavioral elements, rather than a specific, single, transient love emotion” (Batra et al., 2012, p. 6). When customers generate brand love toward the brand, they view the loving brand as part of their identity (Ahuvia et al., 2009). Green brand love means that customers can create emotional connections with a particular brand stressing green activities (Hameed et al., 2021).
Customer citizenship behavior refers to customers’ self-willingness to engage in behavior beneficial for a company (Yi et al., 2013). Green customer citizenship behavior means customers’ voluntary involvement in green activities associated with a company’s brand (Deng and Yang, 2021). That is, those who have high level of green voluntary behaviors have the willingness to actively participate in the environmental activities of the company (van Tonder et al., 2020).
Due to the imperfect and asymmetrical information, consumers usually rely on signals from the company’s activities to make inferences about the quality of a specific seller (Wernerfelt, 1988). Animation advertising can be a cue for consumers to create confidence about the brand, hence generating brand love (Cristela et al., 2018). Applying this nature in a green setting, when a brand can deliver the green concern via animation advertising, it may contribute to brand love for the environmentally-friendly brand. Based on the above statement, this study proposes the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Green animation advertising is positively connected to green brand love.
From a customer’s point of view, loving a brand is a wonderful experience and this makes a customer keep good relationship with the brand (Ahuvia et al., 2009). Brand love enables a customer to exhibit a positive behavior to maintain the loving relationship (Batra et al., 2012). Extending the nature of the concept in green context, this study suggests that green brand love is a positive brand involvement in green activities, and this helps a customer to generate the altruistic behavior which assist the environmental activities of companies. Those customers who love a particular brand tend to perform positive behaviors to maintain a loving relationship (Papista and Dimitriadis, 2019). Hence, we propose the hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2: Green brand love is positively connected to green customer citizenship behavior.
The noted theory of Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) suggests that environment is a stimulus that will cause an individual’s internal evaluation and then produces a response (Deng and Yang, 2021). This theory proposes that an individual’s emotion becomes a crucial role in responding to the exposing environmental stimulus (Deng and Yang, 2021). Based on this famous theory, this research suggests that green animation advertising is an external stimulus, which may cause an internal evaluation (green brand love) and then create a response (green customer citizenship behavior). Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed:
Hypothesis 3: Green brand love has a mediating role in the relationship between green animation advertising and green customer citizenship behavior.
Hypothesis 3a: Reliability has a mediating role in the relationship between green animation advertising and green customer citizenship behavior.
Hypothesis 3b: Attractiveness has a mediating role in the relationship between green animation advertising and green customer citizenship behavior.
Hypothesis 3c: Informativity has a mediating role in the relationship between green animation advertising and green customer citizenship behavior.