The effectiveness of advertising appeals: A culturally-derived power perspective

Based on the perspective of culturally-derived power, we explore the influence of advertising appeals on attitudes towards advertisement, as well as their psychological mechanisms and boundary conditions through three experiments. The results indicate that individuals primed with personalized (vs. socialized) power have a better advertising attitude towards self-benefiting (vs. other-benefiting) appeal advertising via processing fluency. In addition, we find that consumption situations moderate the interaction effect between culturally-derived power and advertising appeals on advertising attitudes. The research findings enrich the theoretical research on advertising appeals and provide practical implications for companies to improve the effectiveness of their advertisements.     

College Student Attitudes Toward Advertising's Ethical, Economic, and Social Consequences

Little research has focused on college students' attitudes toward advertising's ethical, economic, and social consequences over the last two decades. Exploring and tracking the attitudes of college students toward advertising is important, however, for several reasons. College students represent an important segment of consumers for many marketers, negative attitudes toward advertising on the part of college students could lead to their support for restrictive regulation in the future, and there are potentially negative consequences concerning the effects of advertising that college students uniquely share with other youth markets. The results of this study – a differentiated replication of an earlier study of college students in the late 1970s – indicate the salience of various beliefs that help determine attitudes toward advertising and provide a useful benchmark for future studies. The implications of the study's findings for advertising practice and future regulation are discussed.     

Taiwanese students' attitudes towards and beliefs about advertising

This study aimed to investigate college students' attitudes towards advertising in Taiwan using a survey method. This study applied two advertising constructs and their operationalizations which were developed in the USA: beliefs about advertising and attitudes towards advertising in general (AG). Specifically, this paper intends to determine whether the factor structure of these beliefs is similar to those in the USA and other South Asian countries. It also measures whether Taiwanese consumers' beliefs about advertising predict their AG. Six belief factors were extracted and they accounted for 56.5% of the variance. While the results from the factor analysis did not replicate the results from the USA and other South Asian countries perfectly, the similarities were large enough to conclude that the belief structure underlying AG is similar to these regions. By regression analysis, four of the six factors contributed significantly to the prediction of consumers' AG. Three out of four predictor factors matched those found in other Asian countries. These findings indicated that Taiwanese consumers had the same AG as those in five South Asian countries. These consistent findings provide a benchmark for future study on crossnational consumer beliefs about advertising and AG.     

An examination of measurement context effects in empirically based advertising research

The purpose of this research was to examine the issue of measurement context effects in advertising processing research. Based upon a review of the advertising processing literature and recent research focusingon measurement contexteffects, hypotheses were specified and empirically tested via a measurement context experiment. The results indicate that the cognitions measurement treatment procedures used in advertisement processing model tests produce small measurement context effects. However, these effects are not sufficiently severe to suggest a reinterpretation of previous findings or to result in drastic changes in future advertisement processing research methods. The results suggest the process of measuring respondents' attitudes towards advertisements did not result in statistically significant measurement context effects on the measures of attitudes towards brands or purchase intentions.     

A Factor Analysis of College Student Attitudes toward Advertising

Eighty college students were administered 26 Likert-type statements designed to measure their attitudes toward advertising along four different dimensions: 1) economic effects of advertising, 2) social effects of advertising, 3) ethics of advertising and 4) regulation of advertising. Analysis of the responses revealed five clusters or “types” of individuals based on their attitudes. While all five types exhibited some negative feelings toward advertising the degree of, and basis for, their criticisms varied considerably. Findings such as these indicate the need for a better understanding of the reasons for student dissatisfaction with the activities of the advertising community and a more comprehensive program for the dissemination of information about advertising and its activities to a wider cross-section of the college student today.     

The risk of programmatic advertising: Effects of website quality on advertising effectiveness

Programmatic advertising is prevalent in online advertising. However, it offers managers limited control over the type of website where the ad appears, resulting in brand safety issues. Aware of the risk that ads may potentially display on websites of poor quality (nonpremium websites), managers have developed strategies to reduce this risk. Due to the lack of empirical insights, these strategies are based on “gut feeling” and depend on campaign type (branding versus performance) and brand type (premium versus nonpremium). Our research addresses this void and analyzes website quality effects for premium and nonpremium brands in branding and performance campaigns. Our results show that effects, indeed, vary depending on campaign and brand type, but not in ways that managers might expect. When a branding ad appears on a nonpremium website, attitudes towards the ad and the brand deteriorate, but only for premium brands. In contrast, website quality does not affect awareness for either type of brand. When a performance ad appears on a nonpremium website, it generates fewer clicks; this effect is stronger for premium brands. Overall, these findings enrich our understanding of the consequences of programmatic advertising and highlight the crucial role of website quality dependent on campaign goal and brand type.     

