Inspirational advertising: emotional value and marketing benefits Open Access

Emotional advertising appeals generally outperform purely rational advertising appeals in shaping consumer attitudes and word-of-mouth behaviors (Hornik et al., 2017; Tellis et al., 2019). Indeed, iconic campaigns have forged powerful links between a brand and a specific positive emotion: McDonald’s with joy (“I’m lovin’ it!”), Nike with inspiration (“Just do it!”) and Red Bull with excitement (“Gives you wings”), to name just a few. For brand managers, the critical question is not if emotion should be used, but which emotions are more effective. Yet, despite this choice being central to campaign success and potential brand differentiation, the marketing literature offers surprisingly little guidance on the comparative effectiveness of different positive emotions beyond general advice on brand and audience fit (O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy, 2002). This research addresses that critical gap.

Emotions are “mental state of readiness that arise from cognitive appraisals of events or thoughts” (Bagozzi et al., 1999, p. 184) and recently, the emotion of “inspiration” has emerged as a topic of significant interest in consumer research (Böttger et al., 2017; Grewal et al., 2023; Zhou et al., 2024). As inspiration is “the process of being mentally stimulated to do or create something, often resulting in exciting new ideas” (Oxford University Press, 2023), it is uniquely compelling for marketers. Unlike fleeting feelings like excitement, inspiration is intrinsically linked to the awareness of new possibilities and the motivation to act upon them – a process that aligns perfectly with marketing goals, from product adoption to personal growth for consumers. Moreover, its importance is supported by a recent multicountry study which found eight out of ten people agree inspiration is important if not vital to their lives (Wunderman Thompson, 2020).

The unique nature of inspiration prompts a line of thinking about its value for consumers compared to other positive emotions. Despite the centrality of value in marketing, literature reviews reveal a significant gap with no prior studies assessing the value of positive emotions from a consumer’s perspective (Gaur et al., 2014; Laros and Steenkamp, 2005; Sharma et al., 2023). Understanding how consumers appraise the value of positive emotions is crucial for marketers deciding where to focus their communication efforts. This leads to our first research question:

Contributing to the emotions in marketing literature (see reviews by Gaur et al., 2014; Laros and Steenkamp, 2005; Sharma et al., 2023) and extending the work of Conte et al. (2023) on linking values to emotions, we develop Emotional Appraisal Theory (see So et al., 2015) by introducing a new emotion appraisal framework based on dimensions of the value of positive emotions derived from integrating Broaden and Build Theory (Fredrickson, 2013) and theories of consumer value (Sheth et al., 1991; Sweeney and Soutar, 2001; Schwartz et al., 2012) which includes for the first time a dollar value.

Next, despite a recent surge in research on inspiration (e.g. Oltra et al., 2022; Grewal et al., 2023; Frasquet et al., 2024; Fayyaz et al., 2025), there remain significant research gaps in understanding the value of inspiration. For example, previous work in marketing has found inspiration to have positive effects on brand and ad attitudes (Chang, 2020; Zhou et al., 2024), customer loyalty (Frasquet et al., 2024), purchase intention (Izogo and Mpinganjira, 2020; Song et al., 2024), customer satisfaction and self-brand connection (Hernani-Merino et al., 2023) as well as customer engagement behaviors (Böttger et al., 2017; Chang, 2023; Paharia et al., 2011). However, this leaves other KPIs unexplored such as sharing (see Tellis et al., 2019 as an exception) and recommendation which are particularly important to increase exposure and impact (Colicev et al., 2018) while reducing costs in charity and digital marketing campaigns. Similar gaps remain for willingness to pay more and donations which have implications for premium pricing and fundraising strategies and could be related to emotional value. Examining these new variables contributes to the literature on the effects of inspiration (e.g. Chang, 2020; Frasquet et al., 2024; Grewal et al., 2023) as well as previous charity work which considered only donation intention (Zhao and Shneor, 2020) or donations in a laboratory (Liang et al., 2016). This leads to our second research question:

Finally, while some studies have used inspiration as a mediator to explain positive marketing effects (e.g. Andonopoulos et al., 2023; Chen et al., 2024), very few have compared the explanatory power of inspiration to other positive emotions (see Tellis et al., 2019 for an exception). This is a critical omission because positive emotions tend to be highly correlated (Laros and Steenkamp, 2005) and inspiration is particularly associated with other positive emotions (Thrash et al., 2010a). Yet, disentangling its specific influence is essential to justify its use as a strategic focus. This leads us to our third research question:

We build our case for the strategic use of inspiration across three complementary studies and begin by establishing that consumers perceive inspiration as a more valuable when compared to other positive emotions (Study 1). Building on this, we then test its influence in a controlled online experiment (Study 2), which shows that inspiration is a more powerful emotional driver of ad sharing, brand recommendation and willingness to pay more than other positive emotions. To confirm these effects in a real-world setting, our final study uses a field experiment (Study 3) that finds an inspirational ad campaign (vs an informational ad campaign) not only increases donations but also delivers a substantially greater return on investment (ROI). Collectively, this research provides a robust understanding of inspiration’s value, from consumer perception to marketplace performance.

Some argue that human emotions are one of the most reliable and valuable predictors of human behavior (Carlson et al., 2007). For example, when evoked by self-relevant brands, emotions create brand attachment (Park et al., 2010, 2013), a psychological and affective commitment which is expressed through positive brand advocacy, as well as brand community involvement and repeat purchases (e.g. Muñiz and Schau, 2005; Sung et al., 2010). Emotions can also act as information to evaluate a product and lead to a preference for congruent information. For example, Kim et al. (2010) found that when consumers felt excited (vs peaceful), they preferred adventurous (vs serene) travel product appeals. But positive emotions do not always have positive effects. For example, reviews that express greater positive emotion for hedonic products have a positive impact when read by others, but this emotion backfires for utilitarian products, leading others to be less positive (Rocklage and Fazio, 2020).

Despite several reviews of the role and importance of emotions in marketing, (e.g. Gaur et al., 2014; Sharma et al., 2023; Yousef et al., 2023), no study has considered the value of emotions to consumers. Indeed, the value of emotions to consumers is a relatively new area. At an ontological level, some argue that emotions even explain the existence of value: “something is of value because it is able to elicit an emotion” (Conte et al., 2023, p. 3) because emotional experiences remind us of the things we care about. Prior work has established that emotional value exists in consumers’ minds (Sheth et al., 1991; Sweeney and Soutar, 2001) and recent work on the value of networking events identified inspiration as a key value participants derive (Mitchell et al., 2023). Conte et al. (2023) claim their work is the first to try to link values and emotions and they find that values can predict the intensity of an emotional experience in response to value-related stimuli. But they did not measure the value of emotions nor how valuable each emotion is compared with others. In deepening our knowledge of emotions in marketing, we ask a very basic question, namely, which positive emotions are most or least valuable to consumers?

In answering this question, we draw on Emotion Appraisal Theory (see So et al., 2015 for a review) which not only suggests that how we evaluate or appraise a situation affects the emotions we feel, but also seeks to identify key associations that define emotions and guide one’s thinking under the influence of that emotion. For example, when reporting emotional experiences people can explicitly describe feelings of valence (pleasure or displeasure) and activation (feeling sleepy or excited) (Russell et al., 1989). Smith and Ellsworth (1985) showed how distinct emotions could vary and be evaluated on six core appraisal dimensions: certainty, pleasantness, attentional activity, control, anticipated effort and responsibility. For a recent review of the use of Emotion Appraisal Theory in advertising narratives, see Hamby and Jones (2022). While other models of emotional appraisal have been proposed, such as action readiness (Frijda et al., 1989), the dimensions of pleasure, arousal and dominance (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974) (and especially pleasure and arousal) are the most widely used in consumer psychology (see So et al., 2015 for a review).

