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There are two forms of advertising appeals for environmentally friendly products and policies: those that provide consumer benefit (e.g., cost savings) and those that provide societal benefit (e.g., lower emissions). This research examines the role of decision-making and consumption contexts on the efficacy of each appeal. The results of three studies indicate that in contexts where consumers experience heightened public accountability they are more responsive to other-benefit appeals, and in more private settings they favor self-benefit appeals. We replicate this finding across multiple samples, product categories, and consumption and decision-making contexts. Our findings reconcile previously conflicting research on the efficacy of either appeal type and provide guidance for marketers seeking to promote environmentally friendly consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research that examines race-stereotyped advertising emphasizes the social impact of these representations and overlooks the potential positive effect on advertising effectiveness. The present research examines the effects of race-stereotyped portrayals on advertising effectiveness among both members and nonmembers of a group that is stereotyped in an advertisement. We integrate research on consumer identity, social categorization, and advertising persuasion to hypothesize the process underlying viewers' attitude formation when exposed to advertising featuring a race-stereotyped portrayal. Results of an experiment conducted in South Africa demonstrate that members of the group that is the subject of the stereotyped portrayal (stereotyped viewers) feel offended. At the same time, results suggest that nonstereotyped viewers experience ambivalence when exposed to stereotyped portrayals. Findings highlight the role of viewers' strength of identification and provide guidance to advertisers with regard to the use of stereotyped portrayals in advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to identify the potential determinants of advertising avoidance in the context of personalized advertising media, including unsolicited commercial e-mail, postal direct mail, telemarketing, and text messaging. Using a self-administered survey (n = 442), the proposed model is tested with structural equation modeling analysis. The findings indicate that while ad skepticism partially mediates the relationship between ad avoidance and its three determinants (perceived personalization, privacy concerns, and ad irritation), both privacy concerns and ad irritation have a direct positive effect on ad avoidance. However, increased perceived personalization leads directly to decreased ad avoidance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-depth interviews with senior-level agency practitioners (creative, planning, and account directors) were conducted to explore their thoughts about how advertising works. The study was designed to add to the understanding of the academician--practitioner gap in advertising by uncovering practitioners' hypothesized knowledge autonomy in the context of the sociological theory of professionalization. Results provide evidence for the existence of such autonomous practitioner knowledge schemas. Agency practitioners' core theories include a two-step "break through and engage" process and the longitudinal "mutation of effects" idea. They also believe in the primacy of emotional effects. Creativity is identified as the singularly most important factor in effectiveness, and agency professionals resisted any other regularities that may curtail creativity and result in formulaic advertising. Practitioners also emphasized the importance of defining boundary conditions when making claims about how advertising works, and identified strategic campaign objective, product category, medium used, and historical time period as key domains to consider. Implications for both academia and practice are offered, as are possible future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effectiveness of a type of nonprice promotion often used in the European magazines industry to diminish the decline rate of periodical sales, in which a value pack is sold containing the magazine issue plus another product. Magazines are sold simultaneously with and without promotion at different prices, and promotions are serialized by fractioning the additional product across different issues of the magazine. Although promoting magazines contemporarily may cannibalize nonpromoted sales, this loss is compensated by a long-term increase in nonpromoted sales caused by product awareness and loyalty improvements. This strategy is increasingly used as an innovative form of product advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the ways of improving banner advertising effectiveness by suggesting alternative advertising repetition strategies in varying on-line environments. Specifically, we investigate the effectiveness of repeating varied executions versus repeating single executions of a banner ad on brand recall and intention to click in different competitive and content-relevant on-line environments. The results of our experiment show that (1) banner advertising repetition leads to greater brand name memory and intention to click in on-line environments; (2) in a noncompetitive Internet environment, an ad variation strategy leads to higher brand name recall and intention to click than an ad repetition strategy; (3) in a competitive Internet environment, a single ad repetition strategy leads to higher brand name recall than a varied ad repetition strategy; (4) brand name recall is higher when the ad is presented in a content-relevant Web site; (5) a single ad repetition strategy generates