Beyond Advertising and Publicity: Hybrid Messages and Public Policy Issues

Abstract

This research explores a growing genre of marketing communication, labeled hybrid messages, which creatively combine key advantages (and avoid key disadvantages) inherent in advertising and publicity messages. Several types of hybrid messages are discussed, including those with long established histories (product placements, program-length commercials, program tie-ins), and those with a relatively recent origin (masked-art, masked-news, and masked-spokesperson messages). To obtain integrative insights on hybrid messages, this study: (a) reviews their historical/current regulatory status, (b) discusses their pros and cons, theoretical rationales and practical implications, and (c) delineates an extensive agenda for future research. Several important public policy questions raised by hybrid messages are addressed.     

Stages of moral development of corporations

Drawing from the Boulding's (1956) framework for general systems theory, the need to employ richer paradigm in the study of organizations (Pondy and Mitroff, 1979) is reiterated. It is argued that a better understanding of organizational ethical behavior is contingent upon viewing organizations as symbol processing systems of shared language and meanings. Further, it is proposed that organizations, like individuals, develop into collectivities of shared cognitions and rationale, over a period of time. The study adapts Kohlberg's (1983) model of moral development to examine if organizations can be viewed as passing through different stages of moral development depending on the type of moral reasoning employed to explain their behaviors in the face of ethical crises. Several cases raising questions about the ethics of corporate behavior were researched. An instrument entitled Organization Response Analysis was constructed using statements made by various spokespersons representing five of these organizations. The instrument was administered to 246 graduate and undergraduate students of business (N = 246). Results indicated a great degree of concurrence among respondents of differing genders, levels of education and work experience in determining the stages of moral development of organizations. Limitations of the current study and implications for future research and practice are discussed.B. S. Sridhar, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Management at the College of Business, University of Wisconsin — Oshkosh. His research interests include transformational leadership, decision making, attribution, business ethics and cross cultural issues.Artegal Camburn, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Management at the Harold Walter Siebens School of Business, Buena Vista College in Storm Lake, Iowa. His research interests concern the social responsibility of business and decision making in the areas of business ethics and corporate social responsibility.     

A comparative analysis of differential consumer response across supermarket and specialty store in the candy category

Retailing industry has undergone tremendous change in its complexity and sophistication over the past few years. Globally we are witnessing the evolution of retailing industry from traditionally micro-managed small retail formats like mom and pop store to modern corporate-managed large retail formats like supermarkets. Consumers are also shopping across these various store formats even for the products in similar categories. In this research, we posit that consumer purchases in the similar categories may very well be characterized by differential responses to marketing mix across different store formats. The proposed model accounts for the influences that these diverse response parameters and preferences have on one another as well as consumer heterogeneity. Our results show that sensitivities to marketing mix as well as correlations in preferences do indeed vary across formats for consumer purchases in similar categories.     

Distributions determined by conditioning on a single order statistic

LetX ₁,X ₂, …,X _n(n ? 2) be a random sample on a random variablex with a continuous distribution functionF which is strictly increasing over (a, b), ?∞ ?a <b ? ∞, the support ofF andX _1:n ?X _2:n ? … ?X _n:n the corresponding order statistics. Letg be a nonconstant continuous function over (a, b) with finiteg(a ⁺) andE {g(X)}. Then for some positive integers, 1 <s ?n $$E\left\{ {\frac{1}{{s - 1}}\sum\limits_{i - 1}^{s - 1} {g(X_{i:n} )|X_{s:n} } = x} \right\} = 1/2(g(x) + g(a^ + )), \forall x \in (a,b)$$ iffg is bounded, monotonic and \(F(x) = \frac{{g(x) - g(a^ + )}}{{g(b^ - ) - g(a^ + )}},\forall x \in (a,b)\) . This leads to characterization of several distribution functions. A general form of this result is also stated.     

Optimal Resource Allocation with Time-varying Marketing Effectiveness,Margins and Costs

The importance of optimal marketing communications mix decisions is well-recognized by both marketing scholars and practitioners. A significant volume of work has addressed the problem of dynamic marketing mix optimization assuming constant effectiveness of marketing instruments. However, the effectiveness of marketing communications varies over time for a variety of reasons. Moreover, due to factors such as inflation or deflation in media prices and/or raw material inputs, there can be differential changes in the costs of communications and/or margins on the good (or service) sold over time. The academic literature offers little normative direction on how time-varying marketing effectiveness and costs drive optimal marketing-mix levels and their relative allocation. The authors shed light on these issues by solving a monopoly firm's finite horizon dynamic marketing communications mix optimization problem involving two marketing instruments with time-varying parameters, i.e., the marketing effectiveness parameters, media costs, and product margin are all allowed to vary over time. First, they find that the structure of the solutions is similar to that of the classic Nerlove–Arrow model, for a completely general nature of time-varying effectiveness. Second, their model can be used by managers to exactly determine whether and when to switch their marketing-mix emphasis (defined by the marketing element receiving the dominant portion of the budget) over a finite planning horizon. In sum, the authors expand knowledge on optimal allocation of marketing resources with time-varying effectiveness. They also extend their solution to incorporate multiple (more than two) marketing instruments.     

