Communion-over-Agency Effects on Advertising Effectiveness

Gender-stereotypical portrayals of communal women and agentic men are highly common in advertising. But past research indicates that advertising effectiveness is higher when endorsers are portrayed as communal – irrespective of their gender. The aim of the current research is to explore this communion-over-agency effect on advertising effectiveness and its underlying mechanism. Two studies provide evidence for a communion-over-agency effect on advertising effectiveness (i.e., attitude toward the ad and brand). These studies show that the communion-over-agency effect on attitude toward the ad is mediated by endorser likeability (simple mediation). The effect on attitude toward the brand is mediated by endorser likeability and attitude toward the ad (serial multiple mediation). In concert, this research underscores the significance of communion (and agency) on endorser evaluation and advertising effectiveness.     

The Gamification of Advertising: Analysis and Research Directions of In-Game Advertising,Advergames, and Advertising in Social Network Games

The study presents a framework for the analysis of advertising in digital games. It reviews literature on in-game advertising, advergames and advertising in social network games. The framework distinguishes between stimulus characteristics of the game as well as of the advertising that lead to psychological responses toward the game and the brand and to actual behavior toward the game and the brand. It takes into consideration individual factors of the player and social factors surrounding the player. In addition, theoretical models of advertising perception in digital games and issues regarding regulation are addressed. Directions for future research in the area of advertising in digital games are provided.     

Magazine Advertising: Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Celebrity Advertising

This study analyzes the differences in celebrity effectiveness in advertisements of different styles as well as the impact of source credibility. This study uses an experimental magazine to test nine fictional advertisements for three products with unreal brands and three advertising styles. The findings show that the advertising styles that generate the greatest effectiveness differ according to the product; the celebrities do not increase effectiveness, but when the respondents recognize the celebrity, effectiveness increases; and credibility influences affective and conative measures. The work also considers how celebrity-product pairings, the existence of negative celebrity information, and the familiarity with the celebrity affect the effectiveness.     

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.     

The Effects of Identical Versus Varied Advertising and Publicity Messages on Consumer Response

A trend in images and messages that eventually cause offence was noted among significant international advertisers, accompanied by a steady increase in formal complaints over a 6-year period in the UK. Though the numbers are at present small, reanalysis of large-scale industry research reports suggested they are the tip of an iceberg consisting of many million potential complainants. If this latent activism reaches a critical mass, it will become a phenomenon that planners can no longer afford to ignore. Meanwhile, the literature on complaining behaviour has concentrated on the causes and responses rather than on the sources. Therefore, this study applied geographic and psychographic analysis techniques to postcodes accompanying over 50 000 complaints to the two main regulatory bodies in the UK, which were hitherto unavailable to independent researchers. A resulting index of complaints by location confirmed the intuitively logical assumption that it is characteristic of London and the south of England. A profile of the complainants showed that they typically belong to a distinctive and relatively homogeneous social group of potential opinion leaders. Together, these outputs provide an original and unique template for minimizing the risk of longterm negative effects due to accidental provocation of an unintended audience. This is a media-strategy solution; the alternative would of course be to abandon potentially controversial creative strategies.     

Guilt Regulation: The Relative Effects of Altruistic Versus Egoistic Appeals for Charity Advertising

This article examines how egoistic (versus altruistic) appeals in charity advertising help regulate guilt and result in more favorable ad attitudes and donation intentions. The proposed affect forecasting and regulation model depicts the process by which guilt states are mitigated more effectively by egoistic appeals, because they strengthen the affect forecasting belief that giving to charity leads to happiness. Such enhanced affect forecasting beliefs further improve ad attitudes, which lead to greater donation intentions. This research tests the proposed model by exploring three possible types of guilt: existing guilt (Study 1), integral guilt (Study 2), and incidental guilt (Study 3).     

The Effectiveness of Advertising: A Meta-Meta-Analysis of Advertising Inputs and Outcomes

This study measures the degree of advertising effectiveness in previous advertising research studies. By analyzing 324 meta-analytic effect sizes taken from 44 meta-analyses that included more than 1,700 primary studies with more than 2.4 million subjects, the meta-meta-analytic effect size of .2 shows that advertising is effective. The findings differ across advertising inputs and outcomes, and identify different hierarchies of effects due to different underlying processes. The source primarily influences attitudes and behavior due to an acceptability–inference process; the message influences cognitions and emotions due to an emotion–cognition process; strategies foster processing and effects on memory due to a retrieval process; and receiver characteristics primarily influence attitudes, cognitions, and emotions due to a sense-making process. These findings provide quantitative evidence for the effectiveness of advertising and major advertising tools, provide empirical generalizations for researchers and practitioners, and suggest a new contingency for the applicability of hierarchy of effects models.     

