The Role of Metaphor in the Advertising of Food Products: A Comparison between Italian and Bosnian Consumers

This dissertation examines if and how the use of metaphors in the advertising of healthy food can affect consumer behaviour. In doing so, various other consumer factors, such as cultural context and health consciousness, as well as brand features, product involvement and mental imagery have been considered while comparing two different groups of consumers, who were asked to evaluate an advertising message of a McDonald’s food product. Two quantitative investigations were carried out to meet the objectives of the research through the distribution of an online questionnaire to a sample of Italian and a sample of Bosnian respondents. In order to analyse the function of metaphor, four distinct versions of the questionnaire were created, each with the same questions but a different stimulus (one metaphorical and one non-metaphorical). By doing so, it was feasible to examine the metaphor's ability to influence customer behaviour as well as the consequences of other elements related to culture, brand, and product. The advertisement was produced specifically for this study using previous McDonald’s ads as inspiration. It aims to suggest healthier alternatives and persuade its customers to adopt a more balanced diet. The method chosen to interpret the data was the analysis of averages. Implementing this technique requires the use of an independent variable, which in this case relates to the groups being evaluated such as Italian and Bosnian consumers. These two main groups have been then evaluated by considering two sub-groups for each nation, namely the metaphorical and non-metaphorical versions of the ad, which becomes the added independent variable. Thus, we considered four groups that have been evaluated by employing the aforementioned variables. The results underlined variations in the kind of stimulus that respondents preferred in each nation. Metaphorical surveys were shown to work better in Italy because of its high-context culture. In such countries, food metaphors can arouse feelings and associations with flavour, aroma, and texture, which may enhance the attraction to the product and affect consumers’ desires to buy. Indeed, the metaphorical advertisement present in this study significantly impacted Italians' propensity to purchase, word-of-mouth, and attitude about the advertisement. In Bosnia, on the other hand, non-metaphorical surveys prevailed, which is consistent with the nation’s low context traits. In low-context nations, metaphors may be seen as unnecessary since they may be perceived as distracting from the core idea or lacking in specific meaning. As a result, metaphorical communication may be regarded with scepticism.