"Buy now, pay later": appealing to consumers by product type : advertising message strategies in magazine advertisements for credit cards

The purpose of this study is to investigate the advertising message strategies of credit cards for informational and transformational appeals in a print medium. The credit card, a financial service, is regarded as think/high involvement product-based on the FCB Grid, so following informational appeals to arouse cognitive motives is recommended. This study tries to examine whether a credit card follows a match strategy or chooses a mismatch strategy against the FCB Grid. Furthermore, the difference between ads for brands themselves and ads for cobranding is detected in a category of credit cards. For conducting the analysis, all selected print advertisements (N=245) out of seven magazines are coded on informational and transformational content. The results show overall transformational appeals were used more than informational appeals in print card ads. Moreover, ads for bank/co-branded cards use more intangible informational appeals and fewer transformational appeals compared with ads for card brands themselves.