Exploring the impact of affect on the effectiveness of comparative versus non-comparative advertisements

Affect is important in advertising, but it has not attracted sufficient attention in the research of comparative advertising. Two studies were conducted to explore how affect influences the effectiveness of comparative versus non-comparative advertisements. Study 1 focused on context-induced affect and showed that participants with positive affect expressed more favourable attitudes toward a comparative advertisement than a non-comparative advertisement. Study 2 addressed the coexistence of context- and ad-induced affects. Results showed that in the condition of positive context-induced affect, participants liked a comparative advertisement more than a non-comparative advertisement when ad-induced affect was positive. However, they evaluated both types of advertisement similarly in a negative manner when ad-induced affect was negative. In the condition of negative context-induced affect, participants expressed more favourable attitudes toward the advertisement eliciting positive affect than the one eliciting negative affect (regardless of ad type). These studies provided theoretical and practical implications, as well as directions for future research.     

Positive versus negative comparison in advertisements: the affect priming perspective

Abstract

Comparison valence is an important element in comparative advertising. In this research, we investigated how comparison valence influences advertising effectiveness and explored the role of affect underlying such effects. The results of two studies consistently confirmed that a positive comparison elicited more favorable ad attitude and brand attitude than a negative comparison and consumers’ affective states accounted for their preference for the positive comparison. Moreover, we found some preliminary evidence suggesting that the preference for a positive message may be more remarkable in comparative advertisements than noncomparative advertisements. However, this proposition needs further validation in future research.     

Cultural Meaning,Advertising, and National Culture: A Four-Country Study

Cultural meaning transfer theory and GLOBE dimensions were employed in this comparative study to examine the extent to which cultural meaning presented in advertisements reflected national cultures of the target countries. Content analysis was applied to advertisements from four countries to investigate whether the use of advertising appeals presented in these advertisements mirrored variations in cultures as described by GLOBE Society Values. Results revealed that, in line with the hypotheses, there were similarities and differences in the use of appeals, and only some of them mirrored the cultural variations. GLOBE Society Values were more likely to predict the use of appeals than GLOBE Society Practices, but not for all appeals. Advertisers can draw on national cultures for cultural meanings to be used in advertisements only to a limited extent. It may be that advertisements mold rather than mirror societal values, or that only certain cultural traits are important for advertisers.     

How to manage the intensity of comparison in comparative advertising over time

Despite the popularity of comparative advertising (CA) over the past three decades, few studies have explored how to develop this strategy outside the USA. This study reports the results of experiments conducted in South Korea, a country where CA has rarely been used. Two hundred Korean college students were exposed to fictitious advertisements in which the independent variable of comparison intensity (non-comparative/low/medium/high/increasing) and exposure sequence (first/second/third) were manipulated. The dependent variables of attitude towards the brand and purchase interest assessed advertising effectiveness. Results suggest that the effectiveness of comparative advertising in Korea is improved by increasing the intensity of comparison gradually from indirect (low) to direct (high) over time.     

Associative and dissociative comparative advertising strategies in broadening brand positioning

When marketplace dynamics prompt a familiar brand to change its positioning, consumers often meet such attempts with resistance. This research demonstrates how familiar brands can incorporate new attribute information into the brand's position via comparative advertising in order to broaden the brand's marketplace positioning. Study 1 shows how the use and nature of comparative advertising affects the ability of a familiar brand to broaden its positioning. Studies 2a and 2b demonstrate that a comparative advertising strategy that incorporates a specific sequencing of dissociative and associative comparative advertisements best broadens brand positioning.     

Impacts of advertisements that are unfriendly to women and men

Taking Belgium as a case in point, this study analyses, first, tolerance for advertisements unfriendly to women and men as expressed by advertising and marketing professionals, consumers and gender equal opportunity workers. Second, it compares which types of unequal gender portrayal raise concerns with which sector of respondents. Finally, it analyses the differences in adherence of the three sectors to the two main policy solution paradigms proposed in the 2008 European Parliament Resolution on ‘How marketing and advertising affect equality between women and men’. Results suggest a degree of tolerance that varies significantly according to sector, language, gender and age. Overall, respondents express more concerns regarding traditional sex roles in advertising than regarding nudity, unattainable beauty standards or gender stereotypes, and prefer gender-and-advertising literacy programmes and awards for advertisements that break through gender stereotypes over stricter ethical and/or legal regulations. These findings should prove useful to advertising and marketing professionals, national advertising regulatory bodies and policy makers.     