marginally greater recall in a content-relevant Web site; and (6) a varied ad repetition strategy generates marginally greater recall in a content nonrelevant Web site. The effects of repeating varied versus same executions of an ad on intention to click in content-relevant Web sites did not generate any significant findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review compares alcoholic beverage advertising, responsibility advertising, and media advocacy; considers their actual and desired impacts; describes and evaluates the controversy surrounding industry-sponsored responsibility campaigns; and identifies a number of issues that would benefit from additional research. Results indicate that alcoholic beverage advertising does not exert a material influence on total consumption or abuse, but models normative drinking behavior, and thus may actually inhibit alcohol misuse. Industry-sponsored responsibility efforts, like those sponsored by government and nonprofits, appear to affect desired changes, are perceived to be similar to government and nonprofit efforts, model desired drinking behaviors, and may be more effective with heavier drinkers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agency proactivity within client relationships is believed to be critical to improving client satisfaction. Little is known about what proactivity involves, how proactivity effects renewal decisions, and the tactics associated with proactivity. Based on 10 dyadic Australian cases, the authors identify four characteristics of proactivity: initiative taken by the agency, horizon expansion, strategic reflection, and signaling. Proactivity was also found to be a driver of client satisfaction, which thereby motivated clients to renew services, whereas a reactive stance merely reduced dissatisfaction. To enhance their proactive abilities, agencies combined credibility-building methods, multiple communication channels, relationship commitments, and resource support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the results of a study of Web home page complexity. The effect of the perception of home page complexity on communication effectiveness is measured by attention to the home page, opinions about the home page as well as the company and the intent to purchase. Factors that influence perceptions about the complexity of home pages were the length of the page, and the amounts of graphics, links, text and animation on the page. Results from the study indicate that consumers have a more favorable response to home pages that are at a moderate level of perceived complexity.

This study was designed to provide insights into why people avoid advertising on the Internet. Recent negative trends in Internet advertising, such as "banner blindness" and extremely low click-through rates, make it imperative to study various factors affecting Internet ad avoidance. Accordingly, this study builds a comprehensive theoretical model explaining advertising avoidance on the Internet. We examined three latent variables of Internet ad avoidance: perceived goal impediment, perceived ad clutter, and prior negative experience. We found that these constructs successfully explain why people cognitively, affectively, and behaviorally avoid advertising messages on the Internet. Perceived goal impediment is found to be the most significant antecedent explaining advertising avoidance on the Internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From an extensive literature review, we created a model of client-agency marketing information sharing, identifying five major failure points that can prevent critical marketing information from reaching creative staffers. We identified six specific types of marketing information (target audience demographic profile, customer product usage information, client's product performance information, competitors' product performance information, marketing strategy information, and a main selling point supplied by the client) that are considered critical to the creation of effective advertising. Using a "knowledge gap" analysis in a national survey of creative directors, copywriters, and art directors (N = 583), we demonstrate the existence of critical gaps where vital information often does not reach creative staffers. The lack of significant differences among creatives at different levels within agencies for how often information is provided imparted evidence that internal agency communication, or agency politics, was not responsible for these gaps. We provide specific suggestions for both clients and agencies to address these industry-wide knowledge gaps. Our model provides a clear road map for future research in this most important area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, two separate experiments investigate the effects of virtual direct experience (VDE) and the degree of digitalization of experiential product attributes on on-line ad message effectiveness (i.e., perceived risk, product evaluation, affect, and conation). In the first experiment, the message effectiveness of on-line advertisements (VDE/noVDE) is examined across two experience products differing in degree of digitizable experiential product attributes. In the second experiment, the same set of dependent variables is examined across three degrees of digitalization of experiential product attributes (low, medium, high) in relation to a single experience product category. Furthermore, the second experiment investigates the moderating effect of consumer product expertise on the main effect of the degree of digitalization. Findings suggest significant theoretical and managerial implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animated advertisements on the Web come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors; they