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Practitioners and scholars have questioned marketing communication's credibility because it has not been linked to firm shareholder value. Using secondary longitudinal data, the authors show that the impact of marketing communication productivity (MCP) on shareholder value is positive and nonlinear. In particular, the influence of MCP on the forward-looking performances of Tobin's q and stock return is curvilinear with an inverted U shape. The authors also investigate the moderating role of research-and-development investment and competitive intensity. The findings have implications for marketing managers regarding how to model and benchmark MCP and the dangers of blindly improving the productivity of advertising and sales promotion expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses stealth marketing methods used by companies to reach consumers without their motives being obvious. It is noted that word of mouth and peer group recommendation are the most effective promotional and marketing tools. The objective of creating "buzz" for a new product or service is to propetuate an environment where consumers carry the message along to others. Stealth marketing techniques are being driven by a growing criticism of the advertising industry. Guerrilla marketing techniques include viral marketing, brand pushers, celebrity marketing, bait-and-tease marketing, and marketing in popular music. The author feels that brand managers need to consider the strengths and weaknesses of stealth marketing and traditional marketing before they decide on either.

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]

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]

In this article, the authors investigate the effectiveness of advertising alliances (in which two brands from different product categories are featured together in an advertisement) for introducing new brands. The authors identify degree of complementarity between the featured products, type of differentiation strategy (common versus unique advertised attributes), and type of ad processing strategy (top-down or bottom-up) as important factors in determining ad effectiveness. The conceptualization captures the effects of these factors on brand awareness, brand accessibility, brand beliefs, belief accessibility, and brand attitudes. The theory was tested in an experiment using print advertisements to manipulate the three factors in conditions of high consumer involvement. The results show an interesting pattern of interactions among the factors, which has important implications for managers of new and established brands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how audio- visual advertising can help in challenges faced by marketing and brand management in the field of luxury products and brands that appears to be particularly promising and challenging. It reports that narrative advertising refers to a form of audio-visual communication used by luxury companies to engage customers into buying products and services by introducing a typical story about the brand, the company, and its products.

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]

The paper provides a discussion and an empirical assessment of alternate/parallel form reliability in the context of conjoint analysis. The empirical findings from the investigation indicate that the successive evaluative preference judgments gathered via alternate conjoint forms are far more consistent than one would expect by chance. In addition, empirical support for the equivalency of the two most commonly used conjoint forms is provided. These findings should be reassuring to users and advocates of conjoint analysis, and as a result, conjoint analysis should now be used with greater confidence by advertising and marketing researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A content analysis of the major networks and three cable networks was conducted to investigate the current status of animation in television advertising. A total of 2,454 advertisements were analyzed over a seven-day period. Findings suggest that advertisers are using animation as a method of execution in their TV advertisements directed at adults as well as children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing research on comparative vs. noncomparative advertising has resulted in a great deal of conflict and confusion concerning its effectiveness. However, little attention has been directed toward examining the informational nature of the ads themselves. The current investigation examines the question of whether comparative advertisements actually contain more objective information cues than their noncomparative counterparts. The results indicated that comparative ads did indeed have greater information content than noncomparative ads. Additional informational dimensions of comparative ads are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There can be no doubt of the need for strategically positioning a brand prior to the preparation of advertising and for conducting research to help in the formulation of that strategy. But the real issues are not that these should be done, but rather how they should be done. Basically, hard data, based on research from representative samples of the market universe, should be used to answer both explicitly and precisely each of four key issues revolving the competitor milieu, sources of business, market target, and buying incentives. Done properly, the probability of creating more effective advertising is enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with what is known as opposed to what is thought about marketing. The distinction is not subtle. The knowledge of a field is defined in terms of scientific generalizations, whereas theory or thought is necessarily speculative. We argue that marketing generalizations logically precede marketing theories and that marketing generalizations are marketing knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marketing is a topic of growing interest to nonprofit organization managers as their organizations confront new, complex marketplace problems. These institution heads are taking their first, tentative steps toward marketing, often confusing it with its advertising and selling sub-functions. Nonprofit institutions can introduce marketing in a number of ways, such as appointing a marketing committee or task force, hiring an advertising agency or marketing research firm, hiring a marketing consultant, or appointing a marketing director or marketing vice president. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the consumption patterns of American consumers and the implications for the international field of marketing. The authors focus on using information collected on the subject of consumer behavior to develop marketing strategies. The results of an international study comparing the preferences of consumers living in France and the U.S. are analyzed. The results indicate that, despite the economic similarities between the two countries, patterns in consumer behavior remain fundamentally deferent. Implications for marketing personnel are also discussed.