Contributing to the emotion appraisal literature (So et al., 2015), we now discuss a completely new appraisal framework, namely, notions of value and draw upon Broaden and Build Theory (Fredrickson, 2013) and theories of consumer value (Sheth et al., 1991; Sweeney and Soutar, 2001; Schwartz et al., 2012). (see Figure 1 for our conceptual model).

In developing a new value appraisal framework for emotions, we use inspiration as an example which also leads us to propose why inspiration might be more valuable than other positive emotions. Inspiration is “the process of being mentally stimulated to do or create something, often resulting in exciting new ideas” (Oxford University Press, 2023) and has been theorized as a process involving three components: evocation, transcendence and approach motivation (Thrash and Elliot, 2003, 2004). Using this conceptualization, we explore theoretically both the different appraisal dimensions of the value of positive emotions and why inspiration may be of greater value than other positive emotions to consumers and marketers.

First, inspiration involves a new awareness of better possibilities that transcend one’s prior assumptions which can take the form of feelings of being “opened up” (Hart, 1998; Oleynick et al., 2014; Thrash and Elliot, 2003). This transcendent quality fits well with Broaden and Build Theory (Fredrickson, 2013) of the role of positive emotions which is to broaden and expand our thinking to become more open-minded, creative and receptive to new ideas and experiences which help people think outside their usual patterns (Fredrickson, 2013). The transcendent and self-improvement quality of inspiration is also consistent with building enduring personal resources such as better health, greater social connections, improved knowledge and skills and enhanced resilience. These characteristics are highly resonant with marketing messages which often focus on how consumers’ lives can be improved by using a product or service. So how much a positive emotion expands our thinking and helps build our personal resources are two potential appraisal dimensions and sources of value.

Following Conte et al.’s (2023) logic that emotional experiences remind us of the things we care about, we argue that inspiration is a valuable emotion because its transcendent and self-improvement qualities are related to existing frameworks of values. For example, inspiration links three of the four main value axes of the Schwartz et al. (2012) framework, namely: self-transcendence (i.e. valuing something or someone other than the self), self-enhancement (i.e. valuing personal well-being) and openness to change (i.e. valuing personal intellectual and emotional interests in uncertain directions) (Schwartz et al., 2012). The same link to these values cannot be said for other positive Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) emotions such as alert, determined, excited or attentive, therefore inspiration may be more valued by consumers.

Second, since inspiration involves approach motivation to actualize, transmit and express the new possibilities (Oleynick et al., 2014), inspired individuals often report feelings of activation and energy (Hart, 1998; Thrash and Elliot, 2003). Thus, ability to motivate may be another value appraisal dimension. In addition, for inspiration, we argue this approach motivation means inspiration is a higher-order emotion requiring some degree of cognitive processing as it occurs (Shiv and Fedorikhin, 1999). Like other PANAS positive emotions, such as proud and excited, they require some thought around what a person is inspired, proud or excited about. This is different from lower-order emotions which involve spontaneous and largely uncontrollable emotional reactions, such as strong, alert and active. On a motivational appraisal dimension then, inspiration might be more valued because of its action-orientated, activation nature and its higher-order processing compared to other positive emotions.

Third, positive emotions are almost by definition pleasurable to experience and therefore may create hedonic value (Babin et al., 1994) which could be another value appraisal dimension. Clearly some emotions like alert or determined may have less hedonic value than inspired or excited, so their hedonic appraisal will vary. In addition, some emotions like pride and inspiration clearly have social value (Sweeney and Soutar, 2001) and people feel a need to share them. Previous work found online emotional advertising was shared more than information-focused content which was likely due to individuals seeking to make others feel good from positive emotion-based ads (Tellis et al., 2019). This suggests sharing value could be another appraisal dimension. For inspiration, being more motivated to transcend and improve is not only good for the individual, but also good for their family and friends who might benefit from the individual being inspired to take action or be inspired themselves. This means inspiration as a positive, personal growth-related emotion, might be more likely to be shared more than other positive emotions. Fourth, emotions vary in their frequency of occurrence in human experience with love and joy having high frequency and inspiration and awe having low frequency (Fredrickson, 2013). Thus, a scarcity appraisal might also influence value and be another appraisal dimension suggesting that emotions like inspiration which are rarer and scarcer could potentially be more valuable.

Finally, when we consider the various emotion value appraisal dimensions together, namely, expansive thinking, improved personal resources, motivation, hedonic feelings and scarcity, we might conceive of some overall value by which consumers might appraise emotions. Furthermore, because of being more valuable overall, we might also expect that consumer may be willing to pay more to experience high-value emotions. Thus, it becomes possible to propose a notional “dollar value” or financial worth of various emotional experiences which forms another appraisal dimension. Having discussed the various new emotional value appraisal dimensions, we argue that the special nature of inspiration as a positive, personal-growth emotion means that inspiration is likely to have more value than other positive emotions such as alert, active or strong which leads us to hypothesize:

Emotions are a “mental state of readiness that arise from cognitive appraisals of events or thoughts” (Bagozzi et al., 1999, p. 184). They differ from moods which are longer lasting, lower intensity and less intentional with more global and combined causes (Bagozzi et al., 1999; Frijda, 1994). In considering their role in advertising, recent meta-analytic studies show that consumers respond more favorably to emotional appeals than they do to rational appeals (Hornik et al., 2016, 2017). Emotional appeals feature positive or negative emotions such as enthusiasm or fear, while rational appeals are a straightforward presentation of information characterised by objectivity (Stafford and Day, 1995). For example, emotional advertising appeals lead to a higher purchase intention in experience services like travel (Zhang et al., 2014) and advertising messages with positive emotions yield higher liking of the message (Hornik et al., 2017).

In addition, emotional online advertising is shared more than information-focused content in general, except in risk communication contexts (Tellis et al., 2019). This may be not only because senders want receivers to be more positively inclined toward them by making them feel good from receiving positive emotion-based ads, but also that factual, information-focused content can be seen as dry and uninteresting, which may leave consumers neutral at best and not wanting to inflict such content on their friends and family. Sharing dry informational ads may risk reputational harm and reduce chances of self-enhancement and reciprocity from other consumers (Tellis et al., 2019). To these arguments, we add the idea that positive emotion-based advertising elicits a low elaboration level which involves a peripheral persuasion route (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986) and more intuitive heuristic-based mechanisms or “System 1” thinking (Kahneman, 2011). This is more likely to result in more impulsive sharing and recommendation behavior since consumers like to share and respond to positive emotional experiences. However, in informational and rational-based advertising a central persuasion route, which equates to “System 2” or analytical thinking, is likely to be more prevalent. The extra cognitive load on consumers, and any potential recipients they share it with, means informational advertising is less likely to be shared or recommended to family and friends.