also animate at different speeds. Although recent studies have shown animated ads to be more effective than still ads, the role played by the rate of motion in animated ads has been neglected. An experiment was designed to address this issue by focusing specifically on the physiological and psychological effects of animation speeds in Web ads. Hypotheses derived from motion effects, excitation transfer, limited capacity, and vividness effects theories were tested via a mixed-design experiment wherein participants (N = 47) were exposed to both slow-paced and fast-paced animated ads in one of two sequences (fast then slow, or slow then fast). Arousal was monitored during reception, while memory, conation, and impression formation were measured via a postexposure paper-and-pencil questionnaire. Results indicate that animation speed is a psychologically significant variable. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is proposed that targeting strategies that are incongruent with existing advertising schemata due to unusual use of identity cues can increase the salience of particular self-identification and influence consumer response to advertising targeting specific audiences. In an experiment, Hispanic and Anglo consumers were exposed to one of two versions of a Hispanic-targeted advertisement. The two versions were identical except that the first version featured an English-language voice-over (congruent with existing advertising schemata) whereas the second version featured a Spanish-language voice-over with English subtitles (incongruent with existing advertising schemata). Experimental participants were more likely to spontaneously report their ethnicity in self-descriptions (a measure of ethnic self-awareness) if they were exposed to the schema-incongruent ad than if they were exposed to the schema-congruent ad. Ad schema congruity also moderated the impact of target market membership on consumer attitudes toward the spokesperson and advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is frequently assumed by marketing practitioners that ad effectiveness could be substantially improved by publicity surrounding advertising campaigns. This assumption was empirically tested by examining the effects of Super Bowl advertising campaign information in news stories on consumers' memory of the subsequent ads. Synergy between two promotional tools--marketing publicity and advertising--was detected. Previous advertising research has explained, to a degree, why some ads are better recalled from the crowded pool of ads. The present study suggests pre-advertising publicity about an ad campaign is another consideration. Such publicity could be an effective tool in integrated marketing communication (IMC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the number of Internet users increases daily, Internet advertising grows in importance as one of the elements of the communications mix. Because of the controversy surrounding the effectiveness of banner advertising, many companies are seeking alternative formats for capturing on-line consumers. Through two studies, this research provides an empirical investigation of the effects of banner advertising and sponsored content on Web site communities and their advertisers. The studies demonstrate that Web communities and advertisers both benefit from sponsored content. Specifically, sponsored content can be an effective advertising tool to engender positive response toward an advertiser and increase feelings of customer responsiveness, product quality, category leadership, and even purchase intention. In addition, there is evidence that these types of messages are processed differently, indicating to communications managers that program objectives should drive the decision as to whether sponsored content, banner advertising, or some combination of the two will be most effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the study is to investigate how the theme of time is used to advertise product benefits by providing a framework that integrates literal expression and relational/nominative, dead/alive metaphors. The model proposes that the linguistic field is composed of metaphoric and literal words that express wider or narrower ranges of inferences and implications. These words are linked to product benefits with differing ranges of implications and then communicated to consumers. A content analysis of 382 print ads tests the model by examining (1) metaphoric versus literal time expressions in conveying functional versus psychosocial benefits and (2) dead versus alive and relational versus nominative time metaphors in conveying functional versus psychosocial benefits. The findings suggest that advertisers use proportionately more psychosocial than functional benefits with metaphoric time expressions, whereas proportionately more functional benefits are likely to be associated with literal expressions. Proportionately more psychosocial rather than functional benefits are associated with relational/alive metaphors, and more functional than psychosocial benefits are associated with nominative/dead metaphors. Finally, guidelines are offered for the use of time metaphors in conveying product benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Account planning in the United States is now part of the mainstream agency landscape. The planning field has evolved from the original British conceptualization of the 1960s and 1970s. Now planners are central to client business strategy development and also accountable for the outcomes of the agency's products. In light of increased demands by shareholders, holding companies, and market analysts on agencies for accountability, this study examines how the work of account planners in U.S. agencies is currently and