“I don’t care” : Describing digital natives emotional response towards provocative advertising

Abstract: Consumers are actively avoiding advertising, which has made the advertising landscape more challenging, resulting in the implementation of other strategies. Provocative advertising is a strategy implemented to make a strong impression on the consumers. However, the discussion of consumers becoming more and more resistant towards advertising lifts the question of provocative advertisement as an effective strategy. Digital natives is the part of the population who are the most exposed to information on online platforms, therefore the question of lessening of response to provocative advertisement from the digital natives is investigated. As emotional response previously has been used to understand the effect advertising elicits from consumers, the purpose of this research is to describe the emotional responses digital natives have towards provocative advertising. The empirical material gathered has been among digital natives in Växjö, Sweden, studying their emotional response towards the seven types of provocative advertising provided within the theoretical framework. The focus group consisted of four different gatherings, with six participants in each in order to create an understanding of how digital natives perceive provocative advertising and resulted in an understanding of the effectiveness of it. The results indicate that provocative advertising does evoke emotions. Specifically, the advertisements that include a cause or message evoked more emotions from the digital natives, and therefore is an effective strategy to implement from a practical perspective. The result also allowed for an understanding that digital natives expressed more resistance towards expressing their emotions rather than showing specific resistance towards the provocative advertising itself, which is recommended by this study for further research