Consistent with this view, inspiration increases impulsive buying on social media (Yang et al., 2024) and purchase behavior (Chen et al., 2024) such as downloading a new game advertised by a pop-up ad (Tan and Adnas, 2023). Indeed, the positive consequences of consumers being inspired have been relatively well documented for companies. For example, inspiration positively impacts many marketing-related KPIs; customer self-expression, feedback intention, seeking assistance and purchase intention (Izogo and Mpinganjira, 2020); loyalty and satisfaction leading to exploration behavior and greater purchase intention (Böttger et al., 2017); as well as customer loyalty (Frasquet et al., 2024). However, several important effects of inspiration remain un- or understudied, such as ad sharing, brand recommendation and willingness to pay or donate. These are important in a digital marketing world where they can gain greater earned media which not only increases exposure but also helps reduce costs and increase the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns. In addition, willingness to pay or donate more is related specifically to our contention above that inspiration is one of the most valuable emotions and therefore could theoretically influence important monetary KPIs.

With regards to sharing and recommendation, although early work in viral marketing showed email messages that sparked strong emotion (humour, fear, sadness or inspiration) are likely to be shared more (Phelps et al., 2004), and ads that have more positive emotions are more likely to be shared than negative ads (Berger and Milkman, 2012), few studies have looked at which specific emotions most facilitate sharing. One exception found YouTube Ads that evoked amusement were most likely to be shared, followed by similar sharing likelihood for warmth, excitement and inspiration (Tellis et al., 2019). However, other data suggests that inspirational material could be more shared. For example, one study showed more than one in five (22%) articles from the New York Times website retransmitted on different social media platforms (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, broadcasting) were inspirational in nature (Ji et al., 2019). People also share inspirational information using more diverse wordings than when they share less inspirational information (Xia and Wai Li, 2024). This is in line with a transmission function of inspiration (Thrash et al., 2010b) and the idea that emotional appeals can influence subsequent decision-making through contagion effects (Achar et al., 2016). Thus, experiencing a self-transcendent emotion from inspiring messages in social media promotes the tendency to share to their friends (Dale et al., 2017). These findings are consistent with our hypothesis that inspiration has more value than other positive emotions. The same evidence can also be used to support the effect of inspiration on recommendation since sharing content is itself a form of recommendation.

With regards to willingness to pay more and donations, we argue that inspiration has a positive effect and greater effect than other positive emotions on willingness to pay more including charity donation behavior. This is based partly on our reasons behind H1 on why inspiration is a valuable emotion and partly on the general evidence cited above on the positive effect of inspiration on many marketing KPIs. In addition, norms of reciprocity dictate that if a brand makes you feel good you are likely to reciprocate by paying more. For example, inspiration has been shown to facilitate finding more meaning in life which leads to gratitude for such inspiring content and, in turn, results in more favorable video and brand attitudes (Chang, 2020) as well as more favorable attitudes toward ads and higher purchase intentions (Zhou et al., 2024). Inspirational content increases spending more than deal-oriented content or no content (Grewal et al., 2023) as well as customers’ intention to engage in livestream shopping (Song et al., 2024). Based upon our initial discussion about how emotions can create value, including a “dollar” value, we might also expect people to pay more for brands that make them feel good and this is likely to be especially true of emotions such as inspiration. In addition, feelings of connectedness have been found to often accompany episodes of inspiration (Thrash et al., 2014) as attention is focused outside of the self and onto that which is greater than the self and beyond perceived boundaries (Shiota et al., 2014). Intuitively then, when we feel good, we are in a better place to do good and specific evidence in the charity context has noted inspiration improves donation likelihood (Zhao et al., 2023) and donations in a laboratory setting (Liang et al., 2016) as well as better fundraising effort, task performance and citizenship performance from charity workers (Grant and Hofmann, 2011). Taking the above discussion into account, we therefore hypothesize that:

Relating to our third research question of “What is the relative explanatory power of inspiration compared to other positive emotions in marketing communications?” we now discuss the effect inspiration vs other positive emotions on these additional marketing KPIs. Inspiration has sometimes been used as a mediator to explain the positive effects of a variety of variables that influence other consequences. For example, inspiration has been shown to mediate the relationship between information relevance and goal state with purchase behavior (Chen et al., 2024) as well as that between users’ reaction to more positive, optimized Instagram nature and travel posts with stronger upward comparison and well-being (Meier et al., 2021). However, inspiration is often used as a sole mediator to explain why media or message characteristics have effects, and rarely is inspiration’s contribution compared to other positive emotions (see Tellis et al., 2019 as an exception). In considering the relative mediating power of inspiration compared to other positive emotions in affecting marketing outcomes, we can draw upon the discussion above to provide a rationale for our hypothesis. This is based on the higher value of inspiration relative to other positive emotions as well as the research which shows inspiration was one of the positive emotions which resulted in higher sharing of YouTube Ads (Tellis et al., 2019) and news articles retransmitted (Ji et al., 2019) and sentences being shared on social media (Xia and Wai Li, 2024). Thus, we propose the following hypothesis:

Figure 1 presents our conceptual model that guides our approach. We conducted three studies with the following objectives: to understand how consumers appraise the value of emotions and assess inspiration compared to other positive emotions (Study 1); to investigate how brands and charities can leverage inspiration to generate positive consumer responses (Studies 2 and 3). Study 1 (n = 300) assessed ten positive emotions from the PANAS-short form (SF; Watson et al., 1988) across eight value appraisal dimensions, including experiential scarcity, sharing value, hedonic value, motivational value, personal resource improvement, expansive thinking value, overall value and dollar value. Study 1 evaluated H1 which predicted that consumers consistently regard inspiration as one of the most valuable emotions across different value appraisals. Study 2 (n = 296) was designed to compare the effects of a real-life emotional ad based on inspiration vs an informational ad for the travel brand Expedia on consumer responses, while comparing the mediating role of inspiration to those of other positive emotions. Study 2 tested H2 in which we expected that an emotional ad based on inspiration (vs an informational ad) increases ad sharing intention, brand recommendation, willingness to pay more as well as H3 which proposed that inspiration has a stronger mediating effect than other positive emotions. Finally, Study 3 used a field experiment in an online charity fundraising campaign to demonstrate the behavioral and financial impacts of inspiration-based emotional versus informational campaigns on donations.

The objective of Study 1 was to evaluate positive emotions on various value appraisal dimensions. A total of 300 participants were recruited through the online research platform Prolific (M_age = 40.51, SD_age = 13.03, 60% female; all participants were US residents). Participants were informed that the study aimed to explore how individuals think about and experience various positive emotions in their daily lives. Afterwards, they were asked to assess each of the ten positive emotions (active, alert, attentive, determined, enthusiastic, excited, inspired, interested, proud and strong) adapted from the shortened version of PANAS (Watson et al., 1988) which has been cross-culturally validated (Thompson, 2007).

Building upon the literature on consumer value and theories on the purpose of positive emotions (Fredrickson, 2013; Sheth et al., 1991; Sweeney and Soutar, 2001; Vieira et al., 2018), we asked participants to evaluate each of the ten positive emotions across the eight value appraisal dimensions using a single item (Bergkvist and Rossiter, 2007). For experiential scarcity, participants indicated how frequently they experienced each of the positive emotions over the past week on a seven-point scale (1 = very infrequently, 7 = very frequently). For sharing value and hedonic value, they indicated how likely they are to share each of the positive emotions to help significant others (sharing value: 1 = not likely at all, 7 = very likely) and indicated how much pleasure each of the positive emotions brings to them (hedonic value: 1 = not at all, 7 = very much). For motivational value, personal resource improvement and expansive thinking value, participants responded to the following three items:

1. The extent to which each of the following positive emotions motivate you to improve or make positive changes (motivational value: 1 = not at all, 7 = very much).

2. The extent to which each of the following emotions help you increase your personal resources (personal resource improvement: 1 = not at all, 7 = very much).