should be evaluated. The study reports results of a national survey of U.S. planners regarding these questions. The study found that there are three general factors that planners say are currently being used to evaluate their work: (1) feedback from creatives, clients, and account teams; (2) traditional advertising campaign measures; and (3) awards and press of the three, the traditional advertising campaign measures factor accounts for most of the variance in responses. Planners rate the feedback factor as most important, however. Overall, awards and press were not a major consideration in evaluating the work of planners. These finding were consistent when planners were asked how they feel their work should be evaluated: For the most part, it appears that planners feel that the way their work is currently being evaluated is the way it should be evaluated. The study concludes with suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary cultural conditions present many challenges to academicians' and practitioners' understandings of the ways consumers interpret brands and advertising. This article advances the concept of brand morphing, that is, the ways that brand meanings change among different groupings of consumers as facilitated by ad practitioners' efforts to accommodate, reinforce, and create diverse cultural meanings across different international markets. Depth interview data from a study of ad practitioners illustrate the ways that ad professionals accommodate, work with, and reinforce perceived foreign cultural differences that exist across target markets. Finally, brand morphing's usefulness and relevance to contemporary advertising theory and practice is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-cultural research on advertising has called attention to the important role that core societal values have on advertising production and reception. This study focuses on a core American cultural value, rugged individualism. Drawing on recent scholarship that emphasizes the rhetorical, mythical, and metaphorical bases of advertising imagery, the inquiry identifies seven bipolar tensions underlying the expression of rugged individualism in contemporary print advertisements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies address how companies should react when celebrity endorsers with whom they wish to associate are blameless or blameworthy for causing negative events (e.g., accidents). Research findings on stigmas suggest a linear endorser blame-company evaluation relationship, such that companies should associate (disassociate) with endorsers who have low (high) levels of blame for negative events. In contrast, research findings on defensive distortions suggest a nonmonotonic blame-evaluation relationship: Owing to the tendency to downgrade low blame persons so that they seem deserving of bad fate, companies benefit from associating with moderate, rather than low or high, blame celebrities. The current research suggests that the stage of the company-endorser relationship influences the pattern of findings and the type of endorser decisions companies should make. In Study 1 (n=121), consistent with stigma research, companies fared better when dismissing existing endorsers with high blame and keeping those with low blame. In Study 2 (n=108), consistent with research on defensive distortions, when making decisions about potential endorsers, companies fared best when hiring low blame candidates and worst when rejecting moderate blame candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional definitions of advertising include a series of elements that distinguish the field from others. Each innovation in communication has been used for advertising, and in some way, each has changed advertising, which in turn has changed the set of elements used in its definition. However, there are or should be some essential elements that determine whether an activity is advertising. Unfortunately, a discussion identifying these elements is lacking in the marketing and advertising literature. This study is designed to begin an open discussion of what constitutes those essential elements, with the ultimate aim of constructing an improved definition of advertising. The Delphi method, originally developed for financial forecasting, is used to engage a diverse group of advertising experts in a dialogue to reconsider those elements and construct a new definition of advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advertisements containing product endorsements by a third-party organization (TPO), product endorsements by a celebrity, or no endorsement were compared for their ability to affect the dependent variables of perceived product quality, attitude toward the manufacturer, purchase risk, and information value of the ad. In addition, prior brand evaluation and source (endorser) trustworthiness were tested as moderators of the endorsement effect. In two factorial experiments, one for a desktop computer and one for auto insurance, significant main effects were found for endorsement and brand but not for trustworthiness. Brand interacted with endorsement in the quality perception of computers. In both experiments, TPO endorsement was particularly effective in enhancing respondent perceptions of product quality. It is concluded that TPO endorsement may function as an extrinsic quality cue in advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to investigate differences in time pressure and information between two broad classes of promotional offers: (1) "advanced receipts" in which consumers are encouraged to expedite the purchase of a good or service to take advantage of coupons, rebates, price-offs, premiums, etc.; and (2) "delayed payments," in which consumers are urged to "buy now and pay