Improving the effectiveness of prosocial advertising campaigns: Message strategies to increase support from less empathic individuals

Individuals with low levels of trait empathy are hesitant when it comes to helping people in need. This makes it difficult for nonprofit organizations to gain their support for prosocial advertising campaigns. An experimental study among 214 Swiss students examines what message strategies nonprofit organizations should use to increase support from less empathic people. We investigate the effects of depicting daily life situations where people in need are happy versus sad (visual message strategies) and the effects of presenting statistical versus anecdotal evidence (verbal message strategies). The results show that less empathic individuals hold more favorable attitudes toward prosocial advertising campaigns when exposed to sad daily life images and anecdotal evidence. Moreover, attitudes mediate message effects on less empathic individuals' intentions to comply with a prosocial advocacy. Overall, the study suggests that nonprofit organizations should prefer sad over happy daily life images and anecdotal over statistical evidence in prosocial advertising campaigns.     

Does the intention to purchase cause-related products compared to charity donations indicate higher morality?

The growing competition among charity organizations provides individuals with a wide selection of ways how to support specific social causes. Donations to charity and purchase of cause-related products are two forms of pro-social behaviors that receive the most attention from researchers and practitioners. Though their aim (to help others) and many characteristics of campaigns are similar, usually these behaviors and factors affecting them are studied separately, using different theoretical backgrounds. This paper aims to investigate these two behaviors together on the basis of identity theory and analyze how moral identity and moral emotions impact them. Based on a survey of 571 respondents, SEM analysis disclosed the positive impact of the moral identity dimension internalization on the intention to purchase cause-related products (a private prosocial act), whereas the impact of the symbolization dimension on the intention to donate (a public prosocial act) was not revealed. The results also show that purchase intentions of a cause-related product are influenced by empathy, while donation intentions are influenced by guilt. The results indicate that although both behaviors can be explained using the same theoretical background (identity theory), the factors triggering them vary. Additionally, this study proposes several implications for non-profit organizations and cause-related marketing campaigns on how to make charity advertisements more appealing and increase consumers' direct and indirect donations.     

What you see is meaningful: Does green advertising change the intentions of consumers to purchase eco-labeled products?

Consumers are increasingly worried that their current consumption patterns have negative environmental impacts, which in turn shapes their green purchase intentions. Based on the signaling theory and stimulus–organism–response model, the purpose of this research is to construct a theoretical framework to understand consumer intentions to buy eco-labeled products. Empirical results from 671 questionnaires show that as expected, green advertising receptivity positively affects intention, and the relationship between green advertising receptivity and intention is also moderated by promotion focus and mediated by system trust and personal trust. However, the relationship between green advertising receptivity and purchase intention is not moderated by prevention focus. Hence, this research suggests that stakeholders should conduct truthful green advertising campaigns to dispel consumer suspicion and target different consumers with different green advertising and marketing campaigns to increase sales.     

Cause-related marketing and values in Australia

An investigation is conducted into attitudes towards cause-related marketing (CRM) among Australian consumers, with attention to the underlying differences in consumer values. It is found that those who place greater importance on values such as warm relationships, self-fulfilment and security are likely to have more positive attitudes towards CRM. In addition, females appear to have somewhat more positive attitudes towards cause-related marketing than males. Interestingly, the degree to which consumers are susceptible to interpersonal influence is not related to attitudes towards CRM. The implications are that cause-related marketing efforts are therefore best directed at females and those who value relationships, self-fulfilment and security. Efforts to support CRM through social influences (ie via compliance and conformity) would appear to be unlikely to succeed. Copyright © 1999 Henry Stewart Publications     

广告信息对仿冒奢侈品购买意愿的影响研究

本研究采用实验的方法挖掘广告调节聚焦信息对消费者非欺诈性仿冒奢侈品购买意愿的影响机理。研究结果表明，奢侈品广告信息对消费者仿冒奢侈品购买意愿的影响受消费者自尊水平的调节：对于高自尊的消费者，当广告信息为预防聚焦时，其仿冒奢侈品的购买意愿更低；对于低自尊的消费者，广告调节聚焦信息对其仿冒奢侈品购买意愿的影响不显著。广告信息对消费者仿冒奢侈品购买意愿的影响还受消费者从众倾向的调节：对于低从众倾向的消费者，当广告信息为预防聚焦时，其仿冒奢侈品的购买意愿更低；对于高从众倾向的消费者，广告调节聚焦信息对其仿冒奢侈品购买意愿的影响不显著。     

消费者品牌广告共鸣的内容、结构及其影响研究

品牌广告共鸣实质上体现了消费者与广告中品牌的一种紧密的心理联系,通过与品牌的情感互动,消费者会感觉到该品牌能够反映自己的情感并且可以通过该品牌为媒介与其他人进行交流,因此会增强消费者对品牌的认同和依赖,获得较高的品牌忠诚度.本研究发现消费者对广告中品牌的共鸣实际上体现为消费者对广告中的品牌理念、代言人、广告形式、广告场景的共鸣四方面,本文把这四方面命名为理念分享、形式欣赏、人物认同、场景相识,并且验证了消费者对这四方面的共鸣对品牌认知、品牌偏好产生显著正面作用,从而影响消费者对品牌的购买意愿.     