3. The extent to which each of the following emotions help broaden your thinking and open your mind (expansive thinking value: 1 = not at all, 7 = very much).

For overall value and dollar value, participants indicated how valuable each of the positive emotions are to them on a seven-point scale (overall value: 1 = not at all, 7 = very much) and how much they would pay to experience each of the positive emotions in the dollar amount (dollar value: $0–$100). Finally, they were asked to provide basic demographic information such as gender and age, and they were later thanked and debriefed.

Table 1 summarizes the descriptive statistics for the values of the ten positive emotions. Participants consistently considered inspired as one of the more valuable emotions across all the eight appraisal dimensions. For experiential scarcity, participants rated inspired (M = 4.36, SD = 1.61), along with proud, strong, enthusiastic and excited, as less frequent and thus more scarce emotional experiences than other emotions such as active, determined, alert, interested and attentive. When we compared the observed value of inspired to the grand mean of experiential scarcity (M = 4.69) using a one-sample t-test, it confirmed that the experiential frequency of inspired (M = 4.36) is significantly lower than the average experiential frequency of the ten positive emotions combined [M = 4.69; t(299) = −3.55, p < 0.001].

For hedonic value, participants associated greater pleasure with inspired (M = 5.58, SD = 1.37) which was significantly higher than the average hedonic value of the ten positive emotions [M = 5.21; t(299) = 4.75, p < 0.001]. For motivational value, personal resource improvement and expansive thinking value, inspired was consistently regarded as the second most valuable emotion in motivational value (M = 5.75, SD = 1.28), personal resource improvement (M = 5.45, SD = 1.49) and expansive thinking value (M = 5.79, SD = 1.38). A series of one-sample t-tests confirmed that inspired were significantly higher than the pooled means of motivational value [M = 5.31; t(299) = 5.84, p < 0.001], personal resource improvement [M = 5.19; t(299) = 3.07, p < 0.01] and expansive value [M = 5.16; t(299) = 7.97, p < 0.001].

For overall value and dollar value, participants perceived inspired to be the third most valuable in overall value (M = 5.80, SD = 1.36), but the most valuable in dollar value (M = $53.07, SD = 34.37), while being significantly higher than the pooled means for both overall value [M = 5.51; t(299) = 3.63, p < 0.001] and dollar value [M = $45.87; t(299) = 3.63, p < 0.001]. However, for sharing value, inspired was ranked 4th and a one-sample-test indicated that the sharing value of inspired (M = 5.05) does not differ from the average sharing value of the ten positive emotions [M = 4.76; t(299) = 1.19, p > 0.20]. In sum, for seven of the eight value appraisal dimensions, inspiration was significantly greater than the average of all other means. As detailed in Table 1, it was the only positive emotion included in the top five emotions across all eight value dimensions.

The findings from Study 1 offer initial support for the hypothesis that consumers place a higher value overall on the emotion of inspiration compared to other positive emotions (H1). The results indicate that inspiration is perceived as a relatively scarce emotional experience (i.e. experiential scarcity), yet it delivers significant pleasure when it occurs (i.e. hedonic value). Furthermore, consumers appear to derive substantial instrumental benefits from inspiration, viewing it as a powerful source of motivation, a means for personal resource improvement and a catalyst for expansive thinking. This high valuation is also reflected in more direct measures of worth. While inspiration was rated as the third most valuable emotion overall, it was ranked as the single most valuable emotion in terms of dollar value, with participants willing to pay more to experience it than any other positive emotion studied.

A key finding is the consistent high ranking of inspiration across all eight value dimensions. It was the only positive emotion within the top five for every dimension measured. While we acknowledge that the use of single-item measures in this initial exploration may limit construct distinctiveness and implies some potential overlap between value appraisals, the signal across these dimensions is remarkably uniform. Collectively, these results demonstrate that consumer appraisals of value differ considerably across positive emotions and that the unique and consistently high valuation of inspiration observed here lends strong support that inspiration is more valued by consumers compared to other positive emotions and warranted our focus in Studies 2 and 3.

Although Study 1 demonstrated that consumers derive stronger value from inspiration compared to other positive emotions, its implications for consumer responses and marketing outcomes remain underexplored. The purpose of Study 2 was therefore to demonstrate the effects of inspirational emotional vs noninspirational informational ad appeals on consumer responses (i.e. ad sharing, brand recommendation, willingness to pay more) in an experimental setting (H2). The other was to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the effects by comparing emotional drivers of positive consumer responses (H3).

We used an emotional advertising appeal based on inspiration and other positive emotions to compare with a noninspiring informational advertising appeal as a control condition. To rule out confounding brand effects, we used a single brand in both conditions (travel brand Expedia). Like other work (Tellis et al., 2019), we used YouTube ads because they have greater potential to enhance exposure through sharing and going viral. Furthermore, since they have fewer restrictions on length, telling stories that could generate stronger emotions from consumers is more possible. It should be noted real life ads rarely focus on a single emotion and that positive emotions tend to be highly correlated in general (Laros and Steenkamp, 2005). This is particularly true for inspiration which is a composite emotion, i.e. an antecedent or a consequence of other positive emotions (Gao et al., 2021; Thrash et al., 2010a). Therefore, we tested the relative explanatory power of different positive emotions, namely, the five most valuable positive emotions identified in Study 1 (i.e. inspired, interested, enthusiastic, determined and excited) on key marketing outcome variables.

For our manipulation of an inspiring emotional appeal vs a noninspiring informational appeal, we used a database from System1 (Link to the system1group.Link to the website of the cited article.), a marketing research agency specializing in measuring ad emotions and predicting ad effectiveness. From the System1 database of 5,696 ads, we initially selected ads which scored an average of 4.2 stars or above out of a possible five stars for emotional intensity which placed them in the top 3% of all tested ads. As inspiration is a rare emotion, we focussed on the top 34 scoring ads for being awe-inspiring. These ads were rated as two times greater than the norm on their awe-inspiring nature, and we chose an Expedia ad because it featured a charity and was therefore somewhat linked to our final field experiment in the charity context. The inspirational Expedia ad was about Expedia partnering with St Jude’s Children Research Hospital to enable children at the hospital to do virtual traveling (Link to youtube.Link to the website of the cited article.).

The length of the ad was 2 min and 59 s and included the inspirational themes of overcoming adversity, kindness and perseverance. For a control condition, we used the noninspirational informative Expedia ad featuring science communicator Bill Nye explaining the science of airplane travel and how Expedia uses data to improve customer experience (Link to youtube.Link to the website of the cited article.). The length of the ad was 2 min and 42 s. The ad was chosen to represent an informational/rational appeal not only because of its purely informational content, but also because Bill Nye is best known to the sample as the host of the science education television show “Bill Nye the Science Guy” (1993–1999) and as a science educator in pop culture which served to reinforce the informational/rational form of advertising.

Prior to conducting Study 2, we assessed the two Expedia ads and predicted that the Expedia ad with an inspiring emotional appeal would evoke stronger emotions among consumers compared to the noninspiring informational appeal. We recruited a total of 200 participants through the online research platform Prolific (M_age = 37.34, SD_age = 13.20, 54.50% female; all participants were US residents). They were randomly assigned either to the inspiring emotional appeal (n = 100) or to the noninspiring informational appeal condition (n = 100). After watching a YouTube ad from Expedia, participants were asked to report their emotions (i.e. determined, enthusiastic, excited, interested, inspired) evoked by the ad on seven-point scales (e.g. Please indicate the extent to which the video you watched made you feel inspired: 1 = not at all, 7 = very much). The five positive emotions were presented to participants in a randomized order to mitigate potential order effects. After participants provided basic demographic information such as age and gender, they were thanked and debriefed.

