Information Sources in Advertising History. Edited and compiled by Richard W. Pollay,ed. Westport,Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979, 330 pp

Abstract

This research examined how consumers responded to different print advertisements for a green laundry detergent. Hypotheses based on the salience literature were developed and tested in a laboratory experiment. One group considered a “green” appeal which emphasized the environmental attributes of the product. Another group considered a “non-green” appeal which emphasized the cost-saving attributes of the product. We measured each subject's involvement with the environment. Our results showed that for those highly involved with the environment, there were no significant differences in purchase intent, attitude toward the ad, and support arguments between appeals. However, for those less involved with the environment, the green appeal was significantly more persuasive than the non-green appeal in terms of the same variables.     

The effectiveness of fear appeals in ‘green’ advertising: An analysis of creative,consumer, and source variables*

This study focused on the effectiveness of fear appeal messages used to arouse a threat in green advertising. An experiment recruited 175 participants to test the influence of the advertising appeal (fear vs. non-fear appeal), source (for-profit vs. non-profit organizations), and involvement with the environment on attitude toward the ad (A_ad), attitude toward the product (A_p) and purchase intention (PI). Results revealed that a fear appeal in a green ad negatively affected A_ad and A_p and that participants who were highly involved with the environment were more likely to have positive attitudes toward the green ad and advertised green product as well as a stronger intent to purchase it. The source type in the green ad did not affect ad effectiveness and involvement with the environment did not moderate the effects of either appeal or source.     

A Model of the Effects of Self-efficacy on the Perceived Ethicality and Performance of Fear Appeals in Advertising

The primary purpose of this study was to better understand the effects of consumers' perceived self-efficacy on their perceptions of the ethicality of a fear appeal and subsequent attitudes towards the ad, the brand, and purchase intentions. In this study, a total of 305 consumer responses were investigated to determine attitudes toward a fear appeal ad. The results suggest that the use of strong fear appeals may not be perceived as unethical if consumers feel they can use the recommended product to effectively eliminate the threat posed by the ad.     

Advertising Ethics: The Use of Sexual Appeal in Chinese Advertising

With increasing social awareness of unethical advertisements in today's advertising, this study explores consumers' ethical judgements about the use of sexual appeals in advertising in a Chinese context by replicating LaTour and Henthorne's study. It specifically focuses upon responses on the Reidenbach-Robin multidimensional ethical scale, attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand and purchase intentions. The results show that sexual appeal was evaluated as the most frequent use in Hong Kong print advertising and they were also perceived as the most attractive instrument. Similar to LeTour and Henthorne's findings, regardless of respondent's gender, the use of a strong overt sexual appeal was not well received by Chinese consumers and resulted in less favorable attitude toward the ad itself and the purchase intention than using mild sexual themes. However, the degree of sexual content used in advertising has no direct influence on brand attitudes. Due to the conservative nature of Chinese culture, the advertisers should be careful in the use of sexual appeal for Chinese consumers.     

Differential Effects of Chinese Women's Sexual Self-Schema on Responses to Sex Appeal in Advertising

Despite the increased use of sex appeal in advertising, little is known about the influence of individual personality differences on responses to sexual information. This study examines the effects of the “sexual self-schema” personality trait on Chinese women's responses to advertisements using sex appeal. Regardless of the type of sexual information used, attitudes toward these advertisements mediate the effect of sexual self-schema on the purchase intentions of women with lower sexual self-schema while this mediating effect was not observed in women with higher sexual self-schema. The theoretical and practical implications of sex appeal in advertising for Chinese women are discussed.     

Relax Your Fear—The role of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) in green advertising

As a novel approach in green advertising, the autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), which induces relaxation and pleasure, is expected to relieve the excessive negativity caused by a negative environmental message. Drawing from the fear-relief theory, mating attraction strategy, and rational choice theory, this experimental study investigated the effectiveness of embedding ASMR within a negative green ad in controlling viewers' fear. It also explored the effects of ASMR on buying intention between two different perceived-difficulty eco-friendly products. The study involved 240 young adults. The findings reveal that, compared to non-ASMR exposures, interplaying negative appeal with ASMR could significantly decrease young adults' fear. Young male adults experienced lower fear than females when seeing a female ASMR-tist. In contrast, male and female adults' fears were relatively equal when seeing male ASMR-tist in a negative green message. Yet, no direct and indirect effects of lower fear on green buying intention mediated by attitude toward the ad were observed. Findings are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical contributions.     

