EFFECTS OF FUNCTIONAL INFORMATION OF ADVERTISING OF FUNCTIONAL CLIMBING WEAR

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Three categories of basic consumer needs are functional, symbolic, or experiential (Shimp, 2010). Functional climbing wear is specially designed garment for outdoor activity and climbing movement using optimized textiles and garment making engineering process. Therefore, visible feature such as color and design could not provide sufficient information of products for proper communication between company and consumer. Product information of functional wear can be delivered to the consumers via Hang-Tag or advertising but the contents of Hang-Tag are too difficult for the consumers to understandfunctional performance of the product (Lee, Bang, & Yoo, 2014). As to advertisements of functional clothing, its contents and appeal types do not much differ from those of fashion apparel providing no functional information with celebrity models; percentage of no functional information ads were the highest (Liu & Yoo, 2014). This study stared to answer the question, ‘is functional information essential in the ads of functional clothing?’ and ‘is it successful?’ The aim of this study, therefore, was to examine the effects of functional information in the advertisements of functional climbing wear. The advertising effectiveness was measured by ‘communicability’, ‘reliability’,‘favorability’ of the advertisement and ‘awareness and reliability of product’, and ‘purchasing related influence’.

For the stimulus,10 different types of advertisements were prepared by combining of the following factors: functional information (whether or not to include), appeal type (rational/emotional), and model type (celebrity/non-celebrity/no-human). For the survey, 388 adults in their 20-50’s were participated.

The results showed that regardless ofappeal type or model type, functional information enhanced ‘communicability’, ‘reliability’, ‘favorability’ of the advertisement and ‘awareness and reliability of product’, and ‘purchasing related influence’. It implied the importance andnecessity of functional information in the functional climbing wear advertisement.When other variables were controlled, emotional appeal with human models,especially celebrity model, enhanced the advertising effects. Meanwhile, advertisement with rationalappeal and functional information resulted in better ‘favorability’ of ads even without celebritymodels.The finding from this study could be useful information for the functional clothing company to planstrategies for effective advertisement of their products.