Effects of Disclosing Influencer Marketing in Videos: An Eye Tracking Study Among Children in Early Adolescence

This study focused on the effects of sponsorship disclosure timing on children's ability to understand that social influencer videos are sponsored. The study also investigated how sponsorship disclosure timing affects children's attitudes toward the sponsoring brand, the video, and the influencer. An experiment among 272 children in early adolescence (10–13 years of age) was conducted using eye tracking. Results show that a disclosure shown prior to the start of the videos leads to more visual attention than a disclosure shown concurrently with the start of videos. Consequently, disclosure prior to the start of videos is better processed, as indicated by disclosure memory, which then leads to a better understanding that the content is sponsored. This understanding evokes a more critical attitude toward the sponsored content in the video, and results in less positive attitudes toward the brands, the videos, and the influencers. Theoretically, this study provides insights into the mechanisms that explain disclosure timing effects among children in early adolescence. Practically, this study offers recommendations to policy makers to develop sponsorship disclosures that can increase transparency of online embedded advertising to minors.     

Effects of Sponsorship Disclosure Timing on the Processing of Sponsored Content: A Study on the Effectiveness of European Disclosure Regulations

This study investigates whether the timing of sponsorship disclosure affects viewers’ processing of sponsored content, and whether a disclosure influences the persuasive effect of the sponsored content. A model is proposed in which sponsorship disclosure enhances the recognition of sponsored television content as advertising, which leads to critical processing of the sponsored content. Ultimately, this negatively affects the attitude toward the brand in the sponsored content. This model was supported, but only when the disclosure was displayed prior to or concurrent with the sponsored content. These effects were not found for a sponsorship disclosure shown at the end of the program after the sponsored content. Theoretically, the findings emphasize the importance of disclosure timing. A disclosure displayed prior to or concurrent with the sponsored content, primes the sponsored content and provides sufficient processing time, so viewers recognize the content as advertising and can process it critically. In addition, the findings show that persuasion knowledge and critical processing are important underlying mechanisms for the effect of sponsorship disclosure on brand attitude. Regarding the practical implications for legislators and advertisers, this research demonstrates that sponsorship disclosure can make viewers aware of the sponsored content in television programs. Furthermore, this changes the processing of sponsored content and can also ultimately lead to resistance against persuasion.     

“This Post Is Sponsored”: Effects of Sponsorship Disclosure on Persuasion Knowledge and Electronic Word of Mouth in the Context of Facebook

Social media, such as Facebook, offer brands the opportunity to reach their target audience in a less obtrusive way than traditional media, through sponsored posts. Regulations require marketers to explicitly inform consumers about the commercial nature of these posts. This study addresses the effects of sponsorship disclosures by means of a 2 (no disclosure vs. the sponsorship disclosure ‘Sponsored’) × 2 (source: celebrity endorser vs. brand) experiment. Results suggest that a sponsorship disclosure only influences the use of persuasion knowledge when the post is disseminated by a celebrity. Moreover, a disclosure starts a process in which the recognition of advertising (i.e., the activation of conceptual persuasion knowledge) causes consumers to develop distrusting beliefs about the post (i.e., higher attitudinal persuasion knowledge), and in turn, decreases their intention to engage in electronic word of mouth.     

A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Disclosing Sponsored Content

The amount of literature on the effects of disclosing sponsored content has increased greatly in recent years. Although the literature provides valuable insights into the effects of disclosing sponsored content, several research gaps remain, such as inconclusive findings, boundary conditions, and the mechanisms that explain how disclosures work. This article offers a meta-analysis of 61 papers that use 57 distinct data sets to address these research gaps. The results showed that disclosing sponsored content reduced brand attitudes, credibility, and source evaluation but increased recognition, persuasion knowledge, and resistance. Disclosure content, timing, and awareness, as well as product and sample characteristics, provide boundary conditions for the positive and negative effects of disclosures. A path model that tested the mechanism of disclosing sponsored content showed that, as suggested by memory priming effect, recognition of sponsored content increased memory but did not influence evaluation. Moreover, the understanding of sponsored content influenced evaluation, but memory remained unaffected, which corresponds to the flexible correction approach (i.e., consumers try to correct their answer to limit persuasive effects).     

