Onderzoeksartikel

Het effect van emotionele informatie in toeristische promotie: een evaluatie van foldertypes over de Nederlandse kust

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Abstract

Touristic organizations usually communicate with their target groups in an emotional manner (e.g. by using sensoric information in brochures, magazines and advertisements). In this context the present article provides three basic propositions and discusses relevant theoretical issues in consumer psychology, such as: cognition, mental imagery, emotion, affect, and the functions of emotion in advertising. In general market research can help to maximize brochure effectiveness in three areas: looking at the impact of the cover, looking at the relevance and clarity of the information provided in the brochure, and looking at the persuasiveness of the brochure as a whole. The central research question is, whether emotional scripts and picture size have a positive effect on the evaluation of brochures. In an experimental set-up subjects evaluated several aspects of four manipulated brochure types. These brochures describe vacation situations and are identical in outline, except for the type of verbal information (emotional scripts vs. non-emotional scripts) and picture size (large vs. small): The major results indicate that emotional scripts and large pictures did not affect the attractiveness of the cover and the overall information provided in the brochure. Besides, emotional scripts did not affect the degree to which the subjects could project themselves into the ’experience’ of the vacation situations. There is reason to assume that a stated level of low involvement with the experimental touristic information explains the unexpected results. On the other hand, it is possible that mere verbal-emotional information is not effective in making brochures more attractive. Regarding this some suggestions are provided to improve future research on this topic. Probably, vacation pictures with people who express their positive emotional feelings visually will have a positive effect on the attractiveness of brochures.

How to Cite:

Goossens, C., (1992) “Het effect van emotionele informatie in toeristische promotie: een evaluatie van foldertypes over de Nederlandse kust”, Massacommunicatie : Wetenschappelijk Kwartaaltijdschrift voor Communicatie en Informatie 20(3), 183–211.