Processing and Retrieval of Inferences and Descriptive Advertising Information: The Effects of Message Elaboration

Abstract

Two issues make advertising effectiveness difficult to assess: (1) advertising effects occur both during ad processing and when ad information is retrieved, and (2) the information that consumers derive from advertisements is likely to be some combination of explicit information and inferences. The study reported in this paper addresses these issues, examining the effects of encoding and time delay on advertising processing. Results indicate that while some types of inferences (product features) are more likely to be made under strong than weak encoding conditions, other types of inferences (consumption situation) are not affected by encoding. In addition, at the time of a decision (after a time delay), memory information use depends both upon individual brand accessibility and the relative accessibility of alternative brands in the memory set. Implications for both advertising researchers and managers are offered.     

The current practices in food advertising

A content analysis and a quasi-experiment were performed to examine the current practices in food advertising, and the usage and the effectiveness of different advertising claims across two food categories (hedonic vs functional). The content analysis revealed that taste and specific nutrition claims are the two dominating types of advertising claims in recent food advertisements. Also, a greater proportion of advertisements for functional (vs hedonic) foods appeared to use such nutrition/health claims as general health and contains nutrient claims, whereas a greater proportion of advertisements for hedonic (vs functional) foods used taste claims. However, these current practices of food advertising were called into question by the results of the quasi-experiment, which showed that the nutrition/health claims were more effective when promoting hedonic (vs functional) foods, whereas taste claims were more effective when promoting functional (vs hedonic) foods in generating favourable attitudes and purchase intention. Implications, limitations and future research directions are discussed.     

The Use of Different Endorser Types in Advertising: A Content Analysis of Magazine Advertisements

Most of the literature assumes that endorsements, particularly by celebrities, are a frequently used advertising strategy. However, no study has yet investigated the use of the different endorser types identified by academic literature. This study seeks to close this research gap by analyzing German print advertisements. It finds that endorsement strategy in general is used much less than academic literature assumes, and that the relative significance of the different endorser types is incongruent to expectations. Moreover, the data suggest that, contrary to the literature's assumptions, credibility is not the most important underlying construct for endorsement advertisements, the endorser type used is frequently determined by the product category that is being advertised, and campaigns based on authenticity and similarity are gaining considerable importance in advertising practice.     

The impact of bias and unexpectedness on message response

Behavioural research has produced mixed results as to the various effects perceived bias can produce on message response. Though bias and unexpectedly unbiased messages have not been much researched in an advertising framework, perceived bias in advertising messages is an inherent problem. This study presents the results of an experiment designed to test the effect of bias and unexpectedness on message response in an advertising context. The results suggest bias may be more of a problem with advertisements using a comparative format. Unexpectedness, while less effective in comparative approaches, performed well in a non-comparative format. Unexpected messages appeared to produce greater attention to message content, suggesting that this tactic may result in lower advertising exposure levels producing response.     

Professionals' views of comparative advertising and the scholarly research literature: A review and synthesis

Comparative advertisements that contrast identifiable, competing products or services may be among advertising's most important tactical weapons. Despite nearly a century of use in the USA, growing use by advertisers in many other countries, and decades of scholarly research, some researchers continue to argue that the status of empirical knowledge regarding comparative advertising's effectiveness remains equivocal. This study addresses this equivocality with a review of the research literature and comparisons with the findings of a recent survey of US advertising creative executives. The findings reveal substantial agreement among the beliefs of academic researchers and advertising professionals in regard to when and how comparative advertising will likely be effective. In addition to offering confirming evidence that academic researchers and advertising professionals do sometimes arrive at the same destination in regard to their shared understandings of advertising effects, the findings also point the way toward important directions for future research on comparative advertising.     

The Effect of Media Involvement on Print Advertising Effectiveness

Abstract

There is less than full agreement in the advertising research community over the relationship between involvement and advertising effectiveness. The purpose of this research is to extend that investigation into print. In a pre-post between-subjects design, 926 adults were exposed to test advertisements “tipped” (i.e., inserted) into a publication that they read regularly. Readers' attitudes and purchase intentions for the advertised products were collected before and after exposure to the ads. The results indicated that higher involvement with a publication leads to more favorable perceptions of embedded ads, and higher levels of advertising persuasion, while not impacting recall. Analyses of specialized effects indicated that, for the most part, main-effects results were robust across two types of advertisements, two print publication types, and two classes of products studied. The research has implications for how publishers set, and media planners evaluate, advertising rates, which are calculated predominantly according to the size of a publication's reader base. Based on our results, they should consider involvement when making these decisions.     

Social Psychological (Mis)Representations in Television Advertising

As a result of the FTC's more aggressive approach to regulating advertising, there has been a noticeable reduction in the amount of blatant lies in advertisements. More subtle forms of deceit are still a problem, however. This paper examines a special form of subtly deceptive advertising termed the social-psychological representation. A case is developed from available conceptual and empirical evidence to show how this apparently innocuous advertising method can deceive advertising receivers. Results are presented from a content analysis of television commercials which reveal that social-psychological representations are used extensively in national advertising.     