Disclosure of Vlog Advertising Targeted to Children

Influencers can disclose vlog advertising by implementing a platform-generated disclosure or by generating their own disclosure. This study aims to investigate whether and how these two types of disclosures differentially affect children's responses toward the sponsored content and the influencer. To do so, a two (platform-generated [PG] disclosure: no PG disclosure versus PG disclosure) by three (influencer-generated [IG] disclosure: no IG disclosure versus no commercial interference disclosure versus commercial interference disclosure) between-subjects experimental study was conducted among 190 children (aged ten to twelve). The results show that both types of disclosures increased children's recognition of vlog advertising; however, children's advertising literacy (i.e. their understanding of influencer marketing and skepticism toward the ad) was less activated when the influencer specifically indicated that there was no commercial interference of the brand. In addition, besides being more beneficial for influencers (by not negatively affecting children's evaluations of the influencer), an IG disclosure also showed to be more favorable for brands, as it increased brand effects among children, whereas a PG disclosure decreased these brand effects.     

Going Native: Effects of Disclosure Position and Language on the Recognition and Evaluation of Online Native Advertising

Despite recent industry attention, questions remain about how native advertising is perceived and processed by consumers. Two experiments examined effects of language and positioning in native advertising disclosures on recognition of the content as advertising, effects of recognition on brand and publisher evaluations, and whether disclosure position affects visual attention. Findings show that middle or bottom positioning and wording using “advertising” or “sponsored” increased advertising recognition compared to other conditions, and ad recognition generally led to more negative evaluations. Visual attention mediated the relationship between disclosure position and advertising recognition. Theoretical, practical, and regulatory implications for disclosures in native advertising are discussed.     

The importance of creative match in television sponsorship

It is one of the accepted wisdoms of sponsorship literature that there should be a good fit between sponsor and sponsored. This paper reports an exploratory study into the way in which programme audiences respond to television sponsors’ credits and to the sponsorships they announce. The study used a purposive sample of young television viewers and focused on the programmes they like to watch. It was found that, although the viewers expected a fit between the programme and the product or its image, they would accept a sponsor that added to the entertainment value of the programme. Clever or funny creative treatments that match the programme content apparently make up for a lack of fit elsewhere.     

Comments

Despite the increased usage of sponsorship activities by practitioners, there has been little research on the impact of sponsorship on building brand image. This research examines the influence of sponsorship on associations transfer from sponsored entity to the sponsor. In order to test all the hypotheses, two pre-tests and one main study were conducted. Empirical findings suggest that individuals who are exposed to the highly fitting partnership develop a stronger associative link between sponsor and sponsored entity than individuals who are exposed to the poorly fitting partnership. Results do not offer support that frequency of the partnership contributes to building the strength of the associative link between sponsor and sponsored entity. Most importantly, results indicate that the strength of the associative link between sponsor and sponsored entity is positively related to the transfer of associations from sponsored entity to sponsor.     

When less is more: the impact of macro and micro social media influencers’ disclosure

ABSTRACT

There are growing discussions of social media influencers and their effectiveness in endorsing products. Further, recent policy regulations are requiring social media influencers to disclose sponsored content when using a form of native advertising. This research examined the effect of macro-influencers (high likes) and micro-influencers (low likes) and their disclosure of native advertising sponsorship on consumer evaluations of products. Results from a 2 × 2 experiment first show that consumers exposed to the micro-influencer condition report higher levels of product knowledge, and consumers exposed to the disclosure condition reported the products endorsed by social media influencers to be more attractive. The results also show that when exposed to micro-influencers who disclose, consumers have higher levels of purchase intentions than when exposed to macro-influencers who do not disclose, as well as higher purchase intentions than for posts where sponsorship is not disclosed by influencers. The important findings of this research for theory, practice and policy are discussed.     

The Association between Disclosure,Distress, and Failure

The quality of corporate disclosures has drawn increasing levels of criticism from Congress and the SEC. A subject of particularly intense scrutiny and action is the Management’s Discussion and Analysis (MD&A). This narrative, intended to provide an inside perspective on the reported results of the firm, is particularly important when attempting to evaluate the investment prospects of the marginal or poorly performing firm. However, managers may restrict the information content of the disclosure, raising potential concerns about ethical behavior. In this study, we employ a proprietary instrument to measure the quality of MD&A disclosures for a sample of firms entering financial distress. We evaluate the disclosure behavior of these firms in an effort to determine whether changes in the disclosure appear to be motivated primarily by economic or ethical concerns. We find, on average, that firms increase disclosure quality in the year of initial distress. However, sustained increases in disclosure quality are limited to firms that subsequently recover from the distress. The results suggest that observed changes in disclosure are driven primarily by economic considerations, rather than ethical ones, especially in good economic times.     

