Mechanism of Emotional Marketing in Enhancing Appeal of 'Ban

Anxiety' Bananas

Xinyi Yang

School of Liberal Arts, Macau University of Science and Technology, Weilong Road, Taipa Island, China

Keywords: Agricultural Marketing, Emotional Marketing, Banana Green Ban, Brand Competitiveness, Innovation

Strategy.

Abstract: Under the background of increasing competition and homogenization of agricultural products, emotional

marketing has become an important direction of agricultural marketing innovation. This paper takes the

banana of ‘Ban Anxiety’ as an example, and adopts the questionnaire survey method to investigate 131

respondents. It is found that the brand has attracted many young consumers through the new means of

emotional marketing, enhanced product awareness and market competitiveness, and has a high rate of

consumer repurchase. The analysis of ‘Ban Anxiety’ bananas benefited from significant marketing, innovative

and unique creative types, and precise and clear targeting, which provides a lot of insights for the marketing

of other agricultural products in the future. In conclusion, the empowering effect of emotional marketing is

very significant, and in the future, the marketing of agricultural products should deeply explore the emotional

value of products and innovate the marketing mode to adapt to the development of the market.

1 INTRODUCTION

At present, the competitive situation in the market of

agricultural products is getting more and more

intense. With the rapid advancement of agricultural

modernization, the output of agricultural products has

been rising, but this has also made the problem of

product homogenisation in the market more and more

serious. Agricultural products vary in terms of quality,

price, and other conventional characteristics. In such

a competitive environment, it has been difficult to

make agricultural to differentiate agricultural

products, capture consumer attention, and earn

consumer preference by relying only on these

conventional selling points. Many agricultural

products are facing severe challenges such as difficult

sales growth and smaller profit margins in the market

wave, and are in urgent need of innovative marketing

strategies to achieve breakthroughs and development.

Emotional marketing, as an emerging and

influential marketing concept, has received

widespread attention in the field of marketing in

recent years. It breaks the limitation of traditional

marketing which only focuses on product function

and price, and puts the focus on consumers' emotional

needs and emotional experience. Emotion is an

“informational cue” that can directly influence

consumers ' decision-making judgments (Berger &

Schwartz, 2011). Fundamentally, emotion marketing

is a marketing strategy in which brands achieve sales

growth of their products or services by stimulating

and mobilising the emotions of consumers, so that

they have positive emotional resonance during the

purchasing process, thereby influencing the

purchasing decision. The generation of emotions is

mainly based on whether the objective things can

satisfy the basic needs of individuals. When the needs

are satisfied, individuals will produce p1ositive and

affirmative emotions such as happiness and

satisfaction; on the contrary, once the needs are not

satisfied, individuals are prone to negative and

negativistic emotions such as fear, anger and pain

(Yang & Fan, 2024). Therefore, the comprehensive

marketing of agricultural products and emotions is

one of the effective opportunities for traditional

products to break through their niche markets.

In the research related to the topic of emotion

marketing, different case studies have adopted

different analysis methods. Firstly, Beastie is a

diversified art and lifestyle brand with unique design

and emotional marketing to deliver high-end life

concepts. Therefore, the research on how to build the

Yang, X.

Mechanism of Emotional Marketing in Enhancing Appeal of ’Ban Anxiety’ Bananas.

DOI: 10.5220/0013845800004719

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on E-commerce and Modern Logistics (ICEML 2025), pages 401-407

ISBN: 978-989-758-775-7

401

long-term value of the brand in the new era of

emotional marketing with Beastie Pie as an example

shows that today's research focuses on the short-term

effect of traffic conversion, i.e., marketing, and that it

is necessary to focus on the ‘long-term value’ through

the three major strategies of story marketing, co-

branding, and positive marketing in order to build the

brand and the long-term value of the consumers. To

build the emotional resonance between the brand and

the consumers, and to enhance the loyalty. By

combing the academic research results on emotional

marketing, the authors found the theoretical gap

between short-term and long-term effects, which

further clarified the research objectives of the article.

The research object mainly covers the core business

of the Beastie brand and its target group - young

consumers in the Z era. The sample size is not

specified, but the study focuses on the consumption

characteristics of the new generation of young people

who are ‘pleased with themselves’. The case study is

not representative enough, the applicability of a single

high-end art and lifestyle brand to other brands and

industries is limited, and there is a lack of quantitative

data to support the data, focusing on qualitative

analysis. Even though the goal of long-term value is

proposed, there is a lack of systematic means of

verification for clear and specific assessment

indicators (Ni, 2024). Comparison, quantitative

analysis and cross-group research can better focus on

segmentation perspective and overall perspective

together.

