Advertising strategies for brand image repair: The effectiveness of advertising alliances

Advertising alliances are an effective shortcut to increase brand awareness and improve brand image. However, few studies have compared the effectiveness of advertising alliances with traditional (single-brand) advertising. Thus, this study focuses on a specific type of brand beliefs – namely, brand personality – and compares the ability of advertising alliances and traditional advertising to strengthen positive traits and downplay negative traits for a real brand in need of image repair. The results show that the advertising alliance is considerably more effective in upgrading positive brand personality traits than single-brand advertising. Importantly, this superior effect remained one week after exposure. The choice of advertising strategy had no effect on negative brand personality traits. Implications for advertising management are discussed.     

The moderating influence of brand status and source confirmation on third-party endorsement effects in advertising

Two studies were conducted to examine the effect that perceived brand status has on consumers’responses to source confirmation of third-party advertising endorsements. In Study 1, a 2 (ad exposure with opportunity to confirm the source of the endorsement vs ad exposure with no opportunity to confirm) by 2 (topdog brand vs underdog brand) factorial design was used to examine hypothesised effects on message believability and brand attitude. Results indicated that, for underdog brands, augmenting advertising strategies with publicity pieces (source confirmation) is an effective approach in enhancing advertising message believability and producing more favourable brand attitudes. On the other hand, this ad strategy was not shown to have similar added benefits for the topdog brand. Study 2 further examined these interactive effects, finding that, in an underdog brand condition, individuals reported higher levels of involvement with a publicity piece than with an advertisement. An opposite effect (i.e. greater ad involvement than publicity piece involvement) was observed for individuals in the topdog brand condition. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed, and future research directions are offered.     

Corporate Advertising Pass-through onto the Brand: Some Experimental Evidence

While researchers and managers have speculated that corporate advertising can have an impact on brand knowledge, to date there is no empirical support for such "pass-through." We report on a laboratory study manipulating the presence or absence in a brand ad of retrieval cues for subjects' corporate advertising and their pre-existing brand knowledge. We found evidence of pass-through, but it was moderated by the retrieval of subjects' pre-existing brand knowledge. Our results have theoretical and managerial implications, and suggest a number of interesting opportunities for future research.     

It's no longer mine: the role of brand ownership and advertising in cross-border brand acquisitions

Although cross-border brand acquisitions are increasingly common in the global marketplace, research on how consumers respond to them is limited. Building on social identity and psychological ownership theories, we introduce the concept of brand ownership to the advertising literature, and show its negative effects on consumer reactions to a brand acquisition. Furthermore, we demonstrate that consumers’ disidentification (i.e., an oppositional motivation) with an acquiring country moderates the negative effect of consumers’ brand ownership on consumer attitudes after a brand acquisition. The results reveal that consumers with high levels of brand ownership develop more negative post-acquisition brand attitudes when a brand is acquired by a country with which consumers strongly disidentify (i.e. dissociative vs. out-group). Furthermore, our research introduces the concept of a brand ownership appeal in advertising, and demonstrates that it is an effective advertising strategy in enhancing post-acquisition brand attitudes for consumers with high levels of brand ownership. Important theoretical and managerial advertising implications conclude this research.     

Book Review

Media fragmentation and proliferation, in concert with declining television advertising efficacy, has engendered interest in developing more effective ways to reach consumers – particularly non-users of a brand. This study explores the effect of active product placement in computer games on both brand attitude (A_brand) and recall. Findings suggest that exposure to a particular brand in a computer game can increase A_brand among consumers whose pre-existing attitude towards the brand in question is fairly low. We conclude that product placement within computer games is an effective means of fostering high spontaneous brand recall and even of influencing consumers less positively predisposed towards a brand (analogous to non-users). These findings have promising managerial implications for firms looking to grow their customer base through acquisition and conversion.     

Low involvement processing - a new model of brand communication

This paper contradicts the traditional rational view of brand choice and offers a radical new model of how consumers are influenced by advertising. The model holds that the way in which advertising and other forms of brand communication are mentally processed means consumers build up powerful but simple brand associations and these in turn are able to influence their brand decisions intuitively.     

Investigating the Advertising Antecedents to and Consequences of Brand Experience

Brand experience may contribute more to promotional efficacy than concepts such as brand personality/associations/equity/value/attitudes. Yet, little is known about whether managed advertising efforts might evoke more desirable brand experiences and promotional outcomes as a consequence of consumers’ brand experiences. This study examines antecedents and consequences that may be associated with brand experiences. Attitude toward brand name, connectedness to celebrity endorser, message fit, and visual imaging were investigated as antecedents. Brand attitude and brand distinctiveness were examined as consequences. The resulting insights add managerial rigor to advertising processes that currently are often managed more by gut than by reason.     

