Toward a Bakhtinian typology of ambient advertising

Ambient advertising represents a growing sector of creative advertising practice, but has garnered little academic research. This paper aims to provide a theoretical foundation for the examination of ambient advertising's place within the marketing communication mix. The author presents a typology of ambient advertising based on the theory of the chronotope by Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975), the creative expression of the intersection between temporal and spatial dimensions, arguing that this represents the most fecund model for exploring the way in which ambient advertising seeks to harness the matrix of time and place. The typology offers a rationale for comparing different ambient campaigns on the basis of the degree to which they clearly express a particular chronotope and goes on to link this to a consideration of rhetorical persuasiveness.     

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.     

Influence of Advertising on Brand Personality in The Airline Sector: The Case of Spain

This article outlines the findings of a study employing a partial least squares (PLS) structural equation methodology to explore the relationship among advertising and brand personality (BP) dimension of a validated Aaker's model (1997) in the airline business. BP refers to the emotional side of brand image. It is created by all experiences of consumers with a brand. The model was validated using confirmatory factor analysis and the effect of advertising on BP has been tested using PLS. The findings suggest that advertising influences the formation of BP only in the sophistication dimension. These results invite managers in the airline companies sector to develop communication strategies to create a distinguishing and attractive BP that will help them connect with their consumers.     

Assessing the appropriateness of movies as vehicles for promoting tourist destinations

The risky decision about which movies to use as promotional vehicles must be made without assistance from either readily available data held by the industry or systematic criteria published by academia. To deal with such limitations, this study identifies which movie genres are most interesting (uninteresting) for the visitors of different types of holiday destinations—namely, beaches, cities, theme/amusement parks, spa/health resorts, mountains/lakes, cruise liners, and rural areas. Based on the results, specific guidelines are proposed to evaluate movie projects more systematically, so that destination promoters can choose (reject) those films with appropriate (inappropriate) genres for the target tourists.     

Female tour leaders as advertising endorsers

In the Pan-Asia domain, especially Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and the most effectively emerging power house, China, group package tours (GPTs) have been considered as an indispensable gadget for overseas vacationing tourists. A well-trained senior tour guide is capable of bringing up the GPT by offering an intriguing and entertaining interactive service, and vice versa; the presented research reveals the gender differences in terms of positioning tour leaders as advertising endorsers. Technically, the features and cover letters posed on GPT brochures simply justify the credibility of being a capable and well-organized tour leader; nevertheless, female tour leaders seem to be far more satisfying when it comes to satisfying the needs of consumers. In the meantime, there are 440 samples closely examined through the methodology of ‘post-test-only control group experimental design’, which discloses the ground-breaking mystery of why female tour leaders are more favorable than males. Significantly, the updated developing research is able to provide a cost-effective and target-oriented marketing information for any multinational Tourism Bureaus and travel agencies.     

Children,Smoking and Advertising: The Evidence is There for Those Who Wish to See it (A Reply)

In a recent article in this journal, Colin McDonald (1993) criticized our research on cigarette advertising and children's smoking. This paper refutes each of his criticisms and shows that our research and that of others in this field provides a convincing argument that cigarette advertising does influence children's smoking. These arguments are now widely accepted, with the only prominent disagreement coming from those with most to lose—the tobacco industry.     

Using humour to increase effectiveness of shameful health issue advertising: testing the effects of health worry level

ABSTRACT

Communicating shame-inducing health issue information is a challenging task as the feelings of shame might elicit withdrawal and avoidance coping, leading to delay in health screening and treatment. With the cognitive and emotional buffering benefits, using humour as a message strategy might help increase approach coping. Real-world ad campaigns dealing with these health issues have been using humour as an advertising tool, and with the lack of humour effects research in health communication, this is a pending topic to pursue. Given that past studies have found health worry to be a significant contributing factor in health behaviours, the audience factor of the individual's general health worry level is investigated. Three experimental studies provide evidence to humour benefitting low health-worry-level individuals in lower shame contexts and high health-worry-level individuals in higher shame contexts. Theoretical and practical implications provide the significance of the findings.     

Investigating the persuasive impact and underlying processes of interactive magazine ads in a real-life setting

ABSTRACT

This study tests a theoretical framework to explain the persuasive impact of interactive magazine ads on consumers’ ad and brand attitudes. To obtain realistic (unforced) responses, a field experiment was conducted with a one-factor (interactive vs. non-interactive magazine ad) between-subjects design (N = 98). Results showed that, although they rarely used it, participants positively evaluated the presence of an interactive feature in a digital magazine ad. Furthermore, parallel-mediation analyses revealed that the interactive magazine ad was perceived as more interactive and more surprising than the non-interactive ad, which ultimately positively impacted consumers’ attitudes towards the magazine. A second real-life setting experiment (N = 121) confirmed and extended these findings by revealing that the mediation effects were even stronger when consumers had used the interactive feature (vs. only seen). In addition, the relationship between interactive magazine ads and consumers’ attitudinal responses was explained slightly better by ‘perceived surprise’ than by ‘perceived interactivity.’     

Context effects of TV programme-induced interactivity and telepresence on advertising responses

This article provides an analysis of the relationship between annual advertising expenditures and sales, using a time series regression procedure, for beer, wine, and liquor sold in the United States from 1971 to 2012. Information from these four decades provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationships of numerous variables with aggregate alcohol category sales. Even though per capita alcohol consumption has not changed much throughout this period, alcohol advertising media expenditures for all alcohol beverages have increased almost 400% since 1971. This study has provided evidence of consumption changes across categories of alcohol beverages over the past 40-plus years with the preponderance of those changes significantly correlated to fluctuations in demography, taxation and income levels – not advertising. Despite other macro-level studies with consistent findings, the perception that advertising increases consumption exists. The findings here indicate that there is either no relationship or a weak one between advertising and aggregate category sales. Therefore, advertising restrictions or bans with the purpose of reducing consumption may not have the desired effect. Implications on policy decisions regarding advertising controls are addressed.     

Global Issues in Selecting Athlete Endorsers for National Markets: A Macroinvestigation

ABSTRACT

Little advertising research explores the role of culture in selecting celebrity endorsers. The purpose of this study is to explore how the selection process of athlete endorsers is shaped by national contexts. Based on interviews with advertising practitioners in 10 countries, the study reveals similarities in practitioners’ thinking across countries on a variety of matters related to athlete endorsement. It reveals the importance given by practitioners to the “cultural attractiveness” of national athlete endorsers when using them to connect with their national audience and shows that the selection process depends greatly on various cultural pressures linked to sporting traditions of each country. The study also shows how practitioners believe that athlete endorsers should be used mainly to generate brand and advertising awareness principally under pressure from clients’ emotional input.