later." A content analysis of 222 promotional offers was conducted using the time and outcome valuation model as a theoretical basis for understanding the role of time pressure in terms of time allowed before the offer expiration as well as copy and information in these different types of promotional offers. The findings indicate that delayed payment offers allow less time to participate than advanced receipt offers, have more time pressure copy for those promotional offers giving a deadline and provide more information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, social marketers are using sexual information in public service announcements and collateral material for a wide range of causes. This study builds on previous research to explain how sexual appeals can affect cognitive processing and persuasion for "help-self" social marketing topics. It also goes beyond traditional single-message research designs by testing matched pairs of appeals (sexual/nonsexual) for 13 social marketing topics. The major finding was that sexual appeals were more persuasive overall than matched nonsexual appeals for social marketing topics. Sexual appeals also stimulated more favorable ad execution related thoughts but had a negative effect on cognitive elaboration (e.g., support and counterarguments). Respondents also reported that sexual appeals were more attention getting, likeable, dynamic, and somewhat more apt to increase their interest in the topic than were nonsexual appeals. These findings suggest that persuasion is largely the result of peripheral processing and distraction from somewhat unpleasant messages when receivers are expected to counterargue the message or be resistant to change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on the use of tensile pricing in advertising has not yet determined if services respond differently to tensile tactics than do products. Moreover, in the product studies of tensile tactics, minimum tested discount levels were based on local market conditions which were assessed in the early 1990's. This study examines the effects of tensile pricing tactics on services, and uses minimum discounts based on broader current market conditions. Results suggest that advertisements for professional and retail services do not differ from each other in terms of performance in response to a tensile pricing tactic. Results also indicate that tensile pricing tactics may have different dynamics in services versus product advertising. Finally, the findings tend to indicate that consumers' generic perceptions of savings in response to the use of tensile tactics might be distinct from the specific intent to purchase certain services, given the possible link in the customer's mind between discounts and subsequent perceptions of services quality in certain categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares television advertisements from Japan, Russia, Sweden, and the United States are compared. Consistent with Hofstede's framework which suggests that countries may be characterized along a continuum from masculine to feminine, the authors found that television advertisements from feminine countries featured more depictions of relationships for male and female characters than did masculine countries. Expectations of fewer gender differences in feminine countries than in masculine countries and of greater depictions of productivity being found in television advertisements from masculine countries were not realized, however. Implications of these findings for the international advertiser are considered, and future directions for research are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research suggests that music comprises a sign system that could add meanings to advertising. However, research in this area is scant and there is practically no research that has examined the process by which consumers use music to create meanings. This study extends previous research on print advertising to delineate effects of music in congruent/incongruent TV advertising. A mixed design integrating features of qualitative and quantitative methods was used. Results indicated that the viewers' knowledge of cultural texts form a reference point for reading the commercials. Specifically, music in congruent ads reduces 'noise' by reinforcing the connecting cultural context to communicate meanings. However, music in incongruent ads helps enact an alternative context that is meaningful to the viewer to communicate the ad message. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Target marketing is an increasingly crucial component of marketing strategy, particularly given the expanding cultural diversity of the nation's population. Prior research suggests marketers need to consider the nontarget market (consumers who perceive themselves not to be the target of an advertisement) as well as the target market. Further, researchers have called for a more meaning-based approach to understanding advertising and consumer behavior. The authors therefore explore the meanings created by target and nontarget viewers of advertising targeting black, white, and gay/lesbian cultures. Their results show that asymmetries in cultural expertise, power, distinctiveness, and stigmatization among those cultural groups influence the meanings created by target and nontarget viewers of ads targeting those groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study reported examined effects of strength of ethnic identification, media placement, and ad racial composition on attitudes and purchase intentions among African-Americans. The effects of the independent variables were assessed via a two (strong ethnic identifier vs. weak ethnic identifier) by two (racially targeted vs. nontargeted media) by four (black model, white