The effects of advertisement picture likeability on information search and brand choice

A considerable amount of advertising research has focused on the effects of affective cues such as likeable people, pictures, or music. The conclusions have been that ads relying on affective cues can influence choice only under limited conditions, when relevant brand information is either unavailable or not useful if present. However, the effects of affective cues on choice may not be as limited as previously thought. When respondents are allowed to explore diagnostic information but must do it sequentially after initial exposure to the ads with pictures varying in likeability, we hypothesize that the positive ad will influence brand choice, and this effect will be at least partially due to the initial effects of the ads on search of this information. Our study manipulated the likeability of pictures in print ads for a ??test brand,?? along with other similarly formatted ads for three other brands. Brand attribute information was not readily available but could be searched and showed clearly that the test brand was only the second-best. Results showed that the ad pictures biased search order in favor of the advertised test brand and increased choice of the second-best test brand when it was advertised with the likeable pictures. Subsequent analysis revealed that search order significantly but not completely mediated the effects of picture on choice. The results suggest that information search can be a useful, sensitive measure of the effects of advertising.     

Make product placement work for you: Get less exposure

Expenditure on product placement has grown faster (170%) than on advertising (15%) over the past 10 years, but some evidence suggests that the return on investment has been declining. For the well-known, fast-moving consumer goods/consumer-packaged goods (FMCG/CPG) food brands typically placed in local TV programming—the context of this article—the management problem of overfocusing on brand exposure hinders gaining brand choice, the ultimate strategic goal of marketing. Managers’ preconditioning, ease of measuring, and assumptions about the value of exposure contribute to their subtle placements becoming blatant or in other problems, as when other promotional devices, like a television commercial or program sponsorships billboard, get bundled into the same TV episode as the company’s own product placement. The higher brand exposure gained can evoke negative mental outcomes in consumers, weakening influences on brand choice. An experiment with a large sample of grocery shoppers supports such an outcome. More strategic value can also be gained from product placements in general by their use longitudinally, in-between campaigns of TV commercials, as an instructive tool and through normalizing a brand’s role in a consumer’s life. We provide eight checkpoints for marketers to consider when planning to use product placement to gain value for their brands.     

Phenomenology of Aesthetic Organising--Ways Towards Aesthetically Responsive Organizations

Through explication of a visual research method, this paper theorizes how masculine identity interacts with consumption—of imagery, products, desires, and passions in advertising and consumer culture. We analyze the male body as a discursive “effect” created at the intersection of consumption and several marketing discourses such as advertising, market segmentation, and visual communication, balancing between brand strategy—what the marketer intends—and brand community—the free appropriation of meaning by the market. The paper’s contribution rests in extending previous work on male representation into historical, ontological, and photographic realms, providing a necessary complement between understanding advertising meaning as residing within managerial strategy or wholly subsumed by consumer response. We argue that greater awareness of the connections between the traditions and conventions of visual culture and their impact on the production and consumption of advertising images leads to enhanced ability to understand how advertising works as a representational system and signifying practice.     

Exciting on Facebook or competent in the newspaper? Media effects on consumers’ perceptions of brands in the fashion category

Abstract

Media investments are continuously shifting from traditional media like newspapers to digital alternatives like websites and social media. This study investigated if and how media choice between the two rival channels can influence consumers’ perceptions of a novel brand. 504 Swedish retail fashion customers participated in an experiment to evaluate the identical advertisement placed either in a national newspaper or on Facebook. The results revealed that advertising in a newspaper can have a positive effect on brand equity facets and purchase intention through brand personality perceptions of being competent, while advertising on Facebook have similar effects but through perceptions of being exciting. Besides some evidence that choice between traditional and new media affects brand personality this study is one of the first attempts to incorporate media channel choice into the broader customer-based brand equity framework. The results from this particular study suggest that media channel choice should be considered from a brand equity building perspective at least in the fashion category. This study shows that different media channels could complement each other strategically, as traditional media channels still can have valuable and unique contributions to brand building through brand personality perceptions, especially for brands striving to be perceived as competent.     

We share; we connect: how shared brand consumption influences relational brand connections

This research examines how married consumers form relational brand connections. Findings from two studies contribute to research on identity‐related brand consumption by showcasing how shared brand consumption and marital satisfaction influence relational brand connections and the perceived importance of the brand to the marital relationship. This research has important theoretical contributions and managerial implications. From a theoretical perspective, the authors show how consumers incorporate brands into their interpersonal relationships through shared brand consumption and that relational brand connections influence brand‐related outcomes, such as brand attitudes, purchase intentions, brand affect, and brand separation distress. From a managerial perspective, the findings highlight the importance of considering relational aspects of brand consumption when designing branding strategy and advertising appeals.     

Some Thoughts on Multinational Agencies

Abstract

This study tested a model relating humor perceived after repeated exposures to a commercial message to measures of advertising effectiveness. These effectiveness variables are recall of the brand name and advertising copy, attitude toward the advertised brand, stated purchase probability and actual brand choice. The findings indicated that adding humor to a conventional hierarchy-of-effects model does not improve the model's overall explanatory power. However, humor was found to be negatively related to recall and was positively related to brand attitude; both relationships were predicted based on literature in this area.     

Advertising weak and strong brands: Who gains?