Secondly, in the analysis of goodwill marketing fit

type and moral sentiment on purchase intention, the

article mainly explores the goodwill marketing fit

type and image fit (corporate image and values) are

more likely to stimulate consumers' purchase

intention than functional fit (product function), while

moral sentiment plays an intermediary role between

fit type and purchase intention to indirectly promote

the behaviour of purchasing. The authors designed an

experimental study taking multiple variables for

scenario simulation to exclude the interference of

inherent impressions of real brands. The sample

focuses on young women and the vast majority of

them have higher education degrees, thus lacking the

representation of middle-aged and older and lower-

market groups. The virtual brand controls the inherent

attitude of the brand, while the familiarity and trust of

the brand in the real market may affect the marketing

effect, and there is a gap between the study's view and

reality. The epidemic context was used as the

background, and other social contexts lacked

empirical evidence. Moral emotions were only

selected as the two dimensions of ‘pride’ and

‘gratitude’, ignoring other emotional dimensions such

as sympathy and empathy (Yang et al., 2023). The

theory and practice of emotional marketing can only

be further expanded with real brands, diverse groups

and social issues.

Focusing on the emerging case of ‘Ban Anxiety’

bananas, the emergence of the ‘Ban Anxiety’ bananas

marketing case has given. The emergence of ‘Ban

Anxiety’ bananas has brought new ideas and vigour to

the field of agricultural marketing. Lin Wenhai, from

Pinghe County, Fujian Province, has cleverly

combined bananas with bananas, giving them the

words ‘Banana Friends, No Anxiety’, ‘Banana

Green’, ‘Banana Friend’, ‘Banana Green’ and

‘Banana Friend’. ‘Banana a friend’ and other

particularly creative new names, but also carefully

made matching cardboard boxes and cards. This

innovative approach has successfully attracted the

attention of many young people, who are not only

happy to buy, but also like to share in the office, have

to card photos, and take the initiative to spread the

word on social media, so that the product has quickly

leading to rapid market recognition and consumer

adoption in the market.

Ni Min and Xu Wish's research suggests that

emotional value drives consumption to satisfy

emotional needs, making emotional value a core

consumption motivation that goes beyond the

function of use. The authors' use of harmonics and

visual symbols to construct the metaphor of emotion

has become a hot topic in society and has widely

spread across social platforms. The catalytic effect of

social media allows users to strengthen their own

group identity through sharing and interaction, with

certain social attributes. Emotional marketing has a

certain double-sided nature, on the one hand, to

relieve the pressure of young people, the consumption

structure from material to spiritual gradually change.

On the other hand, the problems of blind consumption

and excessive marketing are also emerging. The study

not only focuses on field research, but also introduces

experts' opinions and combines qualitative and

quantitative data. The geographical analysis focuses

on Nanjing and e-commerce platforms, while the

consumption differences between cities and regions

are not sufficiently analysed. The causality argument

is lacking, based only on observation and expert

interpretation. The article is limited by the nature of

the report, lack of mathematical rigour in the relevant

theoretical depth, enhance the universality in order to

better provide systematic guidance for enterprises to

adopt emotional marketing strategies(Ni & Make,

2024). Most of the studies focusing on ‘Ban Banana

Green’ have shown that enhancing emotional value is

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a new way to drive agricultural products. From the

‘ban banana green’ found that the emotional value of

agricultural products in the marketing research, in

addition to differentiation, the catalytic role of social

media, etc., more focused on the culture in the scene

of the innovation, dynamic response to consumer

demand and quality and marketing balance between

the product back to the quality of agricultural

products, attention to the rate of repurchase leads to

trust overdraft. Related studies have certain

limitations in terms of sample, the group interested in

this topic is only a part of the population, and the

natural emotional value of agricultural products

mining stays at the phenomenon level, the refinement

of the theorisation can be more profound (Ding &

Hou, 2024).

Therefore, this paper focuses on the social media

platform-wide survey groups, and specifically

analyses the related studies of different groups on

‘Ban Anxiety’ bananas, and analyses the social

reasons behind it under different perspectives. Based

on the special case study, it provides a reference basis

for enterprise development.

2 RESEARCH METHODS

This paper adopts the questionnaire survey method to

make a comprehensive analysis of the emotional

marketing of ‘Ban Anxiety’ bananas. The

questionnaire was released to the public through

Questionnaire Star, with a total of 12 questions,

including the basic information of the respondents

and the degree of knowledge and understanding of the

‘Ban Anxiety’ brand bananas, with 131 valid

questionnaires and a total sample capacity of 131

people.

Table 1: Gender of respondents

Option Ratio

Male 39 29.77%

Female 92 70.23%

The number of females was 92 and the number of

males was 39, with far more females interested than

males (see Table 1).

Table 2: Age group of survey respondent

Option Ratio

Under 18 years old 11 8.40%

18-25 55 41.98%

26 42 32.06%

36 17 12.98

Over 45 years old 6 4.56%

Total 131

Participation was high among respondents centred

between the ages of 18-35 (see Table 2).

