Advances in Advertising Research (Vol. 1)

Strategic Consistency appears to be one of the main criteria to follow when developing an integrated marketing communication campaign. However, there is a wide body of research which also suggests that incongruent information may be more effective that consistent information. Due to these contradictory points of view, the present study analyzes what is the most effective level of strategic consistency in an integrated communication campaign. For this purpose an experiment is designed in which the level of strategic consistency is manipulated. A total of 227 undergraduate students participated in the study and were randomly assigned to one of three different levels of strategic consistency (high, moderate, low). Advertising and sponsorship were the communication tools used in the experiment. Cognitive and affective responses obtained from the study suggest that a moderate level of strategic consistency is the most appropriate to improve the effectiveness of an IMC campaign.

Limited Editions are a widely used type of line extensions to introduce new products in the Fast-Moving-Consumer-Goods business. In this process an exceptional, limited available variant is added to the permanent offers of a product line. Despite the meanwhile wide use of this strategy in marketing there is almost no scientific discussion about limited editions. This article focuses on how consumers react to limited editions. Based on exploration-, scarcity- and categorization- theory, effects of exploration seeking and processing depth are analysed. Additionally reciprocal effects of limited editions on the parent brand are examined. Implications for the use of limited editions in practice will be deduced from the results.

The European market is increasingly important in the world economy. The expansion of the European Union (EU) advanced further in 2004, by adding ten new member states, a total of 77 million people, and over 700,000 square kilometres of territory. The incorporation of eight central and eastern European countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia) and two Mediterranean islands (Cyprus and Malta) was one of the most ambitious initiatives in the five-plus-decade history of European integration. This drastic expansion has changed the way in which multinational enterprises (MNEs) operate their businesses in Europe. Because of these countries’ low labour costs and investment incentives (e.g., tax reduction, construction aid), many firms have moved their production facilities from other regions to these new Member States. In particular, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary and Poland have attracted almost three-quarters of foreign investment (Sheram and Soubbotina 2000), while MNEs have rapidly become the largest advertisers in these countries. To date, however, little research has been available regarding advertising or marketing strategy in this region.

Using experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of various advertising strategies has a long tradition in academic research in marketing (see e.g., Strong, 1912, for an early example). These experiments typically evaluate the effects of using a certain strategy (e.g., humor or celebrity endorsement) or executional style or elements (e.g., color or images) on a small set of dependent variables. The dependent variables in most cases are brand attitude and brand purchase intention, and to a limited extent attitude toward the ad. The dominance of these variables is demonstrated by the fact that they are the most common dependent variables in meta-analyses of advertising research (e.g., Brown and Stayman, 1992; Eisend, 2006, 2009). This practice is problematic for at least two reasons. Firstly, it suggests a belief that advertising works by having a positive effect on either brand attitude or brand purchase intention, or both, but not by influencing other variables (Figure 1).

In marketing practice, brand managers have to split their budgets between brand advertising efforts and sales promotions. This is a tough decision and is based on several factors including the type of product and the preferences of the target consumer. In this study, the consumer purchase decision making process is conceptualized as a continuum from a passive shopping stage to an active one. Advertising messages work during the passive stage while promotion messages work during the active one. Utilizing panel data obtained from respondents in five European countries, multiple product categories were examined to identify whether pre-purchase brand attitudes determine consumer purchase decision reliance on either passive or active stage brand messages. The author investigated whether patterns hold across countries and product categories. The study also examined to what extent reliance on passive stage messages in a product category is affected by either the aggregate satisfaction or loyalty with the brands available on the market in that category.

Today consumers are over flooded with information on brands, products, and product attributes. At the same time information is not always fully available for all alternatives in a purchasing situation. In this context it is important to understand how missing product attribute information influences the evaluation of branded alternatives. The results of three experiments demonstrate that brands can take advantage of this type of asymmetric information. The first experiment revealed that the evaluation of a weak brand product can be enhanced due to missing attribute information of the competitive product of a strong brand. The second experiment indicated that the mere uniqueness of an attribute has no impact on product evaluation. The third experiment showed that enhanced processing fluency of the target attribute leads to more extreme preferences for superior alternatives.