model, black-dominant integration, white-dominant integration) experimental design in the context of two personal care products: foundation, a race-based product, and perfume, a racially neutral product. Results indicate that strong ethnic identifiers generally have more positive evaluations of ads that feature African-Americans in positions of dominance and are placed in racially targeted media, whereas weak ethnic identifiers have more positive evaluations of ads that feature whites in positions of dominance and are placed in nontargeted media. In addition, the type of product advertised, whether it be specifically related to physical racial features or racially neutral, effects audience members' evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author examines the effects of emotional responses to television programming (program-induced affect) on attitude toward the ad (Aad). He finds that both thoughts about the program and overall program evaluations (i.e., program liking) mediate the effect of program-induced affect on Aad, and that emotional responses to the ad moderate the relationship between program liking and Aad. More specifically, the program liking-Aad linkage is strengthened if the ad and program are similar in emotional content. That effect is enhanced for ads appearing early within a pod. The author proposes and tests a model specifying the nature of the relationships among those variables, and discusses the practical implications for advertising practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advertising researchers often assume that the audience reacts to ads homogeneously, but evidence suggests that individuals process ads subjectively on the basis of their membership in groups defined by ethnicity or gender, or their life themes or experiences. The authors examine how one group, heterosexuals, reacts to the portrayals of an out-group, homosexuals, in ads. They find that heterosexuals' emotional and attitudinal responses to a homosexual ad depend on their general attitude toward homosexuality. The effect on attitude toward the brand sponsor is more muted. Practical implications are noted for advertisers facing consumer groups that have diverse opinions on social issues such as homosexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the limited empirical evidence about the effectiveness of olfactory cues in advertising, firms are increasingly using such cues in their advertisements. The authors examine the effects of olfactory cues that are used as a novelty, as opposed to a product sample, on consumer attitudes. The results show that the addition of a more congruent scratch-and-sniff panel to an advertisement improves neither attitude toward the ad nor attitude toward the brand. Further, the addition of a poorer-fitting scent actually lowers attitudes among individuals who are more motivated to process. Those results appear to be a function of the mood evoked by the scented advertisement and of the scent's perceived pleasantness in the advertising context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although metaphors are used by advertising creators to convey brand meaning and enhance brand information processing, little is understood with regard to consumers' comprehension of intended meaning. This research contributes to this body of knowledge by examining the effect of metaphor type (abstract/concrete) and hemispheric processing on respondents' comprehension of metaphors in ads. Overall, the findings suggest that concrete metaphors are more easily understood than abstract metaphors. This effect is moderated by hemispheric processing such that individuals high in right or integrative processing are more likely to provide valid interpretations of both types of metaphors. These findings are discussed and implications for advertising practitioners are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability of three advertising cues--third-party product endorsement, brand popularity, and event sponsorship to affect consumer perceptions with regard to product quality, uniqueness, manufacturer esteem, and corporate citizenship is the focus of this study. A factorial experimental design, with cue level as either present or absent, yields eight cells with a total of 185 respondents. Results suggest significant main effects for both endorsement and sponsorship cues, with endorsement affecting perceived quality, uniqueness, and esteem, and sponsorship affecting only citizenship. The popularity cue lacks a significant main effect. The three cues do not significantly interact with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to extend latitudinally the stream of research regarding racial minorities in industrial advertising and to provide a benchmark for future longitudinal studies. It utilizes content analysis to examine business-to-business direct mail advertising depiction of African-Americans. Findings indicate that about 28 percent of the direct mail pieces depicted blacks, nearly six percent of all people portrayed were African-American, there was virtually no difference in occupational portrayals of blacks and whites, and blacks were most frequently portrayed separately from whites. Implications of these findings for users of industrial direct mail are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reports the results of an exploratory study of cross-country differences in recall of and attitude toward comparative advertising. As American companies are increasingly advertising their products in other countries, the issue of cross-country differences in comparative advertising effectiveness is very important. The study found that although recall of comparative ads was high, consumer attitudes toward comparative ads was not very positive, especially in