Advertising Creativity: The Role of Divergence Versus Meaningfulness

Creativity is seen as an essential component of advertising and is continuing to attract research interest. While there is widespread agreement on the value of creativity, there are two different perspectives on the key components of creativity. One perspective sees creativity as primarily divergence, containing elements of novelty, aesthetic representation, newness, and difference. The second includes, in addition to divergence, the concept of meaningfulness (or appropriateness or connectedness) to the consumer. This view argues that if an advertisement is not meaningful then it simply is not creative. We attempt to find some empirical resolution to this issue. Our findings indicate that divergence is indeed an important element of creativity. Meaningfulness, however, while certainly very important to ad effectiveness, appears to be a distinct and separate construct from creativity.     

Dancing on the Slippery Slope: The Effects of Appropriate Versus Inappropriate Competitive Tactics on Negotiation Process and Outcome

As negotiation is critical to all forms of organizational decision-making, researchers have shown an interest in understanding how the flow of information (valid and otherwise) influences this process. Often, competitive, questionable, and unethical tactics have been treated as interchangeable in these studies, despite presumed differences in appropriateness. The purpose of this study was to examine the similarities and differences in negotiators’ use and efficacy of appropriate competitive tactics (e.g., exaggerated offers) versus inappropriate competitive tactics (e.g., factual misrepresentations), primarily through a negotiation simulation. The study found that although these two categories of tactics were correlated in terms of overall use, appropriate competitive behaviors were used more frequently, especially early in negotiations, and these behaviors often resulted in comparable responses from counterparts. While ultimately increasing the likelihood of a negotiation impasse, the use of appropriate competitive tactics improved an individual’s substantive outcome where agreements could be reached. Inappropriate competitive tactics were likely to increase in number the sooner they were first employed in negotiations, with a response of inappropriate competitive tactics to the first use of competitive tactics increasing the likelihood of subsequent use of inappropriate tactics. The implications of these and other findings for both practitioners and future research are discussed.     

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.     

Effects of In-Game Virtual Direct Experience (VDE) on Reactions to Real-World Brands

As brand placement into video games becomes an increasingly popular marketing strategy, little research has examined the role that in-game virtual direct experience (VDE) with branded products plays in affecting recall of and attitudes toward the real-world brands. The current experiment employed the manipulation of performance features of the integral brand needed to play an auto-racing game (a Volkswagen car) to determine if players' VDE would translate into differences in real-world, brand-related outcomes. Results indicate that players who had an easier VDE exhibited greater recall of and attitudes toward the brand than did players who had a more difficult VDE. Effects generally were unique to the integral brand; peripheral brands were unaffected. Results are interpreted via the LC4MP model of memory, VDE and affect-transfer theory, and brand-placement prominence. Practical implications are discussed.     

An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Internet Advertising Tools

ABSTRACT

This study explores a wide variety of Internet advertising tools. It presents an assessment of the persuasive impact of Internet advertising tools based on the perceptions of senior executives at interactive advertising agencies. The persuasion matrix developed by McGuire (1978) is used as a framework for assessing the impact of Internet advertising tools on the response hierarchy of consumers. Based on this assessment, a series of research propositions are offered in the spirit of propositional inventories for future testing. Finally, included is a discussion that alerts managers to important issues involved in using Internet advertising tools.     

An Experimental Analysis of the Effectiveness of Multi-Screen Advertising

Multiscreening refers to consumers' simultaneous usage of multiple screen-based devices. Prior research has shown that simultaneous multiscreening distracts consumers and hinders cognitive processing. In this paper, we evaluate whether and how simultaneous multiscreening can harm advertising effectiveness. Moreover, we test under which conditions an additional mobile advertising impression can moderate the effect of multiscreening on advertising effectiveness. We test the impact of multiscreening via different screen-based devices in two experiments. We find that multiscreening decreases advertising effectiveness and show that an additional mobile advertising impression of the same brand can attenuate the effect, but only when the additional mobile advertisement does not lead to high levels of distraction from the desktop advertisement.     

Advertising Decisions and the Long Run Effects of Advertising

The long-run or carry-over effects of advertising have been well documented. These have important implications for decision making in advertising. This article discusses these implications and reports the extent to which directors of advertising of large manufacturing firms are aware of these long-run effects. The study indicates that these individuals do not recognize this phenomenon in making advertising decisions.     

