Children's Responses to Advertising in Social Games

This study explored children's (ages 9 through 12) level of persuasion knowledge and peer influence susceptibility concerning advertising in social games and investigated how these variables affect children's desire for the brands advertised in these games. Results showed that (1) children have a fairly good knowledge of the advertising in social games yet hold uncritical attitudes toward it and claim to be not very susceptible to peer influence; (2) the most important predictors of children's desire for the advertised brands are a low critical attitude and high peer influence susceptibility; and (3) recognition and understanding of advertising in social games is effective in reducing advertised brand desire only for children who are familiar with social games.     

Young Adolescents and Advertising on Social Network Games: A Structural Equation Model of Perceived Parental Media Mediation,Advertising Literacy,and Behavioral Intention

This study tested a model in which perceived parental media mediation in social network games (SNGs) was related to adolescents' conceptual and attitudinal advertising literacies, both of which were in turn related to purchase request intention. The 780 participants, aged between 10 and 14 years, watched a video clip of SNG Habbo that included a commercial message and then completed a questionnaire. Perceived autonomy-supportive restrictive media mediation was found to be positively associated with understanding selling intention. Perceived autonomy-supportive active media mediation was positively related to understanding persuasive intention. Understanding persuasive intention was positively related to purchase request intention.     

The Journal of Advertising and the Development of Advertising Theory: Reflections and Directions for Future Research

In this article, I provide some thoughts that guided my decision making while I was editor of the Journal of Advertising (2003–2006). Specifically, I reflect on the definition of theory and how it has been and should be used in the advertising discipline. In particular, I attempt to distinguish between weaker (contextual) and stronger (universal) theories and present my views on how future research in advertising can proceed in developing useful theories within this domain.     

Winning Versus not Losing: Exploring the Effects of In-Game Advertising Outcome on its Effectiveness

Prior literary works on product placement in games predominantly focus on a host of game and brand characteristics to eventually explore their effects on consumers' psychological responses and behavior. One primary facet of in-game advertising (IGA) that has largely been ignored is game outcome in terms of winning and losing and its effect on consumers' nature of information processing. This article explores the effect of IGA outcome and performance feedback shown to players on their motivation expressed in terms of induced regulatory focus. Further, the effects of regulatory focus are examined on players' implicit and explicit memory, game and brand attitude, and emotions. A conceptual framework highlighting afore-mentioned relationships is developed and empirically tested which reveals that IGA outcome and performance feedback in the form of game messages plays a major role in explaining players' motivation which in turn also affects their memory and attitude. Managerial implications, limitations, and scope for future research are also discussed.     

Playing With Food: Content Analysis of Food Advergames

This study examines how food marketers use advergames, custom‐built and branded online games, to promote food products to children and provides the nutritional content of the food products featured in the advergames. The results reveal that food marketers use advergames heavily, with candy and gum or food products high in sugar most frequently appearing in the analyzed games. Children are often invited to “play with” the foods integrated as active game components. Finally, despite the educational benefits of interactive games, fewer than 3% of the games analyzed in this study appear to educate children about nutritional and health issues.     

Trends in Advertising Research: A Longitudinal Analysis of Leading Advertising,Marketing, and Communication Journals, 1980 to 2010

This study provides a longitudinal content analysis of advertising research articles in 17 top-tier advertising, marketing, and communication journals published over the past 30 years (1980–2010, n = 926). The study's purpose is to shed light on the direction and progression of advertising as an academic field by updating and extending Yale and Gilly's (1988) study of advertising research trends. Nine content characteristics of the journal articles were examined: (1) theory presence (theory driven versus not theory driven), (2) names, types (theory versus theoretical framework/model versus construct), and originating disciplines of theory, (3) topic areas, (4) media of interest, (5) research approaches (empirical versus nonempirical and quantitative versus qualitative versus mixed), (6) methods, (7) types of effects, (8) units of analysis, and (9) research implications. Changes in the content characteristics of journal articles were found across the 30 years analyzed in five-year intervals. Implications for the field, scholars, and advertising practitioners are discussed.     