Modeling large data sets in marketing

In the last two decades, marketing databases have grown significantly in terms of size and richness of available information. The analysis of these databases raises several information-related and statistical issues. We aim at providing an overview of a selection of issues related to the analysis of large data sets. We focus on the two important areas: single source databases and customer transaction databases. We discuss models that have been used to describe customer behavior in these fields. Among the issues discussed are the development of parsimonious models, estimation methods, aggregation of data, data-fusion and the optimization of customer-level profit functions. We conclude that problems related to the analysis of large databases are far from resolved, and will stimulate new research avenues in the near future.     

The influence of cause marketing associations on product and cause brand value

• The purpose of the study presented in this paper is to add to our understanding of the added value, both monetary and non‐monetary, to a brand when supporting a cause in a cause marketing ad. The findings show that consumers do not perceive the brand to be worth more if it was shown to be supporting a cause. The study also failed to show a significant improvement in consumer brand attitudes for brands featured in cause marketing ads. However, there was an attitude improvement for the cause. Product type and consumer dispositional variables were also examined.
• In summary, this study calls into question the value brands derive from being paired with a cause. This study discusses productive areas of future research and managerial implications.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reliability criteria bolster product classification decisions: A reply to Jones

We empirically test the robustness of the Easingwood approach to classify early product life cycle forms for infrequently purchased major products. Our results indicate that the key classification parameters could be unstable to variations in the sample size used for estimation, thereby producing more than one classification for several products. We demonstrate that the problem of multiple classifications can be effectively addressed by using the more rigorous criteria of joint confidence regions (as opposed to point estimates) of classification parameters. The benefit of such rigorous classification is that it increases researcher confidence in Easingwood's classification system.     

Public Attitudes toward Agrobiotechnology: The Mediating Role of Risk Perceptions on the Impact of Trust, Awareness, and Outrage

Using Fishbein's multiattribute and mediation models as conceptual frameworks, we propose that the impact of trust, awareness, sense of outrage, and socio-demographic variables on attitudes toward agrobiotechnology are mediated by risk perceptions. The proposition was validated using large survey data collected in the United States and United Kingdom. Results show that trust, sense of outrage, and socio-demographic factors play an important role in shaping public attitudes about agrobitoechnology, largely via their links to risk perceptions. Moreover, risk perceptions exert a greater effect on public attitudes toward agrobiotechnology than benefit perceptions. Finally, the attitudes of U.K. consumers were more susceptible to negative attributes when compared with U.S. consumers.     

The role of self selection, usage uncertainty and learning in the demand for local telephone service

Telephone services are often characterized by the presence of ‘fixed’ plans, involving only a fixed monthly fee, as well as ‘measured’ plans, with both fixed fees and per-unit charges for usage. Consumers are faced with the decisions of which plan to choose and how much to use the phone and these decisions are not, in general, independent. Due to the presence of a time lag between plan choice and usage decisions, consumers are uncertain about usage at the plan-choice stage. We develop a structural discrete/continuous model of plan choice and usage decisions of consumers that accounts for such uncertainty. Prior research has also found that consumers switch less often from fixed plans to measured plans to gain from potential savings than vice versa. Consumer uncertainty regarding their mean usage levels and different rates of learning by consumers in the two plans is a potential explanation for this phenomenon. We extend our discrete/continuous model to account for consumer learning about their mean usage and estimate different rates of learning for the two types of plans. We estimate our model using data from the 1986 Kentucky local telephone tariff experiment. Even in the absence of any price variation over time, we are able to measure the price elasticities both of usage and of choice of plan. Using our parameter estimates, we simulate the effects of the introduction of a metered plan in a market with only a fixed plan and vice versa, on both firm revenues and consumer surplus. We also find that consumers learn very rapidly if they are on the measured plan but learn very slowly when they are on the fixed plan. We investigate an alternative assumption on the nature of the learning process in which only consumers in the measured plan have an opportunity to learn. We find that our empirical results are robust to this change of specification. We conduct counterfactual simulations to simulate enhanced calling plans from the firm and consumer points of view. Additional simulations to measure the value of information in this category are also carried out. We compute the value of both complete information, where the entire uncertainty about future usage is resolved, as well as that of limited information, where the consumer's uncertainty about mean usage is resolved, but the uncertainty about specific month-to-month usage remains. We find that the value of information is modest. We also find that a large proportion of the value of information is that about the mean usage, with the value of the information about a specific month's usage being relatively small.