Introduction
As one of the visual elements in advertising, typeface elicits psychological associations that might have an impact on ad effects and can convey a significant meaning with cognitive and emotional responses. Previous studies illustrate that typeface influences consumers’ perceptions of advertised products, has an impact on readability and memorability of ads (Childers & Jass, 2002), and generates brand personality (Grohmann, Giese, & Parkman, 2013). Therefore, typeface has the potentiality to change the effect of advertising, and could be one of the critical elements to enhance the ad effectiveness by matching with other elements in advertising (McCarthy & Mothersbaugh, 2002). The purpose of the current study is to examine how representative type styles (e.g., Sans-serif, Handwriting, and Serif) can influence consumers’ psychological perception (i.e., warmth and competence), to explore what underlying mechanism exists between typefaces and the ad effectiveness, and to investigate the impact of typeface in ads considering congruence of typeface with the communicator’s perceived power for more effective communications.
Theoretical Development
The findings of related research support that fonts evoke specific consumer’s perceptions and emotion (Grohmann et al., 2013). Serif typefaces such as Times New Roman were perceived as elegant, charming, emotional, and interesting and Sans-serif typefaces such as Helvetica or Arial were considered manly, powerful, smart, upper-class, and high readability (Grohmann et al., 2013). In terms of the features of typefaces, handwriting typefaces have a curved appearance and they are irregular, unplanned, and characterized by slanted and curved strokes, while Sans-serif typefaces are usually planned and drawn by straight and angular strokes. According to the studies on font in psychology (Jiang, Gorn, Galli, & Chattopadhyay, 2016) and design (Bartram, 1982), circular shapes activate a softness association such as love, warmth, and harmony and angular shapes activate a hardness association such as coldness, aggressiveness, and conflict associations. The research on the transference of some impressions from typefaces illustrates that psychological associations related to type font in ads are transferred to the advertised product or brand (Grohmann et al., 2013). Previous research, based on the Construal Level Theory (Trope, Liberman, & Wakslak, 2007), demonstrated that psychological distance influences individuals’ perceptions and engagement. According to each stream of prior literature on typefaces’ association and Construal Level theory, we predict that handwriting typefaces are associated with closer psychological distance and it reduces the social distance between consumers and the message in marketing activities. In contrast, Sans-serif typefaces are angular and typically associated with professionalism, justice, competence, and power and it may increase the social distance. The current study deals with warmth and competence in consumers’ perceptions. Based on the preceding discussion and research questions, a hypothesis leads to the following.
H1: Sans-serif typeface would be more likely to provoke competence perception, whereas handwriting typeface arouses much warmer and more friendly feeling. Variables influenced by typeface Based on the findings of Study 1, the following research question and hypotheses could be built up on the potential variables that influence the effectiveness of typeface:
RQ 1. How many reliable and interpretable factors are there among the following variables: Handwriting and Sans-serif typefaces, the perceived power, engagement, and attitude toward typeface? In addition, how much variance in the set of variables is explained by the factors? what kind of underlying mechanism between typefaces and the effectiveness of typeface is such there?
H2: Typeface (Sans-serif) would be more likely to provoke (a) perceived power, in turn, positively influences (b) engagement toward the typeface.
H3: Typeface (Sans-serif) would be less likely to provoke (a) engagement toward the typeface, in turn, positively influences (b) attitude toward the typeface.
H4: Perceived power would be more likely to provoke (a) engagement toward the typeface, in turn, positively influences (b) attitude toward the typeface.
Typeface and the perceived spokesmodel’s power in ads
Including typeface, as a visual imagery in an ad, a spokesmodel can generate psychological perceptions in persuasive communication. According to the agentic-communal model of power theory, the power of communicators has an influence on the persuasion process (Dubois et al., 2016) and attitudinal and behavioral responses. However, the communicators’ power would be different by individuals’ perceptions or experiences for the category of people (e.g., employee or expert). Therefore, it would be critical to consider the communicators’ power as ‘perceived power’ in communication. The previous study suggested high-power communicators, compared to low-power communicators, are more inclined to generate responses or arguments related to competence. In addition, low-power communicators are more inclined to generate responses related to warmth (Dubois et al., 2016). Based on each stream of literature of typefaces (Grohmann et al., 2013) and communicators’ power (Dubois et al., 2016), the following hypotheses occur.
