Companies use various appeals in their advertising practice to impact consumers’ attitudes and purchase intention by an advertisement. Advertising appeals can be divided into rational or emotional, depending on whether companies want to influence the rational or the emotional motives of the consumer to purchase of the advertised product. Since there is no general pattern for the use of appeals and the success of an advertising message, this study aims to explore the impact of the emotional and rational advertising appeals on the purchase intention. The results of the empirical research, conducted using the focus groups method, are shown in this paper and the focus group participants were members of the student population.The research results indicate that different advertising appeals may have a different impact on the consumer’s purchase intention; in case of women, the emotional appeal has a stronger impact while for men it is the rational appeal, while “fear appeal” proved to be effective to a certain point, after which it causes selective perception and rejection. This implies that depending on the product, its purpose and target group, advertisers can choose the type of appeal, combination of the appeals and their creative presentation, based on the empirical confirmation of the efficiency the approach.