Targeted advertising as a signal

This study presents a signaling model of advertising for horizontally differentiated products. The central ingredients of the model are two important characteristics of advertising—targeting, and noisy information content. The theory yields interesting results about the informational role of targeted advertising, and its consequences. First, targeting can itself serve as a signal on product attributes. Second, the effectiveness of targeting depends not only on firms knowing consumer preferences, but on consumers knowing that firms know this. This creates a distinction between strategies of targeting and personalization. Third, the effectiveness of targeting in equilibrium may (far) exceed the information contained directly in the targeted message. Fourth, information content is not, however, superfluous. Specifically, when ads contain no information, a targeting equilibrium does not exist. Together, these results reveal how advertising conveys information both through the content of the message and the firm’s choice of advertising medium. Furthermore, the model is robust to the various critiques of prior work on ads-as-signals: namely, that ad content is irrelevant, ad exposure is unnecessary, and the choice of ads as signals is inherently arbitrary.

啸傲地面 决胜终端——苏州广电2010电视广告推介会盛大举行

·苏州台黄金时段收视份额达69.5%,居全国城市台之首·2010年将新推三档栏目、十部大剧,打造八大系列活动·营销政策继续保持稳定,广告价格总体调价幅度控制在8%左右“啸傲地面”苏外l广电总台2010电视广告推介年会于10月28日盛大举行,     

功能错位的网络广告

据最新数据显示,中国网民数量已达3.38亿人,拥有个人博客或个人空间的网民用户达1.82亿人,跃据世界前列,我国已经进入网络传播时代。     

Using commercial advertising agencies in micronutrient promotion: lessons learned

Lack of knowledge, beliefs about food, customs, and poverty are the main factors preventing millions of people from eating enough micronutrient-rich foods. Globally, more than 2 billion people are at risk of iron, vitamin A, and iodine deficiencies. Opportunities for Micronutrient Intervention (OMNI), a 5-year project funded by the Office of Health and Nutrition, US Agency for International Development, is dedicated to preventing and controlling micronutrient deficiencies in developing countries. OMNI's general approaches to reducing micronutrient deficiencies include fortification, supplementation, and dietary diversification. For all of those approaches, the project has stressed a social marketing methodology to define and motivate feasible behavior changes which will benefit maternal and child health and nutrition. The Manoff Group, the OMNI partner most responsible for behavior change, has had many positive experiences using social marketing to address micronutrient malnutrition, breast-feeding, and child feeding in many countries. Focusing mainly upon supplementation and dietary diversification, OMNI's experience to date in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia is summarized.     

In-store demonstrations as a promotion tool

Retailers and manufacturers jointly do their best to influence in-store customer behavior. One promotional tool often used by the industry but rarely studied by academics is in-store demonstrations. In this article we look at when and how demonstrations work the best. Two large field experiments were run and the results indicate that in-store demonstrations are powerful tools to increase sales. Furthermore, the results from the experiments show that the effectiveness of the demonstrations vary widely depending on when they and how they are executed.     

Likeability as a measure of advertising effectiveness: the case of financial services

Television advertising for financial services accounts for over one-third of total financial services advertising expenditure, yet there is evidence to suggest it is not very well done. Given the difficulties advertisers have to overcome in terms of promoting an intangible product in accordance with tight restrictions on advertising content and format to a largely uninvolved audience, it becomes all the more imperative to study how viewers judge financial services commercials. This paper presents the findings of a study which seeks to establish which elements, if any, of a financial services commercial first make it likeable to its target audience, second motivate the viewer to seek more information about the service being advertised and, third, have an effect on the image the viewer has of the advertiser. Some interesting findings from the research point to the similarities between the emerging factors for viewers' affective reactions to fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and financial services commercials and the extent to which likeability mediates the influence which advertisement execution features have on subsequent behavioural intentions.     

Advertising non-premium products as if they were premium: The impact of advertising up on advertising elasticity and brand equity

Non-premium brands occasionally emulate their premium counterparts by using ads that emphasize premium characteristics such as superior performance and exclusivity. We define this practice as “advertising up” and develop hypotheses about its short- and long-term impact on advertising elasticity and brand equity respectively. We test the hypotheses in two large-scale empirical studies using a comprehensive dataset from the automotive industry that includes, among others, the content of 2317 television ads broadcast over a period of 45?months. The results indicate that advertising up increases (decreases) short-term advertising elasticity for non-premium products with a low (high) market share. The results also show that an intensive use of advertising up over time leads to long-term improvements (reductions) in brand equity for expensive (cheap) non-premium products. Furthermore, an inconsistent use of advertising up leads to reductions in brand equity. The results imply that managers of non-premium products with a low market share can use advertising up to increase advertising effectiveness in the short run. However, advertising up will only generate long-term improvements in brand equity for expensive non-premium products. Finally, to avoid long-term reductions in brand equity, advertising up should be consistently used over time.     

Assessing advertising content in a hospital advertising campaign: An application of Puto and Wells (1984) measure of informational and transformational advertising content

The following is a report of a study designed to measure advertising content based on the cognitive and affective elements of informational (i.e., information processing) and transformational (i.e., experiential) content using the measure of advertising informational and transformational content developed by Puto and Wells (1984). A university hospital advertising campaign designed to be high in transformational content did not appear to affect perceived quality of local university hospitals relative to private hospitals or increase the likelihood of choosing a university hospital in the future. Further, experiences with university hospitals that seemed to be in direct contrast to the content of the advertisements based on subject perceptions affected how university hospital advertisements were perceived in terms of content. Conclusions and implications for hospital advertising campaigns are discussed.     

