How are we tempted into debt? Emotional appeals in loan advertisements in UK newspapers

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of emotional appeals in advertisements for loans and explored consumers’ perceptions of advertisements featuring such appeals in order to explore how emotional meanings are transferred to consumers via advertising.

Study 1 employed content analysis to examine the use of emotional appeals in loan advertisements. Over 2,900 editions of eight British newspapers were monitored for advertisements for loans containing emotional appeals. Study 2 employed 33 semi-structured interviews to explore consumers’ perceptions of emotional appeals in loan advertisements.

Loans were positioned as services providing relief, security and excitement. The use of negative emotional appeals such as guilt, fear and sorrow was sporadic. Loans that carried the most risk were advertised with positive emotional appeals the most frequently. Five dimensions of perceptions of emotional loan advertisements were conceptualised from the reported data in Study 2.

This is the first study in the UK to examine the use of emotional appeals in loan advertising and to explore consumers’ perceptions of loan advertisements featuring emotional appeals. The study identified five dimensions of perceptions of emotional appeals.