Engagement with Social Media and Social Media Advertising: The Differentiating Role of Platform Type

This study examines how consumers’ engagement with social media platforms drives engagement with advertising embedded in these platforms and, subsequently, evaluations of this advertising. Our survey (N = 1,346, aged 13 and older) maps social media users’ engagement experiences with Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat and their experiences with and evaluations of advertising on these platforms. Our findings show that engagement is highly context specific; it comprises various types of experiences on each social media platform such that each is experienced in a unique way. Moreover, on each platform, a different set of experiences is related to advertising evaluations. It is further shown that engagement with social media advertising itself is key in explaining how social media engagement is related to advertising evaluations. The general conclusion is that there is no such thing as “social media.”     

The State of Internet-Related Research in Communications,Marketing, and Advertising: 1994-2003

This study analyzes trends, patterns, and rigorousness in research studies about the Internet through a content analysis of published Internet-related papers in 15 major journals in communications, marketing, and advertising between 1994 and 2003. Five hundred thirty seven papers of 4,050 total papers in the 15 journals (13.3%) were about the Internet. The results of this study demonstrate a definite pattern of increase in Internet research, the existence of a wide dispersion of individual and institutional contributors, a need for a more explicit theoretical framework, and a need for better methodological rigors in Internet research. In terms of topical coverage, this study concludes that Internet research deals with diverse research topics, but has not quite reached the last phase of Wimmer and Dominick's (2002) media developmental model (i.e., how we can improve the Internet).     

The Evolution of Marketing Channels: Trends and Research Directions

Despite the vast increase in marketing channels research published in the past decade, few contemporary analyses review or synthesize the domain. This article provides a comprehensive review of marketing channels research from 1980 to 2014. To present a multidimensional view of marketing channels, the authors evaluate extant literature from four perspectives: (1) key theories and constructs, (2) marketing channel strategies, (3) units of analyses, and (4) substantive topics in channels research. A content analysis of the relevant topics within each perspective that have had the greatest impact on channel research provides insights into research trends. This multidimensional analysis offers an integrated guide to extant literature, as well as an outline of promising directions for research, in light of the most significant trends.     

In Defense of Advertising: A Social Perspective

Many critics have questioned the ethics of advertising as an institution in current American society. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine three negative social trends that have been attributed to advertising: (a) the elevation of consumption over other social values, (b) the increasing use of goods to satisfy social needs, and (c) the increasing dissatisfaction of individual consumers. This explanation yields a defense of advertising which argues that the underlying cause of these negative trends is not advertising, but a larger social factor - capitalism. Solutions that address the capitalistic roots of these negative social trends are suggested.     

Social Consumer Neuroscience: Neurophysiological Measures of Advertising Effectiveness in a Social Context

The application of neurophysiological methods to study the effects of advertising on consumer purchase behavior has seen an enormous growth in recent years. However, little is known about the role social settings have on shaping the human brain during the processing of advertising stimuli. To address this issue, we first review previous key findings of neuroscience research on advertising effectiveness. Next, we discuss traditional advertising research into the effects social context has on the way consumers experience advertising messages and explain why marketers, who aim to predict advertising effectiveness, should place participants in social settings, in addition to the traditional ways of studying consumer brain responses to advertising in social isolation. This article contributes to the literature by offering advertising researchers a series of research agendas on the key indicators of advertising effectiveness (attention, emotion, memory, and preference). It aims to improve understanding of the impact social context has on consumers' neurophysiological responses to advertising messages.     

Interactive Services: A Framework,Synthesis and Research Directions

This article briefly reviews marketers' current knowledge about interactive services. It defines interactive services as services that have some form of customer–firm interaction in an environment characterized by any level of technology (i.e., a high or low technology environment). Customers may interact with the firm's physical elements (including technology), processes and people in both service creation and delivery. Consequently, customer participation directly influences service quality and behavioral outcomes (e.g., service usage, repeat purchase behavior and word-of-mouth) — as well as firm outcomes (efficiency, revenues and profits). Hence, a recurring theme throughout our article is that the nature of customer participation is critically important for the effective creation and delivery of interactive services. The article identifies key research areas and their relevance to managerial practice. This analysis yields a set of research questions that provides an agenda for future research.     

Methodological Issues in Advertising Research: Current Status,Shifts, and Trends

This article presents some self-reflective considerations on the methodology applied in advertising scholarly publications, based on a review of articles in four leading journals: Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, International Journal of Advertising, and Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising. This article first identifies two approaches in the positivist paradigm that exert strong impacts on the development of advertising research: the message effects research tradition in the communication field and the consumer psychology research tradition in marketing. With this background, the article next introduces several research questions to explore which methods have dominated advertising research, the role of theory building in affecting the adopted methods and the number of reported studies, differences across the journals, and the degree to which researchers integrate different methods or approaches (quantitative and qualitative) in their research. A content analysis of articles published in these four advertising journals from 2001 to 2015 helps address these research questions and reveals the current status, shifts, and trends in advertising research since the turn of this century.     