Effects of ironic advertising on consumers’ attention,involvement and attitude

The use of an ironic message in advertising has increased, but little empirical research has been conducted to identify the effects of ironic advertising on consumers. This study demonstrated that ironic advertising can lead to consumers’ higher attention to the ad and greater involvement in the ad message compared to non-ironic advertising, applying schema incongruity theory. This study also examines whether ironic advertising influences consumers’ attitudes toward the ad and the brand. Lastly, this study identified a moderating role of need for cognition on ad attention.     

The role of art infusion in enhancing pro-environmental luxury brand advertising

Underpinned by art infusion theory, this present research examines the effect of art infusion on brand attitudes under different brand conditions (i.e. pro-environmental luxury brands and luxury brands) in advertising. Across two experimental studies, this research offers empirical evidence to a moderated mediation model, such that when an advertisement features an artwork (vs. no-artwork), consumers will perceive lower levels of incompatibility between luxury and sustainability, leading to a more favorable brand attitude toward the pro-environmental luxury brand. However, such differences will not occur among consumers evaluating an ordinary luxury brand. The findings of this research broaden the current body of knowledge related to the art infusion effect and provide important implications for marketers in their advertising strategy. Furthermore, these findings suggest that art infusion may be the solution to the dilemma facing sustainable luxury brands since luxury and sustainability are often perceived as incongruent concepts.     

How Latin American Students Perceive American Advertising

The study reported here was designed to examine the attitudes of Latin American students toward American advertising. The attitudes of 188 Latin American students were investigated, and comparisons were made with a matched sample of 193 American students. The results showed that the Latin American students' attitudes toward advertising were different from those of their American counterparts. Latin American students were more likely to have stronger attitudes, both favorable and unfavorable, toward specific social and economic dimensions of advertising. Attitudes expressed by Latin American students were not related to their length of stay in the United States.     

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.     

How does ad relevance affect consumers' attitudes toward personalized advertisements and social media platforms? The role of information co-ownership,vulnerability, and privacy cynicism

Consumers' responses to the use of their personal data for personalized advertising by platform providers are paradoxical. Drawing from psychological ownership theory and the collective information boundary, this study examines how the social relevance and personal relevance of ads impact consumers' attitudes toward advertisements and social media platforms. Basing on 350 responses, we confirm that perceptions of information co-ownership and feelings of vulnerability play a serial mediating role in the positive relationship between ad relevance and consumer attitudes. Specifically, ad relevance increases consumers' perceptions of social media platforms as co-owners of their personal information, which in turn reduces feelings of vulnerability and improves their attitudes toward personalized advertisements and social media platforms. Privacy cynicism negatively moderates the indirect effects of information co-ownership perceptions on two attitude variables mediated through feelings of vulnerability. Our research findings provide a new perspective on the personalization–privacy paradox and offer platform providers new insights into improving their personalized advertising performance and user–platform relationships.     

文化差异及其对广告诉求的影响:基于中美比较的视角(英文)

全球营销获得成功的首要条件是理解不同文化之间的价值观的相似性和差异性。由于缺乏以研究为基础获得的信息,这一任务对于试图与中国做生意的公司而言尤为艰巨。本研究采用霍夫斯塔德文化模型中的最新价值观来比较中美之间波莱广告诉求的有效性。在以文化维度为基础预测有效诉求的20个假设中,有9个得到了支持。另外一个假设也非常显著,但是与预想的方向正好相反。这些研究发现意味着,采用霍夫斯塔德文化维度作为有效广告诉求的唯一预测指标是不明智的。霍夫斯塔德维度或许缺乏可以有效预测各种广告诉求成功度所必需的结构。此外,广告诉求的有效性还可能由于其他因素(例如,年龄、社会趋势、政治法律环境及产品用法)而有所调整。     

Advertising in social media: a review of empirical evidence

This article presents an up-to-date review of academic and empirical research on advertising in social media. Two international databases from business and communication studies were searched, identifying 51 relevant studies. The findings of the identified studies were organized by seven emerging themes: use of advertising in social media, attitudes about and exposure to advertising, targeting, user-generated content in advertising, electronic word-of-mouth in advertising, consumer-generated advertising, and further advertising effects. Besides researched topics and major results, year of publication, journal, theoretical framework, research method, sample, measured constructs, and way of analysis were examined regarding each article. The review concludes by providing an agenda for future research.     