All the five positive emotions (i.e. determined, enthusiastic, excited, interested and inspired) were highly correlated (all Pearson rs > 0.58, all ps < 0.001). As predicted, participants in the inspiring emotional appeal condition reported significantly higher feelings of all the five positive emotions than did those in the noninspiring informational appeal condition while controlling for age and gender (all ps > 0.05): inspired (b = 1.79, SE = 0.26, t = 7.01, p < 0.001, ω² = 0.20), determined (b = 1.47, SE = 0.27, t = 5.49, p < 0.001, ω² = 0.13), interested (b = 0.97, SE = 0.23, t = 4.26, p < 0.001, ω² = 0.08), enthusiastic (b = 0.70, SE = 0.28, t = 2.52, p < 0.01, ω² = 0.03) and excited (b = 0.59, SE = 0.27, t = 2.18, p < 0.05, ω² = 0.02). In other words, the Expedia ad used in the inspiring emotional appeal condition generated significantly stronger emotions among the consumers than the ad used in the control condition. As seen in the effect sizes, our manipulation had a stronger effect on inspired (ω² = 0.20) compared to the other positive emotions such as determined (ω² = 0.13), interested (ω² = 0.08), enthusiastic (ω² = 0.03) and excited (ω² = 0.02), thus confirming successful manipulations of inspiration and other positive emotions. As the effects of age and gender were nonsignificant across the models, they are not discussed further.

The design of Study 2 was almost identical to that of the pretest, except that we measured three key dependent variables, namely, ad sharing, brand recommendation and willingness to pay more before measuring the five positive emotions as in the pretest. We recruited a total of 300 participants from prolific and four participants terminated the study prematurely, resulting in 296 participants for the final analysis (n = 296, M_age = 37.62, SD_age = 12.79, 57.09% female; all participants were US residents). Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two Expedia ads (i.e. the inspiring emotional appeal or the non-inspiring informational appeal as a control). After watching the assigned Expedia ad, all participants were asked to report their intentions to pay more (i.e. “please indicate how likely or unlikely you are to pay more for Expedia services”) (adapted from the Customer Loyalty scale of Malai and Speece, 2005), to recommend the brand (i.e. “please indicate how likely or unlikely you are to recommend Expedia services to a friend”) and to share the ad (i.e. “please indicate how likely or unlikely you are to share this Expedia ad with others) on seven-point scales (1 = very unlikely, 7 = very likely). Afterwards, they reported the extent to which each of the five positive emotions (i.e. determined, enthusiastic, excited, interested, inspired) was evoked by the Expedia ad on seven-point scales (1 = not at all, 7 = very much). As in the pretest, the five positive emotions were presented in a randomized order across participants. Finally, participants reported their age and gender before being thanked and debriefed.

The effects of participants’ gender and age were not significant for our key dependent and emotion variables. Therefore, we used a series of independent-samples t-tests to evaluate the effects of an inspiring emotional appeal on the five positive emotions and the three key dependent variables (i.e. ad sharing, brand recommendation and willingness to pay more). As shown in Table 2, participants in the inspiring emotional appeal condition reported significantly higher feelings of the positive emotions than did those in the control condition. Notably, the manipulation had the strongest effect on inspired (M_inspiring = 5.74 vs M_control = 3.88; t = −10.05, p < 0.001, d = 1.59).

More importantly, participants in the inspiring emotional appeal condition showed significantly more favorable responses than those in the control condition to pay more (M_inspiring = 4.30 vs M_control = 3.19; t = −4.91, p < 0.001, d = 0.57), to recommend the brand (M_inspiring = 5.21 vs M_control = 3.93; t = −6.14, p < 0.001, d = 0.71) and to share the ad (M_inspiring = 4.85 vs M_control = 3.50; t = −5.73, p < 0.001, d = 0.67) (see Table 2 for a statistical summary).

Taken together, these findings provide support for H2. As an extra check, we also used two separate multivariate regression models with gender and age covariates: one for the positive emotions and the other for the key dependent variables. They generated equivalent results (see Web Appendix for the raw statistical results).

It should be noted that the five positive emotions were highly correlated in the pretest (all Pearson rs > 0.58, all ps < 0.001) as well as in Study 2 (all Pearson rs > 0.71, all ps < 0.001), raising a concern of multicollinearity. Before conducting mediation analyses, we evaluated the variance inflation factors while entering our manipulation and all the five positive emotions into the models to predict each of the three dependent variables (i.e. willingness to pay more, brand recommendation, ad sharing). We found moderately low and acceptable levels of multicollinearity in the regression models (M_VIF = 3.53, ranging from 1.54 to 4.94). Next, we evaluated a series of mediation models with two parallel mediators for the effects of the inspiring emotional appeal on our key dependent variables (i.e. ad sharing, brand recommendation and willingness to pay more) with the following two objectives. First, we aimed to demonstrate the mediating roles of the positive emotions. Second, we wanted to evaluate and compare the indirect effects of inspired versus the other positive emotions such as determined, enthusiastic, excited and interested.

For willingness to pay more, we constructed four separate mediation models which included the inspiring emotional appeal (vs control) as a predictor, inspired and one of the other four positive emotions as two parallel mediators and willingness to pay more as a criterion. Figure 2 shows the mediation models for willingness to pay more (see also Figure 3 for mediation models for brand recommendation), and summarizes total effects, direct effects and indirect effects through inspired and each of the other positive emotions. These results confirm that the inspiring emotional appeal as compared to the control condition is predictive of willingness to pay more (total effects). However, when two parallel mediators, including inspired and one of the other positive emotions, are entered into the models to predict the criterion, the effect of the inspiring emotional appeal on the criterion becomes nonsignificant (direct effects). The two parallel mediators are predictive of the criterion, suggesting that the effects of the inspiring emotional appeal on the criteria are fully mediated by inspired and the other positive emotions across all the mediation models.

Bootstrapping tests with 5,000 resamples confirmed that the indirect effects through inspired and the other positive emotions were significant. For example, the first parallel mediation model in Figure 2 (upper-left model), including inspired and interested as mediators, the inspiring emotional appeal as compared to the control condition significantly predicted willingness to pay more (total effect: b = 1.11, SE = 0.26, t = 4.91, p < 0.001). When the two mediators were added to predict willingness to pay more, the effect of the inspiring emotional appeal was no longer significant (direct effect: b = −0.27, SE = 0.20, t = −1.35, p > 0.10), suggesting significant mediating effects of inspired and interested. Bootstrapping tests confirmed the significant indirect effects through inspired (indirect effect: b = 1.01, boot SE = 0.20, 95% CI = 0.63–1.44) and through interested (indirect effect: b = 0.36, boot SE = 0.12, 95% CI = 0.15–0.60), indicating a stronger indirect effect through inspired than through interested. We found equivalent mediating effects across all the mediation models (see Figures 2 and 3). Table 3 summarizes the pairwise comparisons of the indirect effects for willingness to pay more, brand recommendation and ad sharing. Web Appendix 1 provides additional covariate analyses. These results combine to provide support for H3.

