Search

Although existing research has discussed the impact of market strategy or non-market strategy on corporate legitimacy thoroughly, there is limited research on the joint role of the two strategies. Based on the big data analysis of media coverage, this study addresses this research gap by using a sample of Chinese listed firms during 1999–2018. Our finding reveals that positive media coverage promotes corporate financial performance, and advertising intensity and corporate donation strengthen this relationship. However, the simultaneous application of market and non-market strategies diminishes the effect of both strategies on the expansion of corporate legitimacy. This study extends the literature on the impact of corporate strategies on corporate legitimacy by highlighting the joint role of the corporate market and non-market strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study optimal advertising and entry timing decisions for a new product being sold in two-segment markets in which followers are positively influenced by elites, whereas elites are either unaffected or repulsed by product popularity among followers. Key decisions in such markets are not only how much to advertise in each segment over time but also when to enter the follower segment. We develop a continuous-time optimal control model to examine these issues. Analysis yields two sets of two-point boundary value problems where one set has an unknown boundary value condition that satisfies an algebraic equation. A fast solution methodology is proposed. Two main insights emerge. First, the optimal advertising strategy can be U-shaped, that is, decreasing at first to free-ride peer influence but increasing later on to thwart the repulsion influence of overpopularity causing disadoption. Second, in markets where cross-segment repulsion triggers disadoption, advertising is only moderately effective, and entry costs are high, managing both advertising and entry timing can result in significantly higher profits than managing only one of these levers. In markets without disadoption, with high advertising effectiveness or with low entry costs, in contrast, delaying entry may add little value if one already manages advertising optimally. This implies that purveyors of prestige or cool products need not deny followers access to their products in order to protect their profits, and can use advertising to speed up the democratization of consumption profitably. This paper was accepted by Juanjuan Zhang, marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand the perception and purchase intentions of Spanish consumers towards sustainable fashion and to see if this can guide the marketing strategy for sustainable fashion. Design/methodology/approach: A mixed methodology has been designed to test the categories: knowledge, environmental concern, product-related features and social influence. Findings: The results of this study suggest that some implications and advice on sustainability marketing strategy could help companies to develop sustainable fashion for Spanish consumers. Originality/value: The originality of this study lies in the focus on sustainability to achieve happiness and satisfaction of people as a form of governance from a social point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a world overwhelmed with unstructured information, logistics companies increasingly depend on their websites to acquire new customers and maintain existing ones. Following this rationale, a series of technical elements may set the ground for differentiating one logistics website from another. Nevertheless, a suitable digital marketing strategy should be adopted in order to build competitive advantage. In this paper, the authors attempt to respond by implementing an innovative methodology building on web analytics and big data. The first phase of the research collects data for 180 days from 7 world-leading logistics companies. The second phase presents the statistical analysis of the gathered data, including regression, correlations, and descriptive statistics. Subsequently, Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) was employed to illustrate the cause-and-effect links among the metrics in question. Finally, a predictive simulation model is developed to show the intercorrelation among the metrics studied as well as various optimization strategies. Research findings reveal a significant correlation between the logistics websites' technical factors and the growth of the corporate brand name. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of the study was to assess the level of effectiveness of KFC integrated marketing communications (IMC) mix strategy and its correlation to the marketing outcomes. The study specifically aimed to answer the following: (1) Profile of the respondents - customers and managers; (2) Assessment of the respondents on the effectiveness of IMC mix strategy of KFC in terms of the following aspects: Personal Selling, Non-Personal Selling, Direct Selling, Sales Promotion, Advertising, and Public Relations; (3) To answer whether there is a difference on the assessment of customers and managers on the effectiveness of IMC mix strategy; (4) To answer whether there is a difference on the assessment of customers and managers on the effectiveness of KFC IMC mix strategy when they are grouped by common profile; (5) To answer whether there is a difference on the assessment of customers on the effectiveness of KFC IMC mix strategy when they are grouped by profile; and (6) To answer whether there is a relationship between KFC IMC mix strategy and marketing outcomes. The design of this study is descriptive research which is aiming to record, describe, analyze, interpret and compare the facts, data and information gathered through survey about the IMC mix strategy of selected KFC stores in Metro Manila, questionnaires were distributed to the respondents. A total of five hundred fifteen (515) respondents had chosen using convenience sampling, consisting of customers and managers. Results showed the respondents' assessment on the effectiveness of IMC mix strategy of KFC, the most effective among the elements is public relations while the least is sales promotion, over-all the IMC mix strategy of KFC is effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presently, each individual is annoyed by the short messaging service received from various companies about their services without our consent. How many of them are relevant to us? How many attract our attention? This ethical dilemma is problematic for individuals that involve complex and often conflicting principles of ethical behavior. Thus, this study examines the role of ethical and permission-based mobile marketing to measure this phenomenon of unethical sharing of promotional SMS to the customer. The five independent variables; ethics, trust, perceived control, actual control, perceived utility, and one dependent variable as acceptance of the mobile advertisement is deployed. We used 7 points Likert scale questionnaire and distributed it among 150 mobile phone users to empirically test the hypothesis through STATA 14.2. The empirical results of the study present that ethics and trust have a significant relationship with the acceptance of mobile marketing. Interestingly, the actual control of SMS received presents a less significant impact as compared to the perceived control on the acceptance of mobile marketing. The findings of the study hold very useful information for marketers to develop an effective, efficient and selective marketing strategy rather than push marketing tactics to attract more customers by providing them appropriate, informative, attractive, and trustworthy information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the marketing strategies used by educational institutions in Montería, Colombia, to promote and position distance education programs. The importance of marketing and advertising in areas where there is a lack of knowledge about this mode of study is highlighted. It is concluded that greater efforts are required to strengthen key success factors and delve into marketing strategies to increase enrollment in distance education programs. [Extracted from the article]