A Meta-Analysis into Multiscreening and Advertising Effectiveness: Direct Effects,Moderators, and Underlying Mechanisms

Using another media screen while watching television has become a part of people’s daily routines. The topic of multiscreening has thus received increased attention from advertising scholars in recent years. To gain a better theoretical understanding of the circumstances under which multiscreening effects occur and to offer practical guidelines to advertisers, the current study synthesizes the results of past studies on multiscreening and advertising and examines the direct effects of multiscreening on both cognitive and affective advertising outcomes, the possible moderators of those effects, and the underlying mechanisms of multiscreening with regard to advertising outcomes. The results indicate a negative direct effect of multiscreening on cognitive outcomes. The effect is weakened, however, by factors related to research, advertising, and media. In addition, the results show no direct or total effect of multiscreening on affective advertising outcomes, but this again depends on various media-, advertising-, and research-related factors. Finally, the results show that attention, enjoyment, and resistance constitute the underlying mechanisms that explain the effect of multiscreening on memory and persuasion.     

Exploring the Effectiveness of Business Gifts: Replication and Extension

Abstract

This investigation replicates Beltramini's (1992) study of the effectiveness of business gifts, and extends the research to include actual marketplace sales response. A company's customers'perceived satisfaction and intention to continue repurchasing are surveyed both before and after being sent a more expensive gift, a less expensive gift, or no gift at all, and customers'actual sales are longitudinally tracked. The results indicate business gift-giving represents an effective part of a marketer's overall marketing communications strategy, and both limitations and implications are discussed.     

Political PR in the 2005 UK General Election: Winning and Losing,With a Little Help From Spin

The public relations of the UK general election of 2005 is examined in the light of the active promotional culture of British politics, a culture that is especially active at election time. The PR or 'spin' can be seen as a presentational trellis offering to voters, mostly via the media, glimpses of policies and politicians which are favourable to the originating party. The purpose of the trellis for the parties is to maximise their electoral advantage and to minimise their disadvantage. The major obstacle to their success is the capacity of the media to brush aside the trellis and to report on the 'other side'. Whatever the benefits and costs for democracy of this tension between partisan presentation and journalism, there is little evidence that voter disengagement with electoral politics is caused by these public relations shows. Political PR is part of the UK's promotional culture; voter disengagement relates to other systemic and more causal features of contemporary British society. A small purposive (but unrepresentative) survey of campaign observers showed key features of political PR servicing the fundamentals of party, policy and personality.     

The Influence of Product/Nudity Congruence on Advertising Effectiveness

Abstract

While a body of research has examined the effects of nudity appeals in advertising, previous studies examining the question of product/nudity congruency have failed to consider product categories of equivalent levels of involvement and towards which respondents had similar purchase intention. In this experimental study, we examine the role which product/nudity congruency and levels of nudity have on several measures of advertising effectiveness. We also examine the effect of the usa between these two variables. Our findings suggest that product type and the interaction between degree of nudity and product both influence significantly certain measures of advertising effectiveness. Implications for marketing professionals and researchers are outlined, along with directions for future research.     

Gender Roles and Humor in Advertising: The Occurrence of Stereotyping in Humorous and Nonhumorous Advertising and Its Consequences for Advertising Effectiveness

The advertising literature includes extensive research on the occurrence and effects of gender-role portrayals in advertising. None of these studies has examined the ways in which humor affects depictions and the advertising effectiveness of these portrayals. This article reports the results of content-analytic and experimental studies that investigate the occurrence and effectiveness of gender stereotyping in humorous and nonhumorous advertising. The findings from these studies are in line with the assumptions of information processing theories. They indicate that the way women and men are stereotyped in advertising is dependent on humor; in particular, traditional male stereotypes are more prevalent in humorous ads, whereas traditional female stereotypes are more prevalent in nonhumorous ads. With respect to the influence of these stereotypes, humor improves consumers’ attitudes, particularly if nontraditional stereotyping is utilized instead of traditional stereotyping. Furthermore, humor in stereotyped advertising influences women more than men. Women evaluate gender portrayals more favorably and as more credible in humorous ads than in nonhumorous ads, particularly when nontraditional stereotyping instead of traditional stereotypes are used. These findings provide implications for gender-role and humor research in advertising and for practitioners who wish to increase the effectiveness of ads that use stereotypes.