This study investigates the impact of the threat level (death-related or body harm related) and gain and loss framed messages in a public service announcement (PSA) threat appeal, as well as the impact of the valence of the media context in which the PSA is embedded in a sample of 266 young Belgian adults. The PSA threat level and the combination of negative message framing, negative context priming and high-threat messages have a significant effect on evoked fear. Evoked fear plays the strongest role in the development of message credibility, more than cognitive factors such as perceived threat and coping efficacy.

Advertising is normally targeted at a homogeneous target market. In countries where the population is characterized by a wide variety of different racial groups, advertising is however often targeted at a fairly heterogeneous audience. This study investigates whether different racial groups perceive fear appeals pertaining to HIV/Aids communication differently. The role of fear and efficacy are examined to ascertain the influence of different levels of fear appeals. The findings of this paper indicate differences among racial groups pertaining to levels of fear and efficacy experienced after exposure to high fear appeals compared to other appeals.

Physical attractiveness – which is primarily determined by a person’s facial attractiveness and is automatically and rapidly evaluated “at a glance„ (see Olson and Marschuetz, 2005) has a very powerful influence on the person’s ability to persuade others, even when the person is not trying deliberately to persuade. For example, physically (facially) attractive students receive better grades in school, are more likely to be hired as a result of job interviews, tend to be paid more when they get the job, and are much more likely to win political elections than their less attractive peers (see Hamermesh and Biddle, 1994; Cialdini, 2009). When the person is deliberately trying to persuade, people are more likely to agree with the opinion expressed by an attractive person (see Chaiken, 1979; Horai, Naccari, and Fatoullah, 1974) and are more likely to buy products offered by an attractive as compared to a less attractive person (see Ahearne, Gruen, and Jarvis, 1999; Reingen and Kernan, 1993). Attractive presenters also have a persuasive advantage in advertising – and this advantage does not only show when they endorse beauty-enhancement products (see Patzer, 1985; Praxmarer, 2006; Till and Busler, 2000). The purpose of this study is to investigate alternative explanations for this positive effect of an advertising presenter’s facial attractiveness on persuasion.

Advergaming is seen as a valuable communication strategy which specifically targets children. Producers of advergames emphasize that the positive gaming experience transfers positive emotions to the brand. However, recent studies indicate that children, even at a young age, recognize the fact that advergames are “camouflaged” brand messages. This paper addresses the role of entertainment in the gaming experience and its impact both on reusing and recommending the advergame as well as on children’s attitudes towards the brand and on their behavioral intentions. Thus in this paper we deal with children’s perception of the gaming experience and its influence on brand attitude and behavior. Children aged 9 to 12 are the subject of this study as this age group is the main target group for many advergames.

In recent years, a steady number of empirical studies on advergaming have been reported (Mallinckrodt and Mizerski, 2007; Mau and Silbrer, 2008; Waiguny et al., 2009). Narrowly defined, advergaming is “the use of interactive gaming technology to deliver embedded advertising messages to consumers” (Chen and Ringel, 2001). This unique form of branded entertainment ranges from simply featuring a brand in the gaming environment to creating more elaborate virtual experiences with the brand (Wallace and Robbins, 2006).

Internet advertising has become big business. Online advertising revenues were estimated at $23 billion for the U.S. market alone in 2008 (IAB 2009). Whether or not advertisers’ money is spent effectively is hard to determine (Dreze and Hussherr 2003). Although click-through or conversion rates may give some indication of an ad’s impact on Internet users’ behaviour, these measures provide little information with respect to the psychological impact of online marketing, such as changing awareness, attitudes or beliefs with respect to the advertised product or brand (Chatterjee, Hoffman and Novak 2003). To obtain such psychological insights, online consumer-based research is warranted. The conventional methods used for such research, however, have several disadvantages. In this paper we present and test a new method for conducting online consumer research that circumvents these disadvantages: Implicit Measurement Games (IMGs). The implicit nature of the measurement method aims to avoid reactance (i.e. social desirability) and demand artefacts in respondents by tapping into their unconscious cognitions. Moreover, by presenting implicit measurement instruments as games we aim to make them more attractive and thus circumvent the problem of response bias. In a study, we test Implicit Measurement Games as a new way of tapping into consumers psychological states online, and compare it against more conventional methods of online measurement.

