More and more businesses created a vivid story and image of the brand to grab consumers' attention and minds. Story-form advertising seems to be an effective way to communicate with consumers. The importance and alchemy of storytelling can hardly be ignored. Recently, there has been some research done based on story-form advertising but much remains to be learned about the relationship between story elements and consumer attitude empirically. According to the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) paradigm and the attitude theory, the elements of a story (stimulus) may influence consumers’ affect and cognition (organism), which in turn influence their brand attitude (response). Thus, research is needed that empirically examines the intervening variables of consumers’ cognition and affection on the relationships between story elements and consumer brand attitude and purchase intention.
According to previous studies, four key elements are concluded to constitute a compelling story. These elements include authenticity, conciseness, reversal and humor. These elements use affect and cognition as intervening variables to influence the brand attitude and purchase intention. A 2 (high/low) × 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects design will be conducted to test the hypotheses in this paper. Furthermore, we also take two variables, the search goods and experience goods, to be considered about the influences of story elements on consumer attitude in this study.

1.Introduction 1
2. Theoretical Issues 4
2.1 Brand Attitude and purchase intention 4
2.2 Cognitive and Affective Component 5
2.3 Story 7
2.3.1 Storytelling 7
2.3.2 Story-Form Advertising 8
2.4 Elements of Story 9
2.4.1 Authenticity 10
2.4.2 Conciseness 11
2.4.3 Reversal 12
2.4.4 Humor 13
2.5 Theoretical Framework 15
3. Methodology 16
3.1 Design 16
3.2 Pilot study 16
3.3 Research Method 17
4. Study 1 18
4.1 Pretest 18
4.2 Procedure 19
4.3 Measures 19
4.3.1 Authenticity 19
4.3.2 Conciseness 20
4.3.3 Reversal 20
4.3.4 Humor 21
4.3.5 Cognition 22
4.3.6 Affect 22
4.3.7 Brand Attitude and Purchase Intention 22
4.4 Analysis 23
4.4.1 Manipulation Checks 23
4.4.2 Measurement model 23
4.4.3 Structural model 24
5. Study Two 25
5.1 Pretest 25
5.2 Procedure 26
5.3 Measures 26
5.4 Analysis 27
5.4.1Measurement model 27
5.4.2 Structural model 27
6. Conclusion 29
6.1 Discussion 29
6.2 Managerial Implications 30
6.3 Limitation and Future directions 31
References 32

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