Brand inequalities in the loyalty-effects of purchases

Choice models in marketing have generally included the effects of loyalty on individual choice behavior.Loyalty has been typically measured as proportion of purchases or as an exponentially smoothed index of past purchases. An underlying assumption of both measures is that all brands gain the same increase in loyalty with a purchase. However, such an assumption may not hold when the competing brands are not comparable. We propose a new exponential smoothing measure which incorporates brand-specific parameters for the loyalty effects of purchases. A choice model, calibrated on individual level data for the detergent category, is used to compare the proposed measure with its traditional version. This comparison reveals that the new approach improves both the fit and predictive performance of the choice model. The results also suggest that the loyalty effects of purchases are likely to be lower for brands which are purchased on price promotions and higher for expensive brands.     

Pricing and persuasive advertising in a differentiated market

This paper examines the effects of consumer preferences, firms’ costs, and advertising efficiencies on firms’ pricing and persuasive advertising strategies. We show that as the firms’ horizontal differentiation increases, the firm with a lower value-added product tends to increase persuasive advertising, whereas its competitor tends to reduce advertising. Second, the firm receiving a favorable shock in product valuation will complement the favorable change with additional persuasive advertising rather than reduce advertising spending. Third, an equal improvement in advertising efficiency in the industry will lower the profits for both firms, whereas a decrease in advertising efficiency in the industry can benefit both firms. Fourth, a larger shock that improves a firm’s product valuation or unit cost is more likely to induce higher advertising spending in the industry. Lastly, an exogenous increase in the separation between firms’ product valuations or perceived qualities may actually reduce the price dispersion in the industry.     

Modelling job stress as a mediating role in predicting turnover intention

Turnover intention has been an important issue for decades since management has long recognized that low turnover intention of employees is helpful for consequently obtaining high organizational performance and avoiding the potential costs related to recruiting and training new employees. For that reason, this study proposed a research model of turnover intention based on Hackman and Oldham's [(1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16(2), 250–279.] job characteristics theory. The proposed research model is empirically tested using a survey of 255 employees from Taiwanese banks. Tests results of structural equation modelling provide evidence that role conflicts, role ambiguity, and role overload indeed have positive impacts on job stress. Employees with higher levels of job stress are more likely to think about leaving, while those perceiving more fairness of rewards are less likely. Implications for managerial administration and future research are discussed.     

Economics of advertising: Emerging functions of Internet advertising

This paper intends to highlight the emerging force of the Internet as an advertising medium. The economic functions of Internet advertising are examined. Moreover, the paper aims to evaluate the relative impacts on optimal advertising models. Our discussion also includes analysis of associated price-cost margins with respect to optimal advertising budgets and strategic reactions. All in all, this paper should provide entrepreneurs with more crucial knowledge of advertising strategies offered by the new medium. Moreover, it will equip scientists and technologists with more insights into the economic aspects and strategic values of Internet advertising. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

寻找广告费的那一半——降低广告风险，保证广告效果——重庆电视台广告风险管理机制

编前：目前,广告主考核电视媒介投放效果主要指标包括总收视点、传播广度、有效到达频次、广告千人成本等．其中收视率是左右企业广告投放的关键。但业界也逐步意识到。对于电视节目的广告创收而言收视率不是万能的。     

Developing a typology of affective responses to advertising

This article identifies—and then validates—a set of categories for use in the measurement of affective responses to advertising. Unlike previous categories developed for this purpose, these are first extracted by cluster analysis and then also subjected to formal tests for reliability and for convergent, discriminant, concurrent, and predictive validity.     

Money use and purchases in families in which the wife works: a Turkish example

This study, which has been undertaken to find out the manner in which money is utilized and shopping is done in families in which the wife works, has revealed that in more than half of the families studied the spouses co-operate in financial planning. The study has also found that the nature of shopping determines the shopper in the family.     

Investor sentiment and advertising expenditure

A strategic issue facing marketing managers is ‘how much and when’ to spend on advertising. We argue that investor sentiment in the stock market may influence advertising expenditure by affecting firms' ability to raise new funds. We show that during periods of low (high) investor sentiment, firms decrease (increase) their advertising expenditure, even though the effectiveness of advertising is greater (lower) during such periods. We also find that these results are stronger for financially constrained firms that rely more on external financing. Our findings suggest that marketing managers can improve the efficiency of their advertising expenditure by raising (reducing) it during periods of low (high) sentiment.     

Goodwill and dynamic advertising strategies

In this paper, we empirically analyze weekly advertising policies of manufacturing firms in consumer goods markets. We assume firms engage in persuasive advertising, thus policies of firms affect the goodwill of a brand. We introduce a demand and a goodwill production function. A simple transformation of the demand function allows us to identify not only the demand parameters but also the parameters of the goodwill production function. We reconstruct the unobserved goodwill levels using these parameters and past advertising levels. We restrict our attention to Markov Perfect Equilibrium (MPE) strategies which are functions of payoff relevant state variables. Without imposing further restrictions on the dynamic competitive environment, we investigate the relationship between observed advertising strategies—which are assumed to be MPE—and payoff relevant state variables by means of several reduced form specifications. The most important determinant of advertising intensity turns out to be goodwill. We demonstrate that controlling for an advertising campaign significantly improves the explanatory power of the model. JEL Classification L13 . C73 . M30 . M37 I would like to thank Volkswagen Stiftung for the generous financial support which made this research possible.