Psychological distancing: the effects of narrative perspectives and levels of access to a victim's inner world on victim blame and helping intention

• To explore what is an (in)effective way to tell victim stories in order to elicit support for charitable causes, an experiment was conducted to examine how narrative perspectives (first‐person versus third‐person) and levels of access to a victim's inner world (high versus low) may influence reactions to the victim. It found that the two factors interacted to influence victim blame and helping intention through affecting the perceived psychological distance of the victim. Specifically, the first‐person (versus third‐person) narrative increased victim blame and reduced helping intention by motivating participants to distance themselves from the victim when the level of access to the victim's inner world was relatively high but not when the level of access was relatively low. The findings contribute to our understanding of what would be an (in)effective way of telling victim stories to elicit compassionate reactions to those in need.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Price Competition and Advertising Signals: Signaling by Competing Senders

Can price and advertising be used by vertically differentiated duopolists to signal qualities to consumers? We show that pure price separation is impossible if the vertical differentiation is small, while adding dissipative advertising ensures the existence of separating equilibria. Two simple, but nonstandard, equilibrium refinements are introduced to deal with the multisender nature of the game, and they are shown to produce a unique separating and a unique pooling profile. Pooling results in a zero‐profit Bertrand outcome. Separation gives strictly positive duopoly profits, and dissipative advertising is used by the high‐quality firm when products are sufficiently close substitutes. Finally, compared to the complete‐information benchmark, the separating prices of both firms are distorted upwards when the degree of vertical differentiation is large, and downwards when it is small.     

From immersion to intention? Exploring advances in prosocial storytelling

Little empirical work has explored the psychological processes triggered by immersive technologies and how they might lead to more effective desirable prosocial outcomes. Thus, the current study explores two different modalities for presenting 360 videos—YouTube and head-mounted display (HMD)—as strategies for engaging audiences with cause-related stories. Across three stories, using these technologies led to the highest levels of presence, but there was no association between presence and increased attitudes towards the story content. Only narrative engagement impacted prosocial attitudes towards the video content. Data suggest that regardless of the technology used, telling engaging narratives that increase the viewer's self-efficacy is key to behavioral intentions—immersive technologies help viewers feel closer to the physical location of the narrative, but not the narrative itself.     

The effect of human image in B2C website design: an eye-tracking study

On B2C shopping websites, effective visual designs can bring about consumers’ positive emotional experience. From this perspective, this article developed a research model to explore the impact of human image as a visual element on consumers’ online shopping emotions and subsequent attitudes towards websites. This study conducted an eye-tracking experiment to collect both eye movement data and questionnaire data to test the research model. Questionnaire data analysis showed that product pictures combined with human image induced positive emotions among participants, thus promoting their attitudes towards online shopping websites. Specifically, product pictures with human image first produced higher levels of image appeal and perceived social presence, thus stimulating higher levels of enjoyment and subsequent positive attitudes towards the websites. Moreover, a moderating effect of product type was demonstrated on the relationship between the presence of human image and the level of image appeal. Specifically, human image significantly increased the level of image appeal when integrated in entertainment product pictures while this relationship was not significant in terms of utilitarian products. Eye-tracking data analysis further supported these results and provided plausible explanations. The presence of human image significantly increased the pupil size of participants regardless of product types. For entertainment products, participants paid more attention to product pictures integrated with human image whereas for utilitarian products more attention was paid to functional information of products than to product pictures no matter whether or not integrated with human image.     

Advertising and Coordination in Markets with Consumption Scale Effects

Many advertised products are established and have little quality variation. For these products advertising signaling explanations are unconvincing. We develop a coordination model of advertising with consumers observing ads probabilistically and never observing advertising levels. Consumers who fail to see an ad for a product believe it will likely have low sales and so be of low value. Firms advertise to avoid these beliefs. The model's predictions on advertising, market share, and profitability are consistent with observed outcomes. The model produces the time series behavior for prices and market share observed in the data and not available from existing coordination models.     

HelpAd: A marketing system

HelpAd is a simple idea, Brand A allows Brand B to advertise on its packaging thereby creating an effective and targeted medium to reach Brand A's consumers. The new dimension is that the advertisement is placed inside a space given by Brand A for the use of the International Red Cross. Immediately several benefits accrue to all parties; Brand A makes a statement of its ‘corporate caredness’ at point of sale, Brand B gets to reach a specifically targeted audience with little or no waste, and the International Red Cross receive payment based on the sale of valuable commercial media. The core product ‘the world's most ethical advertising’ is simply embellished by line extension through Help Ad's involvement in sport and entertainment sponsorship. The following paper sets out not only the reasoning behind this cause-related marketing but the synergies needed to make it successful.     