The authors present an empirical study that compares advertising for a weak brand and advertising for a strong brand. The results indicate that brand attitude and purchase intention for the weak brand are higher when subjects cannot recall the ad. The opposite is found for the strong brand. Comparisons between single‐brand ads and a joint ad reveal that ad‐evoked brand recall increases for the weak brand in the joint ad and decreases for the strong brand. Furthermore, brand attitude and purchase intention are lower in the joint ad for the weak brand and higher for the strong brand. The study adds new insights to the literature on brand exposure without recall and the literature on joint advertising. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Consumer Responses to Slice-of-Life Versus Slice-of-Death Advertising Appeals: Exploring the Role of Polysemy,Branding, and Culture

Prior research has not verified the theoretical or practical value of slice-of-life and slice-of-death advertising appeals in relation to advertising and branding constructs like advertising polysemy and consumer-based brand equity. The authors make conceptual, measurement, and managerial contributions to this research issue dealing with slice of life versus death advertising appeals. Across three studies, the authors measure, evaluate, compare, and contrast slice-of-life and slice-of-death (SOL/D) advertising appeals across British and American cultures. The authors demonstrate the interrelationships of SOL/D appeals with advertising polysemy, consumer-based brand equity, cultural differences in advertising attitudes, and purchase intentions. From a measurement perspective, the authors develop and validate parsimonious measures of slice-of-life and slice-of-death (SOL/D) advertising appeals. Furthermore, they test the assumptions that underlie these appeals for United States and British customers, and investigate how the cultural characteristic of uncertainty avoidance moderates the impact of SOL/D advertising attitudes on purchase intentions. Managerially, the research demonstrates that SOL/D appeals offer value in predicting (a) consumer-based brand equity through advertising polysemy, (b) consumers’ advertising attitudes across different cultures, (c) consumers’ intentions to purchase, and (d) advertising differences and varying consumer responses in the United States and Britain.     

Addressing negative product attribute reviews: The case of advertising product attributes and corporate social responsibility information

Negative product reviews are bad for businesses. They can adversely affect product sales, brand evaluations, and brand loyalty. To attend to negative reviews, one approach is through advertising products or company virtues. The current study examines the efficacy of different advertising approaches (core product attribute advertising vs. non-core product attribute advertising vs. corporate social responsibility [CSR] advertising) in helping dilute the negative effect of dissimilar negative product attribute reviews (negative core product attribute reviews vs. negative non-core product attribute reviews). Through four experiments, we found that when the non-core attribute of a product had negative reviews, a core attribute advertising approach weakened the effect of negative reviews. However, CSR advertising was less effective. Furthermore, when the core attributes of a product had negative reviews, a non-core attribute advertising effort did not weaken, but actually augmented the impact of negative reviews. In addition, when the core attributes of a product received negative reviews, CSR advertising decreased the influence of negative reviews. Our findings provide theoretical and managerial implications for managing negative online reviews of product attributes.     

Priming a Cross‐Category Brand Alliance: The Moderating Role of Attribute Knowledge and Need for Cognition

Firms often enter cross‐category advertising brand alliance strategies with the goal to increase their market share by association with popular but noncompeting brand allies. However, firms are often not aware of the effects of these alliances on consumer perceptions of participating brands. This research explores the factors moderating brand attribute inferences following exposure to a cross‐category advertising brand alliance. It is proposed that attributes of a brand ally may serve as anchors that produce assimilation effects and move perceptions of a target brand toward the ally's attribute value, or as standards of comparison that produce contrast. This work provides evidence that attribute judgments in a cross‐category advertising brand alliance are moderated by attribute knowledge and individual differences in information processing motivation as reflected in self‐reported need for cognition (NFC) ratings.     

Extending Expectancy Violations Theory to Multiplayer Online Games: The Structure and Effects of Expectations on Attitude Toward the Advertising,Attitude Toward the Brand,and Purchase Intent

This study identified the underlying structure and the dimensional properties of multiplayer online game (MOG) expectations by adopting expectancy violations theory (EVT) and examined its effects on attitudes and behavioral intention for in-game ads. We found a multi-dimensional structure for MOG expectations consisting of three factors. While each of the expectation factors significantly predicted attitudes toward the advertising, no specific factor predicted purchase intent or brand attitude. Attitudes toward the advertising partially mediated the effects of MOG expectations (centrality, socialness, and features) on brand attitudes and fully mediated the effect of socialness on purchase intent. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Is television advertising being placed to reach product users?

Several textbooks, journal articles, and advertising practitioners indicate that the advertising for many products should be directed toward the heavy users of the product category. Other works suggest that advertising should be directed at current users of a brand to retain them or to users of competitive brands in an effort to attract them. The purpose of this article is to compare these directions for how advertising should be placed with data showing how advertising is being placed. The comparison is made using supermarket scanner panel data and household advertising exposure data. Examples are also provided to indicate the extent to which advertising could be targeted to heavy users of the product category and users of a brand, given the actual viewing and consumption patterns. Several implications for the placement of advertising are discussed.