The author uses a dynamic model of oligopolistic advertising competition, in which competitors are assumed to make a series of single-period advertising decisions with salvage values attached to achieved sales in each period, as the foundation for empirical analysis of the competitive situation involving the three largest ready-to-eat cereal manufacturers, Kellogg, General Mills, and the Post Division of Philip Morris' General Foods. The primary insight of the author's empirical analysis is that General Mills places a higher future value on achieved sales than do the other competitors in the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two common assumptions about advertising-selling interactions are challenged by a field experiment. The generality of "advertising paves the way for selling" is questioned by results showing selling-before-advertising to be more effective than advertising-before-selling, "Salesmen are born not made" is questioned because the easily learned "labeling" technique markedly increased selling effectiveness and its interaction with advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A widespread practice in grocery store advertising is to compare the advertised store's prices to a competitor's prices on multiple items. An important, but largely unexplored, Issue is how this Information is processed and used in conjunction with prior beliefs to influence price perceptions. In our initial studies we manipulated prior beliefs and two data-based cues-frequency of price advantage and magnitude of price advantage to determine their relative influence on consumer price perceptions. Results indicate that prior beliefs affected price perceptions but that the frequency cue exerted a dominating Influence. Several follow-up studies demonstrate the robustness of this phenomenon across a variety of presentational and instructional conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study which investigated the international advertising practices of a sample of major advertising spending multinationals, and the rationales behind their policies. The objective was to obtain insights into the efficacy of international advertising standardization options. When the rationales behind the international advertising practices of the sampled companies were examined, it was found that the executives concerned brought a wide-ranging agenda to the decision-making process and that factors beyond the specific benefits of standardization influenced their policies. As regards their actual policies, the practice of some form of standardization was found to be widespread, but the practice of total standardization was rare. As such, the data indicate that standardization is a flexible option, with many possible variants, i.e. it can be adapted to circumstances and is not an either/or policy. The paper concludes that the focus on whether or not multinationals should practice international advertising is misplaced, if only because, just as at the local or national level, there will be good and bad international advertising. Accordingly, more emphasis should be placed on reviewing issues relating to how to improve the quality of international advertising campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks critically at the history, mainly from public sources of the development of the Market Share/Market Growth matrix by the Boston Consulting Group and its popularization in both the practitioner and academic domains. The application of the "Boston Box" became a powerful means of simplifying and "boxing up" complex issues of marketing strategy. However, of particular interest is the question of whether this central technique in any marketing strategy analysis of the seventies or eighties also bred its own form of "marketing myopia" and "boxed in" strategic discussions to a limited set of options and prescriptions. A short survey of marketing lecturers in the UK was also conducted to establish the current state of undergraduate teaching of the "Boston Box" itself which suggests that there are still considerable areas of concern in terms of the teaching of such techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author describes a technique that an advertising agency uses to analyze their own commercials. The author notes that the majority of advertising is successful in producing a quality advertisement for a useful product. He examines how purchasing decisions are being made and notes that emotion is beginning to play a larger role in the choices that consumers make. This notion presents advertisers with a new objective in their work. Not only do they have to provide solid facts about a product, they have to do so in a way that appeals to the consumer to a greater degree then the competition.

A program for the systematic review of company advertising can result in better information concerning what advertising should accomplish, what company advertising has actually accomplished, and what can be done to create more effective advertisements in the future. This article describes a continuing program designed to aid management in evaluating advertising effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frequently implicit in marketing decisions are investments, far removed from marketing data, that turn up in sections of the financial reports. They can have troublesome effects on decision making, not only in the marketing activity but also in other areas. Thus, while marketing management is kept unaware of some ramifications of its earlier decisions, other departments may be treating outgrowths of marketing policy without ever understanding the roots of the problems they encounter. In this article hidden investments in inventory resulting from marketing decisions are described, their causes are analyzed and their effects are traced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is wrong with the marketing planning methods many companies use? Can something useful be learned by examining the procedures of leading companies and reviewing the literature of planning? What should a company do NOW to improve its marketing planning? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the principal factors pro and con as to the growth of standardized advertising practices in Western Europe. The author's presentations to the Fourth Congress of the International Advertising Association in Madrid in September, 1961, and to the Indiana University Second International Seminar on Marketing Management in Stresa, Italy, in July, 1962, have been brought up to date for readers of the "Journal of Marketing." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The foregoing analysis of non-price competition has been an attempt (a) to indicate that in a multi-product firm, such as the large-scale department store, demands are so interrelated that reductions in price have the effect of shifting the over-all demand to the right, selling more units at normal prices; (b) to indicate that in competitive strategy the decision maker views the sales of his merchandise as being a function not only of price but also of location, display, advertising, personal selling effort, product, timing and the like; and (c) to show that the systematic use of all non-price devices in combination is the most effective means of segmenting the market and developing the store itself into a differentiated commodity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on marketing strategies related to consumer motivation. A discussion is presented about the prosperity of the United States and its effect on consumer attitudes. Factors that influence consumer's buying decisions, such as nationality, church affiliation, political party, and labor union, are mentioned. The author points out principles of motivation and offers ways to incorporate the psychological factors of purchasing into advertising and marketing strategies. The importance of qualitative research is discussed.