Female nudity in print advertising: An analysis of gender differences in arousal and Ad response

Previous research on the dimensionality of arousal indicates tension arousal is associated with negative feelings and energy arousal is associated with positive feelings. Women were found to generate more tension and negative feelings towards explicit female nudity in print ads than men. Men were more energized and positive in their feelings about such ads. The results have substantial strategic implications.     

Is there a need for speed? Fast animation as context increases product trial intent and self-focus

Context may be of increasing importance as consumer paths become more predictable by advertisers. Using a framework of excitation transfer, three experiments were conducted (study 1a, 1b, and study 2) where arousal was created by animation speed of product messages and showed effects for a print advertisement (studies 1a and 1b) and an online advertising circular (study 2). People who were in an aroused state were more likely to try the product in the subsequently seen print ad, choose products in the circular that cost more money and perceived the circular ad to be for ‘someone like me’. Implications for advertisers and media planners are discussed.     

Ethical Judgments of Sexual Appeals in Print Advertising

Abstract

This study explores consumers' ethical judgments about the use of sexual appeals in print advertising. It specifically focuses upon responses on the Reidenbach-Robin multidimensional ethics scale, ad attitude, brand attitude, and purchase intentions. The findings indicate that, regardless of the respondent's gender, the use of a strong overt sexual appeal in a print advertisement was not well received. Consequently, advertisers need to rethink the use of strong overt sexual appeals, especially given the controversial issues surrounding such advertising stimuli and their popular use to break through media clutter.     

A model to explore the ethics of erotic stimuli in print advertising

This paper discusses a test of a hypothetical model of the role of perceived ethical feelings about the use of female nudity/erotic stimuli in print advertising. Specifically, the linkages between perceived ethicalness of the use of the print ad (as measured by the Reidenbach and Robin ethics scale) and attitude toward the ad, brand, and purchase intention are explored.     

Non‐Recognition of Print Advertising: Emotion Arousal and Gender Effects

Research in the behavioral sciences has found that memory tends to be enhanced by exposure to emotion‐arousing stimuli. While this relationship is not fully understood, the linkage appears to be more pronounced for females than for males. While the majority of prior studies dealing with memory have relied on the use of visual stimuli in a clinical experimental setting, this research examined the impact on memory resulting from exposure to actual print advertisements of varying degrees of arousal‐producing content. Differences in the relationship between arousal and memory were explored for male and female participants. In general, females were found to exhibit higher memory levels than males. As a single combined group, subjects exposed to emotion arousing versus emotion neutral ad. stimuli exhibited no significant difference in memory. For the set of emotion neutral ad. stimuli, no difference in memory was found between sexes. However, retention was significantly higher for females than males for the set of emotion‐arousing stimuli. The study identifies opportunities for further applied memory research.     

How many pictures should your print ad have?

This study examines the impact of increasing the number of images in a print advertisement on affective and cognitive responses. In advertisements with both positive and negative pictures, increasing the number of positive (negative) images increases positive (negative) affect. However, consistent with theory regarding the mechanism underpinning affect integration in a simultaneous presentation context, in advertisements with only positive or only negative images, increasing the number of positive (negative) images of similar affective intensity does not increase positive (negative) affect. For both types of advertisements, additional pictures have no effects on attitude toward the ad when they exemplify a product attribute or benefit that an existing picture(s) already depicts.     

How can the word “NEW” evoke consumers' experiences of novelty and interest?

This paper examines the role advertising cues play in inducing subjective perceptions of product novelty and how they can evoke consumer interest toward an advertisement. Specifically, it uses behavioral and psychophysiological measures to: (1) investigate the effect of novelty cues on consumers’ subjective appraisal of novelty; (2) demonstrate that novelty cues may evoke the emotion of interest; and (3) differentiate the effect of the emotion of interest on liking and arousal. Across two experimental studies, we demonstrated that simply adding the word “new” in an advertisement increases behavioral (i.e., viewing duration) and psychophysiological responses (i.e., cardiac activity) of interest. However, the word “new” did not evoke liking and arousal. This suggests that novelty cues in an advertisement will make the consumers perceive the product to be novel and further evoke consumer interest.     