Recent reviews of the online advertising literature revealed that interactivity was one of the key topics in that field (Ha 2008; Kim and McMillan, 2008). Three main streams of research can be distinguished in the website interactivity literature. First, several researchers have written about the definition and conceptualization of interactivity (e.g., Liu and Shrum 2002; McMillan and Hwang 2002; Johnson, Bruner II and Kumar 2006). Second, several researchers have tried to map interactivity on websites by performing content analyses of websites (e.g. Ghose and Dou 1998; Ha and James 1998; Tse and Chan 2004; Cho and Cheon 2005; Okazaki 2005). Third, several researchers have investigated consumers’ responses to interactivity. Such studies mainly focused on the influence of interactivity on advertising effect measures like attitude toward the website, attitude toward the brand, and purchase intention (e.g., Bezjian-Avery, Calder and Iacobucci 1998; Coyle and Thorson 2001; Macias 2003; Wu 2005; Liu and Shrum 2009).

With the advance of new and highly interactive media technologies, internet users have become active seekers and producers of content (Livingstone, 2004). Social media provide internet users with unparalleled opportunities and completely different ways to interact. Myriad so-called social media platforms, popular examples of which are YouTube, Facebook and Epinions, facilitate a multitude of online activities based on communicating, interacting, expressing, sharing, creating, and publishing user-generated content about anything, including brands (Hawkes and Gibbon 2008). For instance, people watch videos on Absolut Wodka’s YouTube channel, talk about IKEA on Twitter, or upload pictures of their new Converse sneakers to Facebook.

More and more consumers buy their products online. Consumers do not only conduct their online purchases on typical business-to-consumer websites, online auction websites are becoming a successful phenomenon as well. One of the largest auction sites is eBay, where sellers register their products for sale, and consumers bid on them. There are many incentives for consumers to switch from the traditional bricks-and-mortar store to the Internet for their purchases, such as time convenience and competitive prices. However, online consumers also face some hurdles. A great body of literature demonstrates that online consumers experience various risk concerns regarding the online purchase. These concerns are the main impediment for the growth of electronic commerce. Online marketers seem to acknowledge consumers’ risk perceptions and offer several cues on their websites that address specific risk concerns, so-called risk-relieving cues, with the goal to lower the consumers’ risk perceptions and finally to increase sales.

In recent years, developments in information technology and the subsequent evolution of Internet banking have fundamentally changed the ways in which banks implement their business and consumers conduct their everyday banking activities (Al-Somali et al., 2009; Eriksson et al., 2008; Sayar and Wolfe, 2007). Internet banking allows customers to conduct a wide range of banking transactions electronically via the bank’s website - anytime and anywhere, faster, and with lower fees compared to using traditional, real-world bank branches. However, despite the continuing increase in the number of Internet users and despite all the apparent advantages of Internet banking for customers, in many countries the growth rate of Internet users who adopt Internet banking has not risen as strongly as expected (White and Nteli, 2004). For example, in Norway and Finland 70-80% of Internet users adopt online banking, in Austria and Germany about 40%, whereas in Greece and Romania less than 10% of the Internet users make use of online banking or brokerage (Meyer, 2006). On the other hand, in Brazil the Internet banking growth rate over the past years has exceeded that of the Internet itself (Hernandez and Mazzon 2007).

The study investigates gender stereotyping in TV advertising on private and public TV channels in Germany. The results show that gender stereotyping in advertising still prevails despite the change in women’s role in many cultures over the years. Contrary to their public mission, public TV channels do not exhibit less stereotypical gender roles in advertisements compared to private TV channels, although there are differences in how both channels stereotype gender. The results raise the question for more control over the current advertising practice, as recently put forward by a new EU resolution.