countries where comparative ads are not widely used or are used rarely. Therefore, comparative ads should be targeted at other countries with caution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of employee spokespersons in the advertising of services has received growing attention in the academic literature because the presence of an employee in the advertisement may help visualize the service offering for the customer by providing a physical representation of the service provider. Moreover, a decrease in occupational segregation indicates a potential need for repositioning traditionally sex-typed services. The author examines the use of male versus female employees and the use of service managers versus workers for sex-typed services. Two separate samples were used: students and working adults. For the student sample, results suggest that for female-dominant services, congruency between the source and the service results in higher cognitive attitudes toward the ad. However, for a male-dominant service, a congruent approach and a progressive role portrayal produce equivalent attitudes. For the sample of working adults, results indicate that a congruent and a progressive approach produce equivalent attitudes. Overall, they suggest that (1) among working adults, whether or not a service is male or female dominant has little influence on whether a man or a woman should be pictured in an ad for that service and (2) student samples are not the best surrogates to use in experimental research if students are not typical consumers of the product(s) being tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although services advertising has been studied heavily, researchers concur that programmatic research with a strategic emphasis is still needed on that topic. Such efforts may be hampered without a comprehensive summary of the general findings across studies. Therefore, to assess the current state of services advertising research and to encourage additional investigations, the author offers a conceptual review of the services advertising literature from 1980 to 1995. Those 15 years parallel the last two evolutionary stages of dramatic growth in general services marketing research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every year billions of dollars are spent on advertising that uses humor to sell products. How is that spending decision made? Despite much research examining humor effects in advertising, many advertisers make the decision on faith. Many past studies lack a clear conceptual focus to guide the investigation of humor effects in advertising. The authors examine humor effectiveness by using a conceptual framework adapted from Speck along with a product-contingent focus. The resulting approach affords a clearer understanding of the appropriate use of humor through the examination of (1) the humor mechanisms employed, (2) the intentional relatedness of humor to the ad or product, and (3) the type of product advertised. The descriptive results of the study indicate that current practice for many advertisers is to employ incongruity-based humor in a humor-dominant context. That practice is contrasted with others to examine the influence of humor on the effectiveness of print advertisements for different product groups. Study results indicate that current advertising practices may not be the most effective in terms of advertisement performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, businesses became aware of the 43 million disabled consumers as a source of concern and additional expense, but not as a salient market segment. Advertisers have yet to recognize that by learning more about the communication needs of the disabled, they can devise strategies to reach that large and generally ignored population of consumers. The authors report a study comparing mobility-disabled with nondisabled consumers in terms of media usage, attitudes toward advertising, and media needs. The results show several significant differences between the two groups. Implications for advertising practitioners are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the service sector of the U.S. economy continues to grow dramatically, so does the need for increased attention to advertising strategies for the service sector. The author examines print advertising strategy for services by testing whether the presence of a visual tangible cue (a physical representation) and the use of verbal tangible cues (informational cues related to tangible dimensions of the service) influence the effectiveness of the advertisement. Results indicate that for a hotel (a service high in experience qualities), verbal tangible cues are related to more positive attitudes toward the ad and service, higher patronage intentions and higher levels of recall. For an auto service (high in credence qualities), verbal tangible cues are related positively to attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the service, and recall, but not patronage intention. The presence of the physical representation did not affect any of the four dependent variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventionally, an advertiser's spending on the creative component of an advertising campaign is small in relation to the media budget and is channeled exclusively to a single advertising agency. Gross challenged those conventions more than 20 years ago, using a mathematical model of advertising effectiveness. His model suggested spending more on the creative component and doing so in a competition among several independent sources. The model assumed a normal distribution of effectiveness of advertisements. Data on response to consumer product ads show that the distribution of effectiveness is not normal, but quite skewed. Using Monté Carlo