The Interplay of Mood and Regulatory Focus in Influencing Altruistic Behavior

Using the context of print advertising, this research examines how the effects of mood on altruistic behavior vary as a function of whether a promotion or prevention focus is involved in messaging for child sponsorship. The findings reveal that when an ad message is framed in promotion focus, a happy mood fosters more favorable attitude toward child sponsorship and willingness to sponsor than a sad mood. In contrast, the effects of mood on attitude toward child sponsorship and willingness to sponsor are attenuated when an ad message is framed in prevention focus. Further, the results shed light on the process underlying the interactive impact of mood and regulatory focus by demonstrating the mediating role of perceived elaboration and goal commitment in advertising persuasion.     

Scared Stiff? The Effectiveness of Threat Appeals in Counseling Services Advertising to High‐Anxiety Students

This exploratory study proposes and tests a theoretical model that analyzes threat appeals in regard to their effectiveness for high‐anxiety students, one of the major target groups for counseling services. In particular, affective and cognitive responses to a threat appeal advertisement and their effects on attitude toward the advertisement and behavior are examined. The results suggest that a strong threat appeal is not effective for counseling services but that positive emotions toward the advertisement and cognitive involvement have a positive impact on advertising outcomes. The study contributes further to knowledge of threat appeal effectiveness, targeting “anxious” audiences.     

Ethical Responses to Public Allegations of Skin Tone Manipulation in Print Advertising: Consumer Indifference or Consumer Concern?

This study examines the effect of consumer prejudice on ethical responses to public allegations of skin tone manipulation in print advertising. A sample of 156 undergraduate business students read a fictitious news story in which an advertising watchdog group accused business executives of using digital manipulation to lighten the skin tone of a Black female model featured in a product print ad. Participants then answered questions on ethical perceptions, behavioral intentions, and prejudice toward Blacks. Results suggest that low-prejudice consumers have stronger ethical concerns toward the digital lightening of ethnic models in print ads than do high-prejudice consumers. The authors discuss the findings, limitations, and directions for future research.     

Knowledge Effects on Curiosity and New Product Advertising

Abstract

Advertisers commonly advocate when writing ad copy, “Keep it simple!” In keeping with this belief, ads are typically written at less than the tenth grade level. The authors assert that this view may be too simple in view of the complex processes underlying cognitive processing. In an experiment where print ads did not vary in terms of their concreteness, the authors found that increasing levels of readability made no differences in recall, attitudinal judgments or purchase intent.     

Examining the Effectiveness of Fear Appeals in Prompting Help‐Seeking: The Case of At‐Risk Gamblers

With a sample of Australian at‐risk gamblers, this research examines the impact of gender and individual difference in experiential avoidance (EA; cognitive and emotional suppression) on the processing of fear appeals. Study 1, through thematic analysis, explores fear appeal perceptions among at‐risk gamblers. The results identify that relevant threats, such as social and psychological, should be integrated into fear‐inducing advertising stimuli. Study 2 uses multigroup comparisons in structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the robustness of the revised protection motivation model (RPMM) in predicting the effectiveness of fear appeals to induce help‐seeking intentions in at‐risk gamblers. This research examines the boundary conditions of the RPMM through the moderating roles of gender and EA. The results provide evidence that fear partially mediates the impact of perceived susceptibility (PS) on help‐seeking intentions in low experiential avoiders, whereas high experimental avoiders resist fear elicitation. Furthermore, evoked fear does not lead to help‐seeking intentions in male at‐risk gamblers. In female at‐risk gamblers, while fear prompts help‐seeking intentions, PS (i.e., probability of harm) does not translate to behavioral intentions via fear. For both genders and low and high experiential avoiders, cognitive appraisals of PS significantly and positively impact help‐seeking intentions. This research demonstrates the unique roles of gender and EA on fear appeal effectiveness in at‐risk gamblers.     

Missing ingredients in cause-related advertising

In traditional cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns, marketers focus on a promoted product and ads contain CRM messages only in small print at the bottom. Some recent marketers have chosen to highlight the cause, with the product taking a lesser role in the advertising copy. The purpose of this research is to compare these two execution styles. Moderating effects of product type and cause framing are considered. Experimental results indicate that a cause-focused ad is more effective in hedonic product promotion and a product-orientated ad is more effective in utilitarian product promotion. An other-benefit appeal facilitates the effects of a cause-related ad to individuals with a hedonic tendency towards the product, and a self-related appeal enhances the effects of a product-orientated ad to those with a utilitarian tendency towards the product. The findings underscore the importance for marketers to learn more about how visuals work, and in turn suggest how practitioners can avoid negative consumer reactions to their cause-related ads.