The truthfulness of advertising messages is often doubted by consumers. This investigation analyzes whether there are differences in the skepticism toward advertising in general, and pharmaceutical advertising, in particular. The study is based on an investigation by Diehl, Mueller and Terlutter (2007, 2008), which compared the U.S. and Germany. The current study extends the analysis to China (Hong Kong). For the measurement of skepticism toward pharmaceutical advertising an adapted version of the SKEP scale (Obermiller and Spangenberg 1998) was used. A total of 341 Americans, 450 Chinese (Hong Kong) and 447 Germans took part in the survey. Whereas in Germany and the U.S. - as expected - skepticism toward pharmaceutical advertising was lower than skepticism toward advertising in general, no significant differences were found in Hong Kong. The paper further analyzes gender-specific differences in skepticism toward advertising in general, as well as toward pharmaceutical advertising. Results showed some significant differences. In each of the three countries, men were more skeptical than women, especially with regard to the informational content of the ads. Implications for governmental regulation of pharmaceutical advertising are discussed and recommendations for advertisers of pharmaceuticals are outlined.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of a company can influence consumers’ beliefs about a company’s engagement to social obligations. Although there is already much research on consumer responses to companies’ CSR activities, little is known about the conditions in which CSR activities actually have a positive effect on consumer attitudes towards this company and its brand. We compare the effect of non-altruistic CSR activities which exist when it is evident for the consumers that the company itself benefits economically from such activities with the effect of obviously altruistic CSR activities. Especially, we analyze if altruistic CSR activities should have a fit to the different orientations of morality of men and women.

We make three contributions towards understanding how engagement with the surrounding editorial context affects reactions to ads. First, while previous studies have shown that respondent-level engagement affects ads, we argue that vehicle- level engagement is more relevant to placement decisions and show that magazine-level engagement affects actions taken from seeing an ad. Second, we compare the relative importance of engagement to the execution factors size, position and colour, and show engagement is of comparable importance. Third, evaluations are done with more realistic procedures than previous studies and with real ads.

The aim of this study is to examine the impact of three essential brand placement characteristics on brand attitudes towards and purchase intentions of brands placed in movies. Previous studies examining the effectiveness of brand placement have yielded mixed results. The mixed findings indicate that not all brand placements are equally effective. This may be due to a differentiating impact of varying types of brand placements. Modality, prominence and plot connection are key constructs of brand placement that have been repeatedly shown to influence brand placement effectiveness. In the past, a majority of empirical studies measured the effectiveness of brand placements in terms of how well they are remembered (Babin and Carder 1996; Gupta and Lord 1998; Johnstone and Dodd 2000; Nelson 2002; Roehm, Roehm and Boone 2004; Vollmers and Mizerski 1994). However, since research has shown that recall may be a poor predictor of persuasion (Mackie and Asuncion 1990), research on the effectiveness of brand placements should rather focus on attitude and behavior effects. This study investigates differences in respondents’ attitudes (affective) and purchase intention (conative) towards the placed brands, according to the placements’ varying levels of modality, prominence and plot connection. To explain these effects, we draw from Paivio’s dual-coding theory (1986), the Persuasion Knowledge Model (Friestad and Wright 1994) and Russell’s (in)congruency principle (2002).

The effectiveness of traditional advertising is increasingly debated (Lemonnier, 2008; Redondo and Holbrook, 2008). Traditional advertising is increasingly avoided (Bronner and Neijens, 2006; Franz, 2000). Therefore, advertisers try to find new ways to reach their target groups.

The importance of word-of-mouth (WoM) is completely underestimated by many media persons and still being neglected by several researchers. Since word-of-mouth typically cannot be planned or purchased in a strict sense, it is often left aside in media analyses and explanation models. However word-ofmouth is the most important factor in buying decisions across many different branches. The work presented in this chapter is a first attempt to introduce Agent-based Modelling (ABM) into marketing and advertising research in order to gain a deeper understanding for fundamental processes and underlying principles related to viral marketing and the spreading of word-of-mouth. By applying Agent-based Models the spreading of word-of-mouth and viral marketing dynamics can be simulated based on a bottom-up approach. Our simulation results reveal vital implications for viral marketing strategies and word-of-mouth campaigns.