Offensive Advertising

Abstract

Prior literature regarding offensive advertising relates mainly to western cultures. No work has been done on this area in an Asian context. The research in this article reports on a survey of Singaporean consumers. The survey aimed to identify what types of products and appeals consumers find offensive in advertising, the reasons why they find the advertisements offensive, and how this offensive advertising may affect their purchase intentions. The results found that advertisements relating to chat-line services and sexual diseases were the most offensive, followed by advertisements for dating services. Levels of offensiveness were clearly related to demographic variables such as gender and age. In terms of reasons for offensiveness, consumers were most concerned by advertisements that had a sexual connotation or evoked unnecessary fear.Levels of offensiveness also affected purchase intentions. Based on the results, the article recommends that advertisers and their agencies should think more carefully about the demographic profile of their audiences, how this profile might impact their audiences ?sensitivity“ to potentially offensive advertising, and how this sensitivity should be used as a guide when making media and message decisions     

围绕本质“立法” 坚持权威“执法”——浅析英国误导性广告的立法与司法实践

作为世界上广告监管最为规范的国家,英国的广告监管经验非常值得借鉴。在英国,广告监管主要通过行业自律机构实施,包括对误导性广告的监管。本文通过对英国误导性广告的现状、＂立法＂和＂执法＂等进行初步的分析和探讨,希望能对中国误导性广告监管有所借鉴。     

The Information Content of Comparative Magazine Advertisements

Abstract

The existing research on comparative vs. noncomparative advertising has resulted in a great deal of conflict and confusion concerning its effectiveness. However, little attention has been directed toward examining the informational nature of the ads themselves. The current investigation examines the question of whether comparative advertisements actually contain more objective information cues than their noncomparative counterparts. The results indicated that comparative ads did indeed have greater information content than noncomparative ads. Additional informational dimensions of comparative ads are explored.     

Who A dvertises Prices? A Firm Level Study Based on Survey Data

Recent years have seen a growing body of literature devoted to the analysis of price advertising. Much of this work argues that price advertising leads to lower prices and is likely to be welfare improving. The questions of how much price advertising takes place and which firms are more likely to include price information in advertising have been somewhat neglected. This paper uses a unique new data set of UK company advertising to answer these questions. The evidence presented suggests that only a small proportion of firms include price information in any of their advertisements. Price information tends to be included in a higher percentage of the advertisements of distribution companies and of those which face more than ten competitors. In addition, the importance of price as a form of competition is a factor in determining the inclusion of price information, but only where the firm aims most of its advertisements towards final consumers.     

The Role of the Advertising Agency in the Cultural Message Content of Advertisements: A Comparison of the Middle East and the United States

ABSTRACT

This study compared responses of advertising agencies located in the Middle East and the United States to an email survey examining their approach in designing advertisements. The survey examined whether the advertising agency incorporated area-specific cultural values and advertising appeals in the execution of their advertisements. Results indicate that indeed advertising agencies do use, or at least report to use, different cultural values and advertising appeals. Advertising agencies in the Middle East tend to focus more on filial obedience, customs and traditions, loyalty to one's group, honor, and patience. In addition, agencies in the Middle East reported that they tended to portray women in a more modest fashion than their counterparts in the United States.     

Typologies of Banner Advertisements’ Attributes: A Content Analysis

The web has received significant amount of attention from advertising and consumer researchers investigating the impact of banner advertisement on consumers’ psychological and behavioral responses. However, no typology of banner advertisement has been identified yet, and the selection of banner advertisements as advertising stimuli has been carried out on the premise of personal judgment rather than scientific methodology. The identification of typology is important because different banner advertisement, such as static and pop-up, elicit different consumers’ responses. In addition the identification of a typology constitutes an advance to mid-range theory in a research domain. Hence, the purpose of this research is to identify the typologies of banner advertisements’ attributes such as type, number, shape, location, and size using content analysis. Specifically, nine banner advertisement types are identified as well as the typology of number, shape, location, and size of banner advertisements. Contributions of the research are discussed.     

Are services advertised differently? An analysis of the relationship between product and service types and the informational content of their advertisements

This study examines the informational content of service and product advertisements and analyses the relationship between the amount and type of information in an advertisement and the type of product or service being advertised. The influence that service characteristics have on advertising strategy is still not well understood. One theory is that services need to be more tangible in order to assist in the consumer decision-making process and advertising can assist with this by providing factual information. The purpose of this paper is to establish whether this theory is recognized and adopted in advertising practice. This is achieved by performing a content analysis. The results indicate that product advertisements contain more information than services, which indicates a discrepancy between advertising theory and practice. The results also prove that there are variances in the amount and type of information included in product and service advertisements. The paper examines these variances and applies existing classification frameworks to explain them. Areas for further research are also identified.