Sustainable development: The effects of environmental policy disclosure in advertising

Sustainable development is a key issue for society. Beside corporate's efforts, consumers should have responsibilities for environmental protection and consider sustainable coexistences between future generations and natural ecosystems. In this study, a 4 × 2 factorial between‐subject experiment is adopted to develop eight environmental policy disclosure scenarios based on different environmental advertising claims (product orientation, process orientation, image orientation, and environmental fact) and eco‐labels (available/unavailable) to explore the effect of consumer attitudes and behaviors. This study's results show that environmental advertising claims have significant effects on consumers' attitudes. The product, process, and image orientation advertising, along with advertising with eco‐labels, can induce more positive attitudes and stronger purchase intentions. Individuals with greater environmental concerns have a significant positive attitude toward environmental advertising. Consumer attitudes toward environmental advertising also have positive effects on purchase intentions and sustainable consumption behaviors. Finally, this study offers useful findings, practical implications, and insights.     

Advertising as Information: Matching Products to Buyers

We consider communication of quality via cheap talk and dissipative advertising expenditures, when consumers have heterogeneous tastes for quality, and price information must be acquired through costly search. For search pods, cheap talk communicates quality when fixed costs are roughly constant across quality levels, while if fixed costs vary greatly with quality, then firms having the higher fixed-cost quality level use dissipative advertising. For experience goods, quality can be communicated by cheap talk in a range where low-quality firms have greater fixed costs, and low-quality firms use dissipative advertising if their fixed costs are greater still.     

“互联网+”背景下,打造农特产品新型营销模式

在互联网兴盛的当代,电子商务成为新潮流,农民对于线上销售流程较为陌生,但消费者更倾向于线上买卖。打造农特产品新型营销模式,政府、企业、高校三主体参与建设,开展透明化生产+故事化销售,注重有爱消费+健康饮食,实现公众号+第三方小视频平台+农特产APP三位一体,促进企业发展、大学生创业、线上助农巧妙结合,从而推动经济收益与社会效益双提升。     

Consumer response to social entrepreneurship: the case of the Big Issue in Scotland

The Big Issue is the most prominent example of social entrepreneurship in the UK. Initially started as a nonprofit organisation, it is now a limited company that provides homeless individuals with the opportunity to earn an income and donates its profits to a charity that addresses problems of homelessness. The paper explores how consumer response to the Big Issue is influenced by the fact that the magazine is sold by homeless people themselves. The findings suggest that consumers buy it both because they like the magazine and because they believe that they are helping the homeless, often paying more than the magazine cover price for the latter reason. The results also reveal that consumers see the direct involvement of homeless people in the exchange positively, recognising it as an empowering process. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications     

Signaling Quality in an Oligopoly When Some Consumers Are Informed

This paper considers a signaling game between two competing firms and consumers. The firms have common private information concerning their qualities, and some of the consumers are informed about the firms' qualities. Firms use prices and uninformative advertising as signals of quality. The model reveals that in the separating equilibrium, prices are first climbing and then declining with the proportion of informed consumers, while the expenditure on uninformative advertising is declining. Firms' profits are highest when the proportion of informed consumers is at an intermediate level. Pooling equilibria exist if the proportion of informed consumers is below a certain threshold.     

The strategic effect of retailers' in‐store advertising services under product variety competition

We study a retailer service model of in‐store advertising, in which a neutral retailer provides product information to consumers for free but charges manufacturers. Our results show that the retailer's optimal pricing induces the manufacturers to decrease the number of items they offer. Nevertheless, this relaxes the competition between the manufacturers so that they benefit from using the in‐store service, unless the cost of communicating with consumers about the between‐firm products is lower. Furthermore, the service can be made socially beneficial by reducing the inefficiency resulting from an excessive number of items when manufacturers are not well differentiated.     

Happy workers value effort,sad workers value reward

Why do various workers exhibit dissimilar motivational levels and performance results within the same incentive systems? According to expectancy theory, this might result from distinct evaluations of whether those rewards deserve corresponding effort. We proposed and verified that affective states influence the valuation of effort and reward. We concluded that happy people are likely to exert efforts for future rewards and sad people tend to seek rewards without extra effort. Our finding can explain divergent employee reactions to the same incentive programme. Our results provide an explanation for the finding that happy workers are more productive than sad workers. These results have crucial implications for human resource management theory and practice.     

存在消费者搜寻的双寡头企业广告竞争模型

针对泰勒尔（1997）广告竞争模型中不允许消费者搜寻这一问题，应用两阶段博弈模型，建立了一个存在消费者搜寻的双寡头广告竞争模型，模型中的消费者具有偏好异质性，且搜寻成本企影响企业产品价格和广告水平。结果表明，在发现成本高的情况下，均衡是两企业定价水平相同，广告水平则随消费者保留值的增大先增大再减小。