Abstract
“Creating and telling a story is the most important and must-have capability for businesses in 21st century,” says Rolf Jensen. A good brand story or story-form advertisement enables businesses to grab customers’ attention and create meaningful value within their minds. In the meanwhile, customers’ brand loyalty will be strengthened. Utilizing the power of story-form advertising thus having an effective communication with customers is a critical issue for business to maintain an appealing brand. To have a better understanding of authenticity, one of the crucial elements for story, we categorize it into two types: iconic authenticity and indexical authenticity. Adopting experiment design as our method, this study uses two between-subjects experiments to test hypotheses pertaining to the appropriate stories for both high and low price products. The results reveal that two types of authenticity (iconic and indexical authenticity) are both positively related to brand attitude; indexical authenticity correlates more with brand attitudes for low than for high price products. These findings provide insights for marketers to design effective and appropriate brand story for their products.