The principle of incremental analysis as applied to media selection problems is examined by illustrating some magazine-selection problems. Although these examples are simple, the method can be extended to handle more complex problems. Incremental analysis can be applied to both print and broadcast media campaigns, but it is most suitable for scheduling print advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The decisions marketing managers make on advertising expenditures are vital to maintaining the sales and profitability of a firm. However, these decisions have not been taken into account to a great enough extent when determining a firm’s performance. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the marketing-finance interface and to reveal the effect marketers’ discretionary advertising expenditures can have on firm performance. In particular, the real activities method of managed earnings (ME) will be used to study this phenomenon.Design/methodology/approach The initial sample consisted of all the companies that appear in the North American COMPUSTAT files over the period 1970-2014. Since the focus here is on the effect of discretionary advertising expenses on firm performance, the authors restricted the samples to only include observations with advertising expenses. Therefore, the sample included 14,732 firms.Findings OLS regressions revealed a negative relationship between marketers’ discretionary advertising expenditures and firm performance using return on assets as a proxy for firm performance. Additional regressions displayed similar results for return on sale and return on cash adjusted asset proxies. Fixed effect and Tobit regressions also confirmed these findings. Finally, this effect was especially true for low performing firms. The economic significance of these findings on firm performance is also discussed.Originality/value The decisions made by marketing managers on advertising promotional efforts impact sales directly and brand equity indirectly, but they can also have an impact on firm performance. Therefore, it is important for investors to understand the level of ME in relation to marketing and advertising decisions that are taking place at their firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trends expected to dominate industrial marketing during the 1970s are discussed. These are: (1) increased marketing involvement in providing direction to R&D and acquisitions, (2) more formal marketing planning, (3) emphasis on systems, (4) better direction of line marketing activities, and (5) new directions in marketing research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on increasing accountability in industrial marketing budgets. According to the author, each division of a business enterprise must generate value from the money it spends; the marketing department is no different. Absolute dollar costs of advertising, sales promotion and personal selling continue to rise-in many companies at a faster rate than gross dollar sales revenue. In all corporations production, distribution, engineering and accounting departments must justify their costs; yet potential additional efficiencies in these areas do not appear great.

This study was conducted to investigate the nature of relationship between marketing strategy and product performance with a special focus on the food and beverage industry in Nigeria. The study used primary data gathered from 284 randomly selected staff of ten selected companies. These companies are guoted on the Nigerian stock exchange. To do this, a guestionnaire was adopted as research instrument. The data gathered was subjected to factor analysis and regression analysis. The results show that indeed marketing strategy impacts product performance of the observed firms. More so, of all the factors considered (promotion strategy, Product strategy, Distribution strategy, General marketing strategy and Pricing Strategy) promotional factors were found to be most important, then product strategy while pricing mix account for the least variation. This paper therefore recommends that business organisations should accord necessary attention to the element of marketing strategy by designing market strategies driven by a sound marketing management, targeting and strategic positioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature abounds with articles and books on marketing and especially promoting consumer products. As consumers for these goods we are exposed each day to promotional messages of major product brands in order to attract or retain us when we are already buyers. Fewer things have been written about how to do promotion of industrial goods, which are a special category of goods, but have a very high quota in trade of goods, both nationally and internationally. This article will analyse the main methods used to promote the industrial brands and products on the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divergent thinking (DT) is the driver of the creative process. This study examined how DT was affected by the intensity level of the Creative Code, which consists of shared values held by people in creative departments of marketing communication agencies, about what represents excellence in advertising. A preliminary set of interviews with art directors, copywriters, and creative directors established a context and understanding of the importance of divergence, its role in the creative process, and methods that promote it. A national cross-sectional survey found a significant relationship between the Creative Code and divergence, which implied that divergent ideas could be fostered by more open communication among peers and with creative directors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Marketing products globally is challenging due to the diverse nature of markets. We use market heterogeneity, unbranded competition, resource and infrastructure availability, and sociopolitical governance as country-market characteristics that distinguish between developed and emerging countries. We investigate their moderating role on the relationship between elements of the marketing mix and brand sales. We provide evidence, from a hierarchical linear model and a panel data set of brands from 14 emerging and developed markets that account for 62% of the global GDP, that country-market characteristics moderate the relationship between the complete set of marketing mix elements and brand sales performance asymmetrically. While distribution and price have the largest impact in emerging and developed countries, respectively, product innovation and advertising have significantly larger impacts in emerging markets relative to developed countries. These finding highlights the importance of contingency view of marketing strategy in global markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have become increasingly interested in how organizations communicate with external stakeholders, such as consumers. Recent studies have looked specifically at consumer response to the use of English in advertising texts in a number of different European countries. The use of English in such texts is part of a commonly used marketing strategy to standardize advertising campaigns that builds on the assumption that English is not only neutral but also widely understood. This article presents the results of a survey of the attitudes of Emirati consumers toward the use of English in advertising texts in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The survey findings are discussed in terms of the unique social and cultural fabric of the modern-day UAE, as well as of the Emirati community as an economically powerful Muslim population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a study on the Google Consumer Surveys, a method of performing probability-based Internet surveying. The study provides comparison on the responses of a probability-based Internet panel, a non-probability-based Internet panel, and Google Consumer Surveys against several media consumption and health benchmarks. It reveals that the results of Consumer Surveys are more accurate than both the probability- and non-probability-based Internet in panels in three separate measures. The measures include the average absolute error, the largest absolute error, and the percent of responses within 3.5 percentage points of the benchmark.