simulations and Gross's framework the authors find that the skewness strengthens the case for competition. Shifting a sizable percentage of a campaign budget away from media spending and into competitive generation of creative renderings apparently can be very profitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advertising for multinational products uses standardization most often in strategy, less often in executions, and least often in language. This study's international sample of advertising agency executives considers creative impact the most important and pressure (from time, client, etc.) the least important reason to use some form of standardized advertising. Despite this, it is views on client pressure which explain most of the variance in views on future use of standardization. That is, those respondents who believe that client pressure is increasing also believe that overall use of standardization will increase. A separate sample of agency executives reinforced some of these findings, particularly the role of the successful, big idea and client pressure in making the decision to standardize. Copy research also plays a role in standardization recommendations, but it is not used as extensively as might be necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manufacturers of consumer packaged goods regularly distribute coupons through free standing inserts in newspapers. In this paper, we investigate the possibility that free standing inserts have an advertising exposure effect that influences the brand purchases of shoppers who do not use coupons in the category studied. If free standing inserts for a brand do have a pure advertising exposure effect, there should be an increase in the sales of that brand even to non-users of the coupons. Results of an empirical analysis show that such an effect does exist for two of the six cases investigated. We also find some evidence of a cross-brand advertising exposure effect indicating that the sales of a competing brand to non-users of coupons decrease in the weeks following the appearance of a coupon in a free standing insert. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employed content analysis to examine animation and animated spokes-characters in television advertising. The majority of spokes-characters observed in this study were humans, animal personifications, or product personifications. Characters were more likely to speak for the product than provide visual demonstration although they did both in more than half the cases. There were far more non-celebrity than celebrity spokes-characters, and a large majority of them were male. Significant differences were found in the use of animation across dayparts, program types, product classes and product categories. Although no increase was evident in the use of animation since the last study was completed, there was evidence to suggest that the role of animation has been changing in the past decade. Findings indicate that animated spokes-characters are being used more often to present high involvement products to adult audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the use of humor or parody in advertising. Analysts speculate that parody is a form of humor that has the potential to work well in a variety of media. They warn however that legal issues are still developing in terms of the potential ethical issues associated with the use of parody in advertising. In the instance of parody there is a danger when the audience does not get the joke. In some situations audience members may find the parody to be offensive. Offensive commercial messages are a major ethical concern within advertising.

Country of origin (CO) is a potentially powerful image variable that can be used to gain competitive advantage in international marketing. However, deficiencies in the definition and measurement of its facets have contributed to ineffective and infrequent use of CO image as a competitive tool. The research reported in this article addresses these weaknesses through the use of confirmatory factor and incremental fit analyses. The findings reveal that CO image is a multifaceted construct and that its facets are clearly interpretable. The article concludes with a discussion of advertising implications and directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural influences on domestic advertising strategies and tactics have been the subject of recent attention in the marketing literature. However, few researchers have considered how home-country culture influences firms' marketing strategies and tactics in foreign markets. In the present study, print advertisements for German and Japanese products appearing in Indonesian, Spanish, and U.S. print media are compared. It was hypothesized that home-country culture would influence ads in each of the target countries. However, an analysis of informational and emotional content provides evidence to the contrary---that is, Japanese advertisers, in particular, appear to adapt their advertising approaches to foreign markets, whereas Germans do so, but to a lesser degree. Managerial implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper, Johar and Sirgy have proposed a hypothesis that value-expressive advertising appeals are persuasive when the product is value-expressive, whereas utilitarian appeals are persuasive when the product is utilitarian. Johar and Sirgy suggested that future research be directed at testing these hypotheses. This comment points out that direct support for these hypotheses already exists. The experimental evidence in support of these and related predictions is discussed. Suggestions for future research on the effectiveness of utilitarian versus value-expressive appeals are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]