H5. When an ad includes a handwriting typeface in a headline copy, if consumers perceive low power from the spokesmodel’s in ads, by the matching (congruence) effects, it leads to a more favorable attitude toward the ad, ad engagement, and purchase intention than when an ad is employed by sans-serif typeface in a headline copy.
H6. When an ad includes a sans-serif typeface in a headline copy, if consumers perceive high power from the spokesmodel’s in ads, by the matching (congruence) effects, it leads to a more favorable attitude toward the ad, ad engagement, and purchase intention than when an ad is employed by handwriting typeface in a headline copy.
Overview of Research Design
Three separated experiments were conducted to investigate all hypotheses. Study 1 was examined to test the effect of typeface across three representative typefaces such as Sans-serif, Serif, and handwriting, on psychological responses (i.e., warmth and confidence) (H1). Study 2 was conducted to explore the interrelations between the factors and the model with other strong potential effects (RQ1 & H2, H3, and H4). Study 3 was conducted to investigate the effects of typeface along with a spokesmodel in an ad on ad attitude, engagement, and behavioral intention (i.e. purchase intention) (H5 & H6).
Research Design in Study 1
Participants were exposed to all 15 typefaces in each 3 font-style (i.e., sans-serif, handwriting, and serif). To test and choose an appropriate typeface in consumer’s perceptions and psychological associations (i.e., warmth and competence) among several typefaces, there were sans-serif (e.g., Arial, Helvetica, Oswald, Quarrion, etc.), handwriting (Bradley, Children, Dandelion, etc.), and serif (Time New Roman, Soria, Courier, Playfair, etc.).
Results and Discussion
The results of repeated ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) showed that participants perceived different level of competence (F (1.40, 54.63) = 17.23, p < .001, Partial η2 = .31) and warmth (F (1.28, 49.96) = 10.32, p < .01, Partial η2 = .21) depending on typefaces. The post-hoc analyses indicated that participants were more likely to perceive competence in Sans-Serif (M = 4.89, SD = 1.15) and Serif (M = 5.07, SD = 1.04) than in handwriting typeface (M = 4.23, SD = 1.22). On the other hand, participants perceived higher warmth in handwriting (M = 4.75, SD = 1.26) and Serif (M = 4.47, SD = .96) than in Sans-Serif typeface (M = 4.01, SD = 1.08). Model fit for competence was Wilks’ λ = .58, F (2, 38) = 13.82, p < .001, Partial η2 = .42 and model fit for warmth Wilks’ λ = .61, F (2, 38) = 12.11, p < .001, Partial η2 = .39. Study 1 examined the effects of three kinds of font-styles across each typeface on warmth and competence. The findings provide distinct evidence that Sans-serif font-style provokes more competent associations than others (i.e., serif and handwriting) and handwriting font-style generates more warm associations than others.
Research Design in Study 2
Given that a certain font-style is more associated with psychological perceptions (warmth vs. competence), the next step was to ascertain whether is the relationship of the variables (i.e., attitude toward typeface, engagement, and perceived power of typeface) (RQ1, H2, H3, and H4). Participants were exposed to two typeface-conditions by using handwriting typeface (i.e., Tornac) and sans-serif typeface (i.e., Nimbus) with several text phrases. Factor analysis was conducted to determine what underlying structure exists for measures on the following variables: typeface, the perceived power, engagement, and attitude toward typeface and to summarize the structural equation modeling among the set of variables.
