Consumer Reactions to Comparative Advertising: The Role of Product Type and Sensation Seeking—A Structured Abstract

Over the last decades, comparative advertising which compares different brands of the same product category on the basis of one or more specific product characteristics (Wilkie and Farris 1975) has been increasingly used on an international level (Jeon and Beatty 2002) and in diverse industries (Thompson and Hamilton 2006). Many previous studies deal with the effectiveness of comparative advertising as compared to noncomparative advertising [e.g., Grewal et al. (1997) for a meta-analysis], as well as with how to phrase the comparative claim (e.g., Miniard et al. 1998). However, little is known about the relative effectiveness of different product characteristics such as price or attribute performance that could be used as a basis for comparison. In this context, it makes sense to additionally differentiate between goods and services because advertising for services faces challenges that do not exist for goods due to their unique characteristics (Stafford et al. 2011) and research on comparative advertising has so far not made such a differentiation. Furthermore, it is interesting to include consumers’ level of sensation seeking because it might influence consumers’ evaluations of the sensational value of comparative advertising, which is due to its attention drawing properties (Grewal et al. 1997).