Figure 1: Occupation of survey respondents

The survey respondents are mainly business

employees and students (see Figure 1).

3 RESULTS

Figure 2: Income of survey respondents

Mechanism of Emotional Marketing in Enhancing Appeal of ’Ban Anxiety’ Bananas

403

As for the price, survey respondents' incomes are

concentrated in the range of less than 3,000 RMB and

between 5,000 and 8,000 RMB (see Figure 2).

Covering a wide range of incomes, all income levels

are attractive.

Figure 3: Price sensitivity of survey respondents

36 percent of respondents indicated that price was

a strong influence on decision-making and that the

majority of the user group had low price sensitivity

(see Figure 3), and that price was not a decisive factor

in consumer purchases.

Figure 4: ‘Whether the emotional concept conveyed by

‘Ban Anxiety’ bananas is appealing to survey respondents

The vast majority of the survey respondents

believe that this emotional marketing is attractive to

them (see Figure 4), so this phenomenon fully

demonstrates that, in the current situation where the

effect of traditional marketing methods is gradually

diminishing, the marketing method that incorporates

emotional elements has great potential, and it can

open up a new way of marketing for agricultural

products.

Figure 5: Frequency of purchasing ‘Ban Anxiety’ bananas

From the survey, it can be seen that more than half

of the consumers who have purchased Ban Anxiety

bananas ‘1-3 times per quarter’ account for the

highest percentage (see Figure 5). Consumers have a

high repurchase rate after purchase, showing a

tendency to make multiple purchases in the future.

Consumers have a high level of recognition and

satisfaction, so the combination of emotions and

agricultural products creates a unique market

competitiveness.

4 IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS ON THE

STRATEGY OF ‘BAN BANANA

GREEN TO EMPOWER

EMOTIONAL MAEKTING

Effective marketing: Using e-commerce platforms

and other channels, the number of searches and orders

has increased significantly.

Figure 6: Awareness of 'Ban Anxiety' bananas

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404

65% of consumers learnt about ‘Ban Anxiety’

bananas through e-commerce platforms, while 28%

of consumers learnt about the brand through e-

commerce shopping platforms (see Figure 6). This

further shows that in the Internet era, new social

media and e-commerce platforms have become the

mainstay of brand fame. The vast majority of

consumers learn about and buy brands online. ‘Ban

Anxiety’ bananas became a hot topic in social media,

which further enhanced the product's popularity and

influence, and also drove the heat of the entire banana

category, allowing the old varieties to regain more

attention, and laying a deep foundation for the product

to continue to be a hot seller in the future.

Unique and innovative creativity:

Figure 7: ‘‘Ban Anxiety’ bananas’ emotional elements have

an impact on consumers

Figure 8: Reasons for consumers to buy ‘‘Ban Anxiety’’

bananas

The combination of banana marking and emotions

boosted the attention of 45.8% of consumers and the

goodwill of 51.91%.44.27% of consumers chose to

actively share the bananas with others, which

enhanced the brand's social communication through

interesting topics.43.51% of the survey respondents

broke the stereotypes of bananas and gave a new

connotation to the product, and the negative

feedbacks were relatively low, so the marketing

approach is accepted by most consumers (see Figure

7).

The vast majority of consumers who purchased

the bananas were attracted to the unique emotional

theme and innovative packaging (see Figure 8).

Therefore, by combining simple and rustic produce

with contemporary trends, it is possible to avoid the

ways and means by which most produce is sold in the

marketplace. Drawing on the ‘emotional priming

theory’, it is posited that individuals can be stimulated

by presenting pictures or words containing emotions,

thus producing emotional priming effects (Zemack-

Rugar et al., 2007). The harmonic terrain of banana

‘banana green’ and ‘anxiety’ gives banana a brand

new cultural connotation and emotional value,

together with interesting texts and related cartons

such as ‘banana friends, no anxiety’, With interesting

copywriting such as ‘Banana Friends, No Anxiety’

and related cartons and cards, ordinary bananas are

turned into creative products with stories and

emotions. By infusing products with emotional

elements, companies can evoke the emotional value

of consumers during the purchasing process. This

emotional drive will prompt consumers to have a

stronger desire to buy.

Precise positioning of target customers:

Figure 9 Successful aspects of emotional marketing for

‘Ban Anxiety’ bananas

The brand's innovative, infectious, visually

striking packaging and social media communication

were recognised by nearly half of consumers (see

Figure 9).