Results and Discussion
To check the structural equivalence of measures, reliability test, correlation analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were conducted. Reliabilities for all measurements indicated acceptable levels: perceived power (a = .89) (Dubois et al., 2016), engagement toward the typeface (a = .95), attitude toward the typeface (a = .94). The correlations analysis showed that there is no violation of multicollinearity among the variables (r ≤ .62). A CFA was conducted to confirmed the measurement model fit. The results of CFA indicated that the measurement model had a good fit to the data, χ2 (41) = 55.38, p > .05, χ2/df = 1.35, GFI = .94, CFI (comparative fit index) = .99, TLI (Tucker-Lewis index) = .99, RMSEA (root mean square error of approximation) = .05, SRMR (root mean square error of approximation) = .04. For study model analysis, the Amos 23 with 5,000 bootstrap samples for mediation analyses was employed to analyze the proposed study model. Figure 1 indicate the result of path analysis. The results of the analysis showed that people perceived stronger power in Sans-Serif than in handwriting typeface (β = .43, p < .001, SE = .22, 95% CI [.00, .86]), but they were likely to engage in handwriting than in Sans-Serif typeface (β = -.34, p < .001, SE = .23, 95% CI [-.79, .11]). Perceived typeface power is positively associated with the typeface engagement (β = .60, p < .001, SE = .60, 95% CI [.44, .76]). Indirect effect of typeface on engagement through perceived power was significant (β = .26, p < .001, SE = .06, 95% CI [.16, .38]). Insignificant effect of typeface on engagement become significant when mediator, perceive power, was included in the model. The result shows a full mediation model. Engagement toward the typeface is a significant predictor of attitude toward the typeface (β = .62, p < .001, SE = .07, 95% CI [.48 .76]). Indirect effect of power on attitude toward typeface through engagement was significant (β = .28, p < .01, SE = .07, 95% CI [.24, .51]), but indirect effect of typeface on attitude through engagement was not significant (β = -.21, p > .05, SE = .05, 95% CI [-.15, .04]).
Research Design in Study 3
An experimental study between-subjects randomized factorial design, 2 (typeface: handwriting vs. sans-serif) x 2 (perceived power of the communicator in ads: high vs. low), was used to test the proposed Hypotheses 5 and 6.
Results and Discussion
Regression analyses were conducted to test proposed hypotheses, controlling for the differences of communicators’ characteristics (e.g., a business woman vs. a housewife). Even though ad stimuli were developed by two conditions on communicator’s power, there are individual differences from the perceived power toward each spokesmodel in ads. Therefore, we measured and analyzed the perceived power. The results (Table 1) revealed that perceived communicators’ power positively influences ad engagement (β = .19, p < .05), attitude toward to ad (β = .41, p < .001), and purchase intention (β = .38, p < .001), but typeface does not. Different from the expectation, typeface and perceived communicator power did not interact to generate advertising effectiveness.
Conclusion
Study 1 obviously revealed that handwriting typefaces are associated with warmth and Sans-serif typefaces provoke competence in consumers’ perception. Study 2 illustrated that there were strong relationships between typeface and the perceived power toward typeface, between typeface and engagement through the perceived power toward typeface, and between the perceived power toward typeface and attitude toward typeface through engagement. Engagement toward the typeface is a significant predictor of attitude toward the typeface. Moreover, there were relatively relationships between typeface and engagement; between engagement and attitudes toward typefaces. The result of Study 3 shows that advertising audiences are more likely to process other visual information (e.g., photo images) than typefaces (e.g., a headline copy) in order to indicate audiences’ responses in advertising contexts and to generate advertising effectiveness. The current research has demonstrated that the strong effects come from a typeface itself might eventually dissipate when woven with other visual elements such as photo images in ads, even though the current research previously indicates that there are influential effects come from typefaces such as warmth and competence and the relationship with the perceived power.

• Soojin Kim(Louisiana State University, USA)
• Yoojung Kim(Konkuk University, Republic of Korea)
• A-Reum Jung(Louisiana State University, USA)