The Links Between Objectives and Function in Organizational Sponsorship

This paper presents the results of a postal survey of 54 large companies who use some form of sponsorship in the UK. The main purpose was to examine the links between the objectives of sponsorship, and the main types of sponsored activity and to achieve an insight into which organizational functions are responsible. The results indicate that functional objectives for sponsorship generally differ, and that this is reflected in the choice of sponsorship activity. However, the primacy of the corporate image objective is manifest. The number of arts and sports events sponsored are about the same for all organizations, but arts sponsorship is mainly a public relations activity. The marketing function is most concerned with sports sponsorship. Community sponsorship is still commercially unimportant.     

Perceptions of Intentional Wrongdoing and Peer Reporting Behavior Among Registered Nurses

Researchers and practitioners have devoted considerable attention to firms' policies regarding discretionary disclosures. Prior studies argue that firms increase demand for their debt and equity issues and, thus, lower their cost of capital, by providing more informative disclosures. However, empirical research has generally not been able to document significant benefits from increased disclosure.This paper proposes an alternative explanation – firms disclose because it is the socially responsible thing to do. We argue that companies have incentives to engage in stakeholder management by undertaking socially responsible activities and that providing extensive and informative disclosures is one such practice.We examine the relationship between firms' disclosures and measures of social responsibility. We use ratings provided by the Council on Economic Priorities as proxies for the degree of social responsibility adopted by the sample firms. Disclosure rankings provided by the annual Association for Investment Management and Research Corporate Information Committee Reports (AIMR Reports) are used to measure disclosure level.Our results indicate that there is a positive relationship between disclosure level and corporate social responsibility. That is, firms that engage in socially responsive activities provide more informative and/or extensive disclosures than do companies that are less focused on advancing social goals. In addition, we find that socially responsible firms are more likely to provide this increased disclosure through better investor relations practices. These results support our contention that increased disclosure is a form of socially responsible behavior.     

Drivers of brand image improvement in sports-event sponsorship

This stock-taking article re-examines 20 years of research on conditions that influence the magnitude of brand image improvement through sports-event sponsorship. The study suggests a procedure to adequately measure sponsor image change in field sponsorships and investigates potential factors related to the sponsored property, the sponsorship relationship, the sponsor, and the individual sports spectator that may affect the magnitude of sponsor image improvement. An empirical analysis in the context of a large sponsored sports event shows that some drivers influence sponsor image improvement directly in a multiple regression analysis (spectators’ perceived event image, event–sponsor fit, sponsor familiarity, and product category importance), while other drivers are related to sponsor image in bivariate analyses only (spectators’ event interest, sport interest, event exposure, and demographic characteristics). Reasons for these findings (e.g., interrelationship between drivers of sponsor image improvement), managerial implications, and consequences for the development of a comprehensive model of sponsor image formation are discussed.     

Understanding Consumer Response to Sponsorship Information: A Resource‐Matching Approach

Sponsorship of sporting teams and events has become an increasingly popular form of corporate and brand communication. Despite the continued growth of sponsorship spending, the corresponding literature base is highly fragmented and little agreement exists related to the psychological mechanisms underlying response. This paper integrates several prominent sponsorship research streams in promoting a “resource‐matching” perspective of cognitive elaboration and attitude change. This research holds that in the absence of clear functional fit between sponsor and event, identifying a basis for sponsor–event fit is likely to require some degree of cognitive effort. The results indicate stronger social identification with the sponsored event influences the favorability they attribute to sponsor motives and promotes stronger perceptions of fit between the sponsor and the sponsored activity. Further, the results indicate fit perceptions mediate the relationship between attribution and sponsorship response. Consistent with ELM theory, when cognitive resources are insufficient for the complexity of the fit‐matching task, social identification may still act as a peripheral cue in driving a positive affective response to sponsorship information.     

Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

We examine the relationship between corporate governance and the extent of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures in the annual reports of Bangladeshi companies. A legitimacy theory framework is adopted to understand the extent to which corporate governance characteristics, such as managerial ownership, public ownership, foreign ownership, board independence, CEO duality and presence of audit committee influence organisational response to various stakeholder groups. Our results suggest that although CSR disclosures generally have a negative association with managerial ownership, such relationship becomes significant and positive for export-oriented industries. We also find public ownership, foreign ownership, board independence and presence of audit committee to have positive significant impacts on CSR disclosures. However, we fail to find any significant impact of CEO duality. Thus, our results suggest that pressures exerted by external stakeholder groups and corporate governance mechanisms involving independent outsiders may allay some concerns relating to family influence on CSR disclosure practices. Overall, our study implies that corporate governance attributes play a vital role in ensuring organisational legitimacy through CSR disclosures. The findings of our study should be of interest to regulators and policy makers in countries which share similar corporate ownership and regulatory structures.     

Leveraging sponsorship with corporate social responsibility

Sponsors increasingly engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities surrounding sponsored events (e.g., the soccer World Cup and Olympic Games). This study examines how linking CSR to sponsorship affects consumer attitudes towards sponsoring brands. Schema theory suggests that consumer CSR perception and brand credibility act as serial mediators. They transfer the positive effects of a CSR-linked sponsorship strategy. These effects only occur for brands with a moderately low congruity to the sponsored event (but not for brands with a moderately high congruity to the sponsored event). Two experiments measuring (Study 1) and manipulating (Study 2) sponsor–event congruity confirm the proposed mediation mechanism for brands with a moderately low sponsor–event congruity. CSR-linked sponsorship (vs. sponsorship without CSR linkage) does not influence attitudes towards brands with a moderately high congruity to the sponsored event. The study develops theoretical and practical implications for sponsorship and CSR strategies.     

Investigation of the Effects of Disclosure Statements in Rental Car Advertisements

State attorneys general recently proposed mandatory disclosures for rental car advertising. This study investigates the effects of alternate disclosure statements on consumers' beliefs. The results suggest that a shorter disclosure statement may be as effective as the one proposed.     

Ethical Aspects of Sponsorship

The paper regards sponsorship as an agreement, in which the sponsor undertakes an action with economic nature for the sake of a sponsored subject. Typical cases related to unethical conduct of sponsors and subjects are described, as well as some social contexts of sponsorship and its influence on the public opinion.     

The effect of consumer emotional disclosure on fairness perceptions

One way consumers cope with an unfair consumption experience is to express how they felt about it. Understandably, these disclosures are often rich with emotion. Does emotional disclosure in this context influence consumers' perceptions of fairness? Drawing hypotheses from the emotional disclosure literature, this research reveals that writing about emotions improves consumer fairness perceptions and satisfaction. However, the benefit of emotional disclosure disappears if the disclosure is solicited by the company perceived to be responsible for the unfairness and they do not offer redress. The findings lead to the recommendation that companies provide and facilitate opportunities for consumers to disclose to third parties the emotions arising from consumption experiences perceived as unfair. Implications for managing customer feedback, complaints, and negative word‐of‐mouth are discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Auditee Religiosity,External Monitoring,and the Pricing of Audit Services

This paper demonstrates the political perspective of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures and, drawing on Weber’s notion of traditionalism, seeks to explain what motivates companies to make such disclosures in a traditional setting. Annual reports of 23 banking companies in Bangladesh are analysed over the period 2009–2012. This is supplemented by a review of documentary evidence on the political and social activities of corporations and reports published in national and international newspapers. We found that, in the banking companies over the period of study, apparently neutral, corporate, philanthropic activities disclosed and promoted in CSR reports are inextricably linked to powerful leaders’ personal projects and the ruling party’s agendas. We have demonstrated elements of traditional societies, including personal loyalty and the public display of loyalty, the master–servant relationship, and obedience to personal rather than formal authority, provide an understanding of why banks (with or without explicit political linkages with the ruling party) have employed politically charged CSR disclosure strategies. The paper contributes to disclosure studies where political motivations of corporate disclosure rarely discussed. The paper extends the debate on political CSR by demonstrating that the role of family and familial values at the organisational and national levels may be much more important when it comes to CSR disclosure and activities.