Peter McGraw - room A33 - 14.30-16.00
Institute of Marketing and Communication Management
Start date: 19 October 2012
End date: 20 October 2012
Humorous Consumption
Humor is an important but largely overlooked topic in consumer research. The humor research within marketing focuses predominantly on advertising and uses incongruity theory as its theoretical foundation. We empirically assess the ability of incongruity theory to explain perceptions of humor across a broader range of consumption experiences, including YouTube videos, sports plays, products, and everyday events. We find that a theory proposing that humor occurs when a violation simultaneously seems benign explains differences between humorous and non-humorous consumption experiences better than leading humor theories based on incongruity. Perceptions of a benign violation better explained the data than the criteria most frequently discussed in incongruity theories, including surprise (study 1), juxtaposition (study 2), something atypical (study 3), or something unexpected that is explained (i.e., a resolved incongruity; study 4). We conclude by encouraging continued refinement of theory and methodology in order to build a deeper understanding of humorous consumption.