Consistent with H2, inspiration-based emotional advertising increased sharing and recommendation intentions more than information-based advertising. In general, this finding is in line with previous meta-analytic studies (Hornik et al., 2016, 2017), but specifically extends work on sharing online video ads (Tellis et al., 2019) into recommendation. The explanations are that feel good emotions are more likely to engender social interaction from others and that while factual, information-focused content can be dry and uninteresting for others, emotion-based advertising messages encourage a low elaboration level which is more likely to result in impulsive sharing and recommendation behavior. However, we acknowledge that the effects from our manipulations of using real-world ads may also stem from broader creative differences (e.g. visual style, narrative structure) between the emotional and informational formats, rather than inspiration alone.

The results also support H3 that inspiration has a stronger mediating effect than other positive emotions on ad sharing behavior, recommendation and willingness to pay. It is worth noting that positive emotions are naturally intercorrelated, often reflecting a broader “general positive emotionality.” Yet, despite this overlap (multicollinearity), our mediation analysis indicates that inspiration captures the specific variance driving these marketing outcomes more effectively than other positive states. The latter finding is in line with our results in Study 1 that inspiration is one of the most valuable emotions, so people are more willing to pay for it. The recommendation results are explained by the transmission function of inspiration (Thrash et al., 2010b) and supported by previous work on inspiring messages in social media being more shared with friends (Dale et al., 2017). The sharing results reflect previous work which found inspiration explained online sharing as much as the emotions of warmth and excitement (Tellis et al., 2019), but the primacy of inspiration observed here as a driver for sharing is supported by other work on inspirational news article transmission (Ji et al., 2019) and short social media posts Xia and Wai Li (2024). Overall, the results support the notion that emotional advertising based on inspiration impacts marketing outcomes to different degrees. While general positive affect plays a role, the differential effects of each emotion on each outcome variable provide nuanced evidence of this variance which future researchers and practitioners might wish to consider.

Inspiration has emerged as a crucial psychological mechanism underpinning social causes, particularly in the context of brand activism on sociopolitical issues (Zhou et al., 2024). To contribute to the relatively sparse research on inspiration within charity contexts (Grant and Hofmann, 2011; Liang et al., 2016; Zhao et al., 2023), and to align with the charity themes presented in the Expedia emotional advertisement, we conducted a field experiment focused on a mental health charity. We used an online fundraising campaign for the mental health charity Beyond Blue while creating two experimental ad campaign stimuli which were advertised using paid advertisements with Google AdWords.

For the field experiment, we created two versions of advertising campaigns: an informational ad campaign vs an inspiring emotional ad campaign. For the informational ad campaign, we relied on the charity’s existing communication messages and a fundraising landing page of Beyond Blue (www.beyondblue.org.au/) which were largely informational based on factual content. For the inspiring emotional campaign, we incorporated several words and sentences centered on the inspirational themes of human kindness and overcoming adversity (Chang, 2023) (see  Appendix 1Figure A1). Both landing pages had approximately the same word count (approximately 150 words) and allowed visitors to donate any amount of money on either page.

In a pretest, we checked the manipulations of the positive emotions in the two advertising campaigns. We predicted that the inspiring emotional ad campaign, as compared to the informational ad campaign, would evoke a stronger sense of inspiration and it would have limited impacts on the other positive emotions. A total of 200 participants from the online research platform prolific (n = 200, M_age = 37.24, SD_age = 13.59, 47.50% female; all participants were Australian residents) were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions (i.e. an inspiring emotional ad campaign vs an informational ad campaign), and they were asked to read the messages in the Google ad and the fundraising landing page. As in Study 1, we adopted the ten positive emotions from PANAS-SF (Watson et al., 1988: active, alert, attentive, determined, enthusiastic, excited, inspired, interested, proud and strong), and participants indicated the extent to which the Beyond Blue messages make them feel each of the positive emotions on seven-point scales (1 = not at all, 7 = very much). Consistent with our findings from Studies 1 and 2, all the ten positive emotions were highly correlated (all Pearson rs > 0.500, all ps < 0.001). Given the highly correlated nature of the positive emotions and the possibility of the covariance of error terms, we used a seemingly unrelated regression model to evaluate the effects of the inspiring emotional ad campaign on the positive emotions while controlling for gender and age (see Appendix for the raw statistical results). Out of the ten positive emotions, eight were unaffected (all ps > 0.05): active, alert, attentive, determined, excited, interested, proud and strong. However, there were significant effects of the inspiring emotional ad campaign on two positive emotions (inspired: b = 0.48, SE = 0.23, t = 2.08, p < 0.05; enthusiastic: b = 0.56, SE = 0.23, t = 2.48, p < 0.05) and participants reported significantly higher feelings of being inspired and enthusiastic than did those in the informational ad campaign condition (inspired: M_inspiring = 4.49 vs M_{informational} = 4.01; enthusiastic: M_inspiring = 4.17 vs M_{informational} = 3.61). To summarize, although we were unable to disentangle the positive emotions and manipulate inspiration only, our manipulation only significantly affected the two emotions of inspired and enthusiastic, with very limited impacts on the other positive emotions, suggesting a successful manipulation in the feeling of being inspired.

The campaigns used in the field experiments involved two components:

1. a Google ad that was advertised with a set budget over one week; and

2. a fundraising page hosted on the Beyond Blue website.

Each had an inspirational version and an informational version which were designed and run for one week. A total of A$383.33 was spent advertising the inspirational campaign, while a total of A$407.14 was spent advertising the noninspirational campaign. The search terms for the ads were identical: “online fundraising,” “fundraising platforms,” “mental health support,” “suicide prevention,” “beyond blue,” “mental health donations,” “mental health Australia,” “beyond blue depression” and “saving lives.” A broad match search strategy was chosen to maximize exposure to the ads as it offers the widest reach, potentially triggering ads for a wide range of related search queries. To begin, the researchers made an initial donation of A$75 (not included in any analysis).

The data captured in this study included statistics from Google Ads analytics, such as money spent on donations, donation likelihood, frequency of donations and total impressions and clicks. Clickthrough rates were calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions (people who saw the ad). Donation likelihood was calculated by dividing the number of donations by the number of clicks on the ad. ROI was calculated based on Google ad spending and final donation amount as (the amount of donation raised) ÷ (the amount of ad spending) × 100.

The emotional campaign driven by inspiration and enthusiasm was significantly more effective than the informational campaign, supporting H2d. Specifically, over the seven days, the inspiring campaign received 13 donations totalling A$7,250 (ROI of 1,891%) and generated more impressions (3,606) than the informational campaign (2,679). Donation likelihood (donating after clicking on the ad) was higher and marginally significant for the emotional campaign (13 donations, 1.81%), than the informational campaign (4 donations, 0.62%) (χ² = 3.76, p = 0.053). Interestingly, although the inspiring campaign resulted in more clicks (720 clicks) than the informational campaign (642 clicks), the clickthrough rate (% of people who saw the ad (impressions) and then clicked on it) for the informational ad of 23.9% was significantly greater than the clickthrough rate for the emotional ad of 19.97% (χ² = 9.27, p = 0.002). One possible explanation is that it is difficult to be inspirational in 30–40 words in an online ad and the ads only ran for one week so there was relatively limited exposure. However, once people saw the inspirational landing page, they were nearly three times more likely to donate (1.81% vs 0.62%). Much of this effect appears to be due to differences in inspiration and enthusiasm generated on the landing page. Impressively, the total donation amount of A$7,250 (13 donations) for the inspiring campaign compared to A$130 (4 donations) for the informational campaign, meant the ROI for the inspiring campaign was 1,891% compared to −32% for the informational campaign.