The Effects of Advertising,Social Influences,and Self-Efficacy on Adolescent Tobacco Use and Alcohol Consumption

Exploring the simultaneous effects of key variables on the unhealthy consumption behavior of adolescents, two studies focused on the relative effects of advertising, parental and peer influence, and self-efficacy on adolescent tobacco use and alcohol consumption. The results suggest that (1) advertising effects are largely neutralized by parental and peer influence; (2) peer and parental influence strongly predict adolescent tobacco use and alcohol consumption; and (3) self-efficacy is a weak predictor of both adolescent risk behaviors.     

Social Responsibility and the Olympic Games: The Mediating Role of Consumer Attributions

Current literature suggests that corporate social responsibility (CSR) can affect consumers’ attitudes towards an organization and is regarded as a driver for reputation-building and fostering sustained consumer patronage. Although prior research has addressed the direct influence of CSR on consumer responses, this research examined the mediating influence of consumer’s perceived organizational motives within an NGO setting. Given the heightened public attention surrounding the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, data were collected from consumers of the Games to assess their perceptions of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) socially responsible initiatives. We hypothesized that consumers of the Games were likely to cognitively elaborate on CSR messages by way of three specific attribution effects derived from the literature. The results show that, contingent on CSR awareness, consumers responded positively to social efforts judged to be values-driven and stakeholder-driven; and a negative response was seen for efforts judged to be strategic. These attribution effects influenced various types of patronage and perceived organizational reputation.     

The Network Industry,Monopoly Regulation,and Social Optimum

This paper examines pricing policy, quality levels, consumer surplus and social welfare for the monopoly and non‐monopoly case. It is shown that given certain realistic assumptions, the network industry under unregulated monopoly would yield more social welfare than in the case of several producers in the industry, and would therefore be socially preferred.     

Small Service Businesses: Advertising Attitudes and The Use of Digital and Social Media Marketing

Advertising is embraced by companies as a means of building awareness, sales, and customer loyalty. However, in recent years advertising has changed. Digital marketing and social media marketing have gained a greater prominence (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016 Lamberton, C., Stephen, A. T. (2016). A thematic exploration of digital, social media, and mobile marketing: Research evolution from 2000 to 2015 and an agenda for future inquiry. Journal of Marketing, 80(November), 146–172. https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.15.0415.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]). While megabrands spend millions of dollars on advertising, small businesses often view advertising as an expense rather than a means of generating revenue. Small service business owners are often skeptical of the value of digital marketing and social media. This study examines various digital and social media channels that can be utilized to grow their business.     

Telework: Existing Research and Future Directions

Telework, which is defined as work performed at home or a satellite office to reduce commuting, is attracting much attention as an alternative way to organize work. Numerous studies have pointed out a variety of advantages of telework for individuals, organizations, and society. Current telework research, however, displays many weaknesses that inhibit use of this alternative as an effective vehicle to promote distributive organizational design. This study was undertaken to characterize existing telework research, improve understanding of problems and issues of telework, and guide future research directions. A review of the relevant literature and a characterization of telework were conducted from 3 different angles: the research methodology, the focus of existing telework studies, and the research paradigm. First, an overall lack of robust research methodology was found in many studies. Second, although telework is an organizational phenomenon, disproportionate attention has been given to teleworker-related personal issues. Finally, the current telework paradigm was discovered to be characterized by suitability-based planning that selects appropriate persons and tasks and by ad hoc implementation in response to local needs. We suggest that future research could be enriched with more rigorous research methodology, more balanced focus for studies, and more flexible perspectives in the research paradigm.     

创意的网络广告给促销带来的影响

世界已经进入信息时代,以国际互联网络为基础的信息技术正在改变着我们的生活方式、工作方式和商务方式。从万维网到电子邮件,正逐渐成为广告媒体用以接触消费者,向消费者传递信息的强有力的工具。互联网络的前景正在以前所未有的速度在全球范围内普及开来。在适当的时间向人们传递适当的广告,能给商家带来不可预测的促销影响,能产生更大的经济效益。