Mechanism of Emotional Marketing in Enhancing Appeal of ’Ban Anxiety’ Bananas

405

Figure 10: Purchase frequency of consumers who have

purchased

Extensive promotion with the help of e-commerce

platforms and social media has pinpointed the target

customer group as young people. Contemporary

young consumers not only pursue fashion and tend to

emotional consumption, but also pay more attention

to investing in themselves and enjoyable

consumption, which coincides with the brand's

marketing strategy (Maddenley, 2022). Aiming at the

target customer groups, combined with the

communication effect of the Internet has made

‘Banana Green’ quickly become popular and attracted

a large number of potential consumers. Focusing on

the target market of young people, the brand has learnt

that when they are under pressure, they are eager to

accept new things and release their emotions.

Therefore, directly addresses consumer psychological

needs by embedding the product with culturally

resonant emotional metaphors, which further satisfies

consumers' pursuit of emotional value and

successfully attracts more attention.

5 INSIGHTS AND LESSONS

LEARNT FROM THE LINK

BETWEEN AGRICULTURAL

PRODUCTS AND MARKETING

5.1 Enhancing the Added Value of

Agricultural Products

Emotional marketing has transformed bananas from

ordinary agricultural products into unique

commodities with emotional value. Initially, the green

bananas keep turning yellow to be edible by

hydroponic culture, and bananas continue to deepen

their own emotional value in the process of

cultivation. From practicality to emotionality, the

banana is transformed from a product that cares about

whether it is good to eat or not, and whether it is fresh

or not, to a stress reliever for the new age group, and

it has found its own emotional positioning in

agricultural products. Other agricultural products can

also learn from this, mining the emotional connection

between the product itself and the pain points of

consumer groups, such as combining the hard shell of

nuts with inspirational elements to enhance the unique

emotional value of the product.

5.2 Expanding Consumer Groups and

Market Space

‘Ban Anxiety’ bananas focus on attracting young

consumers and creating creative marketing

campaigns in their constant pursuit of innovation and

personalisation. The relationship between emotion,

information and sharing behaviour is mainly realized

through the use of the ‘Ban Anxiety’ bananas.

information and sharing behaviour are mainly

realized through direct and intermediary ways (Gao,

2022). Therefore, it is important to further expand the

market scope of agricultural products by initiating

relevant trending topics in social media and

encouraging consumers to share their own

experiences, so as to attract more and more young

people's understanding and attention. At the same

time, other agricultural products in the expansion of

their popularity, should be in-depth study of the

characteristics of different consumer groups, know

what specific consumer groups actually like, what to

pay attention to, accurate positioning, expanding the

market space.

5.3 Enhancement on the Brand

Competitiveness by Creating a

Unique Brand with a Story

Agricultural products will have their own unique

‘persona’ for agricultural products to shape their own

brand story, so that consumers produce a “brand

understand me, understand my brand image”. From

then on, when consumers see this brand, they will not

only associate it with fruits, but also with a good

partner to relieve anxiety. Tapping into the emotional

story and cultural connotation behind the product, the

brand can combine local characteristics with

agricultural products to tell the history of cultivation

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and heritage stories. The most suitable emotional

expression with the product in order to establish a

close connection between the product and the

emotion, so that the product and the emotion rendered

by the marketing of the high years of adhesion, so that

the maximisation of the utility of emotional marketing

(Zhu, 2023). Brand - building initiatives can let

consumers, in the purchase of agricultural products,

not only buy the product itself but also purchase a

cultural and emotional experience, enhancing the

competitiveness of the brand.

5.4 Innovative Marketing Mode and

Strategy

‘Ban Anxiety’ bananas not only breaks through the

appearance and packaging form of previous

agricultural products, adopts a more attractive

consumer group of interesting creative design to

attract the eyes of consumers, but also breaks the

traditional advertising route, so that agricultural

products become more fashionable. Brand managers

need to make full use of social media, short videos

and other emerging media, combining online and

offline to expand brand awareness. Unite with more

IP to further establish a perfect feedback mechanism.

Thus, it shortens the distance between consumers and

the brand, timely understands consumers' demands

and opinions, and improves customer satisfaction and

loyalty. Different agricultural products should study

the innovative marketing models and strategies

suitable for themselves in order to better break the

blockade of traditional models.

6 CONCLUSION

In conclusion, through the in-depth analysis of the

case of ‘banana green’ banana emotional marketing,

the brand has more and more market share in the

market by virtue of emotional marketing. Emotional

marketing can not only effectively improve the added

value of the product, but also provide innovative ideas

for agricultural marketing in terms of expanding

consumer groups and increasing brand

competitiveness. Unique and innovative ideas,

precise market positioning, significant marketing and

effective brand building provide valuable reference

for other agricultural marketing. In the future, the

marketing of agricultural products should pay more

attention to the in-depth excavation of its own

emotional value and the continuous innovation of the

marketing model, in order to adapt to the ever-

changing marketing, so that the agricultural products

in the new era of the market blossomed with more

vitality.

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