Research on the Influence Path of Humorous Advertisement Types on Customer Engagement

Customer Engagement has become an increasingly popular topic in recent years. Higher customer engagement implies stronger brand power and is a key factor for businesses to capture market share. In the current trend of short video marketing, more and more brands are incorporating humor into their advertising campaigns. Therefore, it is important to explore the mechanisms of customer engagement formation under humorous scenarios to validate marketing practices. This study discusses the formation mechanism of customer engagement in humorous advertising contexts through three experiments. The research found that humorous advertisements promote the formation of customer engagement by reducing the psychological distance between the brand and the customer. Additionally, brand strength and perceived value play moderating roles in the paths from humorous advertising to psychological distance and from psychological distance to customer engagement, respectively. This study enriches the understanding of the formation mechanism of customer engagement in the context of content and these findings will help advertising practitioners better understand and utilize humor advertisements to improve customer engagement.