Abstract:
Introduction: Even though there is a risk from using humor as an
advertising campaign strategy in industries which rely on trust and their
technological prowess, like the telecommunications sector, the fact that
there are a great number of humorous advertisements arranged by
telecommunications companies in Indonesia needs to be researched.
Background Problems: This research aims to narrow the phenomenon
by investigating the effect of humorous advertisements with the need for
humor as a moderating role on consumers’ attitudes, consumers’ intent to
purchase, and their word of mouth intention. Novelty: By adding the
need for humor in a moderating role, and the word of mouth intention as
an endogenous variable, this research aims to extend the existing models
of humorous advertising’s effectiveness. Research Methods: The
research was designed to focus on consumers who can be classified as
young adults (18 to 34 years old) and are not users of the mobile SIM
card brands that the ad they perceived as funny ones. The researcher
conducted a survey with a five point Likert scale, an online questionnaire,
and purposive sampling as the primary data collection methods.
Finding/Results: The result shows that although a humorous advertise ment has a significant impact on the attitude toward the advertisement
and the word of mouth intention, the humorous advertisement has no
significant impact on the attitude toward the brand and the consumers’
intent to purchase. The need for humor failed to moderate the relationship
between the humorous advertisement and the attitude toward the
advertisement in this study. Conclusion: The researcher concludes that
the impact of a humorous advertisement was limited to only entertaining
the consumers, and to encourage their word of mouth intention, not their
purchase intention.