Towards effective advertising self‐regulation in Australia: the seven components

Despite claims of social and economic benefits, advertising has always had its critics. However, when dealing with unacceptable advertising, advertisers in developed countries usually choose a self‐regulatory approach in order to stave off government intervention. The recent breakdown of one of the world's longest established advertising self‐regulatory programmes in Australia has reopened the 20‐year‐old debate concerned with enhancing understanding of such regulatory systems. This article presents a framework for assisting in improving the effectiveness of advertising self‐regulation that is informed by both the literature and the key findings of an Australian study. The study used a mixed approach to data collection, including in‐depth interviews with regulators, advertisers and public participants and historical analysis of more than 10 000 complaints over a period of 10 years. From this research three key concepts are developed for assisting industry and regulators concerned with regulating advertising in eliminating undesirable features of such systems in the future. The empirical work succeeds in making both a practical and theoretical contribution to advertising self‐regulation specifically and industry regulation in general.     

An epistemological odyssey: towards social construction of the advertising process

This paper seeks to describe the outcome of an intellectual journey from cognitivism to mutualism in advertising research. It frames this journey with a metaphor from Greek mythology as a means of foregrounding some of the major issues the journey entailed. In particular, a focus on myths, narratives and storytelling in discourse reminds us that the subtlety of meaning making in twentieth-century advertising may not be penetrated by the quasi-scientific myths we live by today. The paper attempts to elucidate a social constructionist approach in advertising research, locate it as a legitimate development in marketing theory, hint at aspects of the trajectory it took as a personal intellectual journey and, finally, illustrate some meta-theoretical research implications through reference to a research project which investigated the intra-agency advertising process.     

中国大陆广告伦理道德研究综述

广告具有经济和文化双重属性，它作为一种重要的商业手段的同时，也对大众的社会生活和价值观念等产生重大的影响甚至起导向作用。然而随着广告业在我国的逐渐发展繁荣，广告也出现了许多问题，逐渐引起社会各界的重视。本文回顾和反思我国广告伦理道德研究十几年来的研究现状，综述了广告伦理道德的相关成果，发现广告伦理道德研究的不足与缺陷，为我国未来广告伦理道德的研究提供依据，为中国广告业更好的发展提供一些建议。     

Advertising value and advertising processing

Advertising value research is rooted in the view that advertising messages are potential communications exchanges between advertisers and consumers. Since some level of processing effort on the part of receivers is necessary for successful exchanges to occur, it is proposed that advertising processing decisions are based on initial, spontaneous, categorical evaluations that combine to form an expected advertising value (EAV) assessment. If sufficiently positive, individuals devote additional processing effort to the advertisement and more detailed ad-related factors become the focus. Once processing ends after some or all of an advert has been taken in, an evaluation of whether or not the effort was actually worthwhile - designated as outcome advertising value (OAV) - should be a measurable outcome. Factors that account for OAV and its relationship to attitude-toward-the-advertisement (A ad ) are also discussed.     

An Analysis of Consumer Complaints about Social Marketing Advertisements in Australia and New Zealand

While social marketers are rarely targeted in discussions of the ethics of advertising, we are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of ensuring that social marketing messages are developed and conveyed in an ethical fashion. The article reviews complaints made by members of the general public in Australia and New Zealand to the advertising regulatory bodies in those two countries for the five years 2000–2004; examining the number, type, and nature of these complaints – including the categories of advertising, and the types of appeals, which generate complaints from the general public in both countries. We find that, as for commercial advertising, there is a need for further research to explore “community standards” in relation to social marketing messages; and that there is a clear need for social marketers to consider consumer attitudes towards advertising when developing communication strategies and messages.     

When I feel invaded,I will avoid it: The effect of advertising invasiveness on consumers’ avoidance of social media advertising

As companies increasingly use social media as the platform for promoting their products and services, it is critical for consumers to be receptive to social media advertising (SMA). However, consumers may feel invaded when viewing SMA. The literature on advertising invasiveness has focused primarily on consumers’ attention invasiveness (i.e., the interruption of their attention). We argue that such a focus is limited, and we propose space invasiveness as an additional dimension for understanding advertising invasiveness in social media. Data were collected from Chinese consumers, and the results show that space invasiveness had a stronger effect than attention invasiveness did on advertising irritation, and that irritation in turn led to advertising avoidance. Furthermore, psychological ownership moderated the relationship between social influence and space invasiveness. This study provides important guidelines for practitioners to reduce advertising avoidance in social media.     

How advertising is covered in the Egyptian press: a longitudinal examination of content

The possibility of Egyptian attitudes towards advertising being affected by exposure to media portrayals of advertising is discussed in the context of cultivation effects. A census of all content related to advertising in Al-Ahram from 1978 through 1997 is conducted. Findings show that most columns, letters to the editor and editorials are negative in tone, and most news stories dealing with advertising are neutral. Domestic and international industry practices and social aspects of advertising are commonly covered. Outdoor and television advertising are most often criticised. The concerns expressed typically involve morality, culture and deception. Calls for increased government regulation and censorship of advertising are common. It appears that the coverage of advertising in Egypt is more negative than in the US. Future research examining links between media content and public attitudes towards advertising is suggested.