Building on the small number of studies in the charity and social contexts (Grant and Hofmann, 2011; Liang et al., 2016; Zhao et al., 2023), we used different appeals (human kindness and overcoming adversity) from Liang et al. (2016) (who used strength-based emotions and sadness) and different outcome variables of real monetary donations in the field as opposed to donation intention (Zhao et al., 2023) or donations in a laboratory setting (Liang et al., 2016). This adds to the paucity of work on the effect of inspiration in field experiments (see Böttger et al., 2017; Grewal et al., 2023). The study is a powerful demonstration of how inspiration together with enthusiasm can greatly influence the success of online donations using simple inspirational quotes.

The paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, emotion researchers have suggested that future research should examine “the possibility of additional appraisals that may be more localized in their applicability” (So et al., 2015, p. 363) and therefore be highly contingent on the situation, e.g. when related to marketing contexts. We respond to this call by proposing and additional appraisal framework, namely, the value of emotions to consumers and integrate on theories of consumer value (Sheth et al., 1991; Sweeney and Soutar, 2001) and Broaden and Build Theory (Fredrickson, 2013) to extend the emotional appraisal literature. In doing so, we also put to the test one criticism of the broaden and build model, namely, that it “is largely neutral vis-à-vis distinctions among discrete positive emotions, which may vary in important ways” (Revord et al., 2021, p. 94). By looking at how positive emotions vary in their ability to broaden our thinking and build personal resources, we address this criticism. Our value appraisal framework for emotions also adds a very different, yet important contribution to the literature on emotional appraisal (e.g. Frijda et al., 1989; Smith and Ellsworth, 1985) and might cast a different lens on other dimensions like the value of pleasure, arousal and dominance (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974). For example, what is the dollar value of pleasure, arousal and dominance to a consumer? What happens to hedonic or dollar emotional value when emotions change in their occurrence? This latter question raises the theoretical issue of how the dimensions of emotion value appraisal are related.

Second, prior reviews of research on emotions in marketing revealed no work on the value of positive emotions, either conceptually or empirically (Gaur et al., 2014; Laros and Steenkamp, 2005; Sharma et al., 2023). Here we extend the work of Conte et al. (2023) by not only conceptualising new value appraisal dimensions (e.g. price, social, openness, overall value), but also empirically by measuring the value comparatively for ten positive emotions. Moreover, we are the first to examine the dollar value consumers will pay to experience emotions. We show that emotions not only vary significantly on the value they have to consumers but also show that inspiration is one of the most valuable and special emotions. This finding may go some way to explain the recent stream of research interest in the concept of inspiration.

Third, while several studies have used inspiration as a mediator for other effects (e.g. Andonopoulos et al., 2023; Chen et al., 2024), they have not compared the explanatory power of inspiration to other positive emotions. Extending the work of Tellis et al. (2019), we examined a wider and different range of emotions (inspired, excited, interested, determined, enthusiastic) based on their value to consumers to show that inspiration is the main mediator of the effects compared to other positive emotions. This partly justifies the single focus on inspiration in the studies we reviewed but also suggests prior studies may have potentially missed the smaller effects of other positive emotions often linked with inspiration (Thrash et al., 2010a) and resulting from positive emotions being highly correlated in general (Laros and Steenkamp, 2005).

Fourth, we contribute to the literature on the positive effects of inspiration on marketing KPIs (e.g. Chang, 2020; Frasquet et al., 2024; Grewal et al., 2023; Izogo and Mpinganjira, 2020; Meier et al., 2021; Song et al., 2024; Zhou et al., 2024; Tellis et al., 2019) by adding important new marketing KPIs relating to recommendation and willingness to pay more which corresponds directly with the value inspiration brings to consumers. Next, despite meta-analysis finding that gain-framed appeals do not differ significantly on persuasiveness in charity advertising (Xu and Huang, 2020), these findings were not broken down by emotion type. By using a different charity context and different stimuli (banner advertising) we show inspiration’s effects together with enthusiasm on real charity donation behavior in an online fundraising campaign as opposed to donation intention (Zhao et al., 2023) or donations in a laboratory setting (Liang et al., 2016). This also helps to address a shortcoming which one recent review of advertising appeals in the not-for-profit sector identified, namely, that “limited studies explored emotions beyond the heavily investigated emotions of fear and humour” (Yousef et al., 2023, p. 10).

Finally, we contribute methodologically to the recent work in marketing on inspiration. For example, advertising executions of customer inspiration have been largely ignored in previous work (e.g. Abbasi et al., 2022; Beckert and Naderer, 2023; Grewal et al., 2023; Oltra et al., 2022; Xia and Wai Li (2024); Yang et al., 2024). Indeed, Tellis et al. (2019, p. 6) comment about the previous work using content which evokes emotions that, “none of these studies examined whether the extent to which ads evoked these discrete emotions created variation in sharing of real-world ads.” By using real advertisement and real digital marketing campaigns as opposed to artificial stimuli, we improve ecological validity. Relatedly, few studies deploy experimental manipulations of inspiration (see Winterich et al., 2019 and Liang et al., 2016 as exceptions) nor conduct field experiments (see Böttger et al., 2017 and Grewal et al., 2023 as exceptions), so we contribute methodologically to the literature by using both.

The first general implication is for building branding strategies or individual marketing campaigns around emotions. From our studies and other work (Hornik et al., 2016, 2017; Tellis et al., 2019) we can see that emotional advertising works better than informational advertising. The first implication then is for marketers to use more emotions in advertising since it appears companies are not doing a good job. For example, an analysis of 345 online video ads shared across Facebook, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn found more informational ads (55%) than emotional ads (45%) (Tellis et al., 2019). This tallies with a recent advertising industry report on the cost of being dull that found a neutral emotional reaction to the average TV ad was the most common response (52% in the UK, 47% in the USA) (Evan and Field, 2023). This gives some idea of the scale of the opportunity for using emotions in advertising.

Second, returning to our initial general question of which positive emotion marketers should choose when designing emotional advertising, we provide guidance on which positive emotions are more or less valued by consumers. We found emotions vary in value to consumers with the most valuable positive emotions being inspired, followed by interested, excited, enthusiastic and determined, while the least valuable are active and alert. Our first implication therefore is for marketers to focus on the most valuable positive emotions when creating emotional engagement in their campaigns and our second suggestion is for marketers to think outside the default positive emotions such as joy or excitement.

Third, different positive emotions seem to create different types of value. For example, excited has highest sharing and hedonic value, while determined has the highest motivational, personal resource improvement and overall value. This suggests that depending on which value marketers want to create for consumers with their brand, they need to focus on the appropriate related emotion. For example, if a brand wished to improve sharing of brand content, it would need to excite consumers and if a brand focused on making consumers more determined, they could reap significant motivational and overall value benefits.

Fourth, as inspiration appears to be the most valued emotion, it would seem to be highly beneficial to build it into a brand’s positioning. Expanding our knowledge of the appraisal dimensions of emotional value helps deepen our theoretical understanding of why inspiration may have a special place for marketers due to its inherent connections with change and improvement which are often key marketing messages. This may even help brands such as Nike who already have inspiration as a core brand value to understand the different types of value being inspiring creates for consumers. For example, Nike could run a campaign around how much being inspired might be worth financially to consumers?

