From Emotion to Value The Role of Emotional Response and Perceived Brand Authenticity in Storytelling and Consumer Willingness to Pay

Storytelling is widely used in marketing to create emotional connections between consumers and brands, yet less is known about whether these responses translate into economic value. This study investigates how storytelling-related consumer responses are associated with Willingness to Pay (WTP), with particular attention to Emotional Response and Perceived Brand Authenticity (PBA). A between-subject experiment was conducted using two storytelling advertisements from Dove and Pepsi. Data from 99 valid respondents were analysed through PLS-SEM using SmartPLS. The findings show that the two campaign conditions generated significantly different emotional responses, with the Dove campaign eliciting stronger reactions than the Pepsi campaign. Emotional Response was positively associated with WTP and represented an important pathway linking differences between the two campaign stimuli to consumers’ economic evaluation. An additional mediation analysis including the direct Storytelling Condition → WTP path showed that Emotional Response accounted for a significant part, but not all, of the difference in WTP between the two conditions. Perceived Brand Authenticity showed a significant positive association with WTP in the baseline model, although this relationship was not robust in the extended specification including the direct Storytelling Condition → WTP path. Its hypothesised moderating effect on the relationship between Emotional Response and WTP was not supported. Overall, the findings indicate that Emotional Response represents the most robust mechanism associated with WTP in the present study, while the contribution of Perceived Brand Authenticity appears more sensitive to model specification. The results should be interpreted as evidence concerning the two specific campaign stimuli examined rather than as general causal evidence of the effect of storytelling itself.