A fifth major implication is financial. This is based not only on the perceived value of positive emotions and the financial price consumers are willing to pay for experiencing them, but also the increased willingness to pay more and make more charitable donations. Thus, there are clear financial benefits to consider and with a more nuanced discussion of ROI of positive emotions, we can now bolster the financial case for investment in emotional brand communications. Focussing on inspiration, there are numerous reasons why it appears to be financially beneficial to marketers. For example, inspiration was one of the most valued positive emotions across multiple dimensions in Study 1 and consumers were prepared to pay the most amount to experience it. From Study 2 inspiration was the most influential emotion in explaining increased willingness to pay more and Study 3 showed an inspirational version of the charity campaign significantly outperformed an informational ad campaign to return nearly 1,900% of the initial advertising investment. This finding of willingness to pay more is consistent with practitioner findings that inspiration predicted 63% of the variation in consumer demand for brands, 52% of brands’ ability to command higher prices and brands that improve their ability to inspire consumers more than their competitors improved their demand (Brand Power) by 8% year-over-year (Wunderman Thompson’s “Inspiring Growth,” white paper, 2020). Such data are likely to set the foundation for a greater financial return on inspiration compared to other emotions and are a powerful argument for investing in brand inspiration to increase the perceived value of brands.

A sixth implication stems from answering the question of which emotions have a greater effect on sharing and recommendation intentions which were mainly driven by inspiration compared to other positive emotions. This is consistent with the contagious property of inspiration and previous work which found inspirational ads positively influenced sharing in online platforms (Tellis et al., 2019). However, we should note that other positive emotions (amusement, inspiration, warmth and excitement) also had a positive effect on sharing behavior (Tellis et al., 2019) to which we can now add the effects of emotions like interested, enthusiastic and determined from our work. Recent research on the writer–reader contagion of inspiration (Thrash et al., 2017) supported in the marketing context (Xia and Wai Li, 2024) suggests that inspired customers may also pass their inspiration on to other customers by creating and sharing content such as social media posts. This reflects work in psychology where a study of fiction writing showed inspiration predicted efficiency, productivity and use of shorter words, suggesting that inspiration not only transmits creativity, but also does so economically (Thrash et al., 2010b). Such parsimony is particularly relevant to communications on social media platforms like X. For example, one study found a positive association between the inspiring level of a short sentence and its likelihood of being shared with others on social media controlling for the message’s positivity Xia and Wai Li (2024). The improved shareability potential of positive emotional ads helps digital marketing campaigns to gain greater earned media which not only increases exposure but also does so via trusted channels (family and friends) which means exposure can have greater impact (Colicev et al., 2018). This helps reduce costs and increase the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns. One qualification to this recommendation is based on findings that emotional ads are shared more on general platforms (Facebook, Google, Twitter) than on LinkedIn which is more professionally focused and the reverse holds for informational ads (Tellis et al., 2019).

Seventh, the measurement of positive emotions’ value and our charity field study findings support the idea that this a context where inspiration can be useful (e.g. Liang et al., 2016). In addition, since Google Ads is an important platform for brands, our results help confirm that inspiration can be effectively used in a charity setting to fundraise and this it is likely that finding messages and stories which inspire would appear to be a good way to enthuse donors and inspire donations. Using inspirational ads could have a substantial impact on the overall effectiveness of a fundraising campaign, and although our study was conducted in the context of a single online fundraiser, it is still relevant for charity marketers as it shares many crucial components of normal online campaigns including AdWord advertising, landing page information and a desired behavioral action.

Finally, information on the value of inspiration might be useful for other areas of marketing beyond consumer brand communications such as retailing (Grewal et al., 2023), or in overcoming risk when adopting new products (Mitchell and Boustani, 1993) or in organizational markets where recent work suggests that advertising using emotion-based themes helps to foster brand engagement tendencies and advocacy for brands (Kemp et al., 2020). Indeed, inspiration could also be used in other fundraising scenarios like universities where one award-winning campaign based on inspiration became the first Australian university to raise A$1 billion (CASE, 2019). In addition, it may have wider implications beyond business for society in areas such as self-help groups and psychological interventions. For example, the use of inspiration as one of the most valuable positive emotions might be beneficial to help consumer activist groups garner greater support as well as other cause-related marketing such as green issues where it has been shown to help recycling (Winterich et al., 2019) and reuse or upcycling (Tarabashkina et al., 2022).

Emotions are important for marketers to understand and in answering our first research question (what is the relative value of positive emotions to consumers?), we show that emotions not only vary significantly on the value they have to consumers, but also that inspiration is one of the most valuable and special emotions. This might explain recent research interest in the concept. Compared to other valuable positive emotions, inspiration improves and explains significant increases in sharing, recommendation and willingness to pay more, while together with enthusiasm, inspiration increases charity donations with a large ROI. This answers our second and third research questions of how much are new marketing KPIs like recommendation, sharing, willingness to pay more and charity donations improved by inspiration and how does the explanatory power of inspiration compare to other positive emotions? Our work has advanced research on emotions via emotion appraisal theory and is practically useful in guiding marketers and charity fundraisers on which emotions to use in communication campaigns.

However, in interpreting our results we must be mindful of some limitations. For example, we only used the short version of PANAS with ten positive emotions. Further research on the value of more positive and even negative emotions might be illuminating from a marketing since marketers often use fear, guilt and shame in social marketing campaigns. As well as broadening the number of emotions that consumers value, further research might also like to add to the appraisal dimensions of value we have suggested while using multi-item scales. Since some appraisal dimensions may overlap, using multi-item scales may also help clarify the distinctiveness of these value appraisals.

Next, we used only one ad with short exposure times and evaluated only one field experiment which also had limitations. For example, the marginally significant click-through rates suggest the brevity of the google ad may have reduced the inspirational strength of the stimulus along with the short campaign period of one week. Such limitations are likely to underrepresent the effects of full campaigns. Further work could consider testing our findings on a wider range of emotional ads and with longer advertising campaigns and multiple executions. In addition, we only considered three outcome variables and further research might examine more, such as whether consumers do actually pay more for inspirational brands, or corporate social responsibility benefits since inspiration directs attention firmly outside the self, away from one’s mundane expectations and immediate needs (Haidt and Morris, 2009). In Study 2, despite inspiration being the main driver, there was moderate to low multicollinearity between the positive emotions and other positive emotions did affect the outcome variables. This is likely because of the difficulty in finding clean (inspiration only) stimuli when using real-life advertisements. Further research might consider disentangling these emotions by using fictitious ads which focus on one emotion.

Finally, in our model we used emotions as mediators. However, having established that inspiration is somewhat different and special from other positive emotions, further research could examine what mediates inspiration’s effects. For example, one study found the uplifting effects of social comparison on inspiration were mediated by benign envy in the context of social media (Meier and Schäfer, 2018), while other work found inspiration’s positive effects on well-being are mediated by purpose in life and gratitude (Thrash et al., 2010a). Still other possibilities are imagination (Böttger et al., 2017) and self-transcendence (Dai and Jiang, 2024). To these we can add suggestions from Study 1 which might include social or hedonic value, and the ability to broaden our thinking and build personal resources.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the advice and financial support of RichardsRose, Sydney and the use of System 1 data. The authors appreciate the advice of Professors Eduardo Andrade and Shai Danziger as well as Michael Zhang, Diana Vassilenko and Luke Borgnolo for their assistance in data collection.

The research involved human participants and all necessary ethics approvals were sought from the University of Tel Aviv and the University of Sydney.

Informed consent was sought from all subjects who participated in the studies undertaken in this paper.

The supplementary material for this article can be found online.