Cause-related marketing has the capability to generate strong brand evaluations and brings to managers a set of very complex decisions. Cause-related marketing very closely concerns society and its problems and consumers (in terms of product/service offer and the seeking of their support for various campaigns) and the company (with its various objectives that demand simultaneous attention). Although this marketing strategy has been used for more than 30 years there's still a lack of clarity regarding the level of importance of various factors that affect success of a cause-related marketing campaign. In this study, the aim was to determine driving and dependence power of certain significant factors over each other to ascertain the approach with which these factors must be considered during campaign development For this purpose, ISM technique was employed to determine interrelationships between factors and, later on, the hierarchy that lies in their relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online advertisements have become one of today's most widely used tools for enhancing businesses partly because of their compatibility with A/B testing. A/B testing allows sellers to find effective advertisement strategie,s such as ad creatives or segmentations. Even though several studies propose a technique to maximize the effect of an advertisement, there is insufficient comprehension of the customers' offline shopping behavior invited by the online advertisements. Herein, we study the difference in offline behavior between customers who received online advertisements and regular customers (i.e., the customers visits the target shop voluntary), and the duration of this difference. We analyze approximately three thousand users' offline behavior with their 23.5 million location records through 31 A/B testings. We first demonstrate the externality that customers with advertisements traverse larger areas than those without advertisements, and this spatial difference lasts several days after their shopping day. We then find a long-run effect of this externality of advertising that a certain portion of the customers invited to the offline shops revisit these shops. Finally, based on this revisit effect findings, we utilize a causal machine learning model to propose a marketing strategy to maximize the revisit ratio. Our results suggest that advertisements draw customers who have different behavior traits from regular customers. This study demonstrates that a simple analysis may underrate the effects of advertisements on businesses, and an analysis considering externality can attract potentially valuable customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By their mass distribution and popularity, advertising images have strongly influenced the collective pictorial knowledge and have shaped certain visual ideas about the world. Regarding colonial and ‚exotic’ image motifs, the visual ideas concern powerful constructions of the racialised ‚other’ and the white ‚own’ as well as hierarchical ideas of a colonial order that constructed colonial identities. In doing so, they spread colonial-racist stereotypes. The paper describes how, based on changing diets and advertising strategies in the long 19th century, product advertising was specifically used to reach a wide audience and to spread colonial political positions. It directs a special focus on the role of advertising in shaping colonial discourse and concludes with remarks on the dissemination of colonial revisionist positions during the National Socialist era, when advertising images were used as a propaganda tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional marketing strategies are now no longer seen as effective in communicating with today's sophisticated groups. Today, companies employ knowledge from disciplines other than marketing – such as psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics – when communicating with their target audience. In this study, the content analysis method is used to analyse Effie Turkey gold award-winning advertisements in order to determine the storytelling elements used in advertisements. In order to show the increasing use of storytelling elements in advertisements, the 2011–2013 and 2017–2018 award winning advertisements are studied. The analysis reveals that seven basic plots are used extensively in advertisements to create empathy. We also analysed the archetypes used in the advertisements, and found that the caregiver type is the most commonly used archetype, followed by Jung's explorer type. According to the findings of this study, among all aspects of language syntactic structure seems to play the most important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers are susceptible to reference price effects when they make purchase decisions for a certain product. Meanwhile, the sales price and advertisement are the determinable factors that have impact on consumers’ reference price which are also fundamental marketing strategies. Therefore, how to determine an appropriate sales price and advertising effort level to maximise firms’ profits is an essential task. A joint pricing and advertising problem for a monopolistic firm with consideration of reference price effect is investigated, where consumer demand rate is price-sensitivity and depends on the gap between the sales price and the reference price in consumers’ mind. An optimisation model is established to maximise the firm’s total profit by making a joint pricing and advertising strategy. The static and dynamic joint strategies are obtained by applying Pontryagin’s maximum principle. Results show that the dynamic strategies dominate the static ones. Furthermore, the dynamic pricing and dynamic advertising strategies are strategic complements. Additionally, the length of the sales period plays a key role in determining the superiority of the two dynamic strategies. Specifically, a relatively short sales period highlights the value of the dynamic advertising while a long sales period strengthens the function of the dynamic pricing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explains how response latency and semantic priming were harnessed to create a truly implicit methodology that taps in to automatic processes. Much of the truth (about brands, advertising and products) lies submerged, in our implicit mind. Direct questioning cannot elicit this truth, because we cannot express attitudes that we don't know we possess. To penetrate the implicit mind, we need approaches that reflect its fast, automatic nature. For eBay, the approach described here revealed a strong (and hidden) negative bias among non-users and showed that these beliefs could be successfully challenged by new ATL advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research explores consumers’ perceptions of the business motivations behind a new type of sustainable business strategy – green demarketing. Green demarketing refers to a strategy whereby a brand encourages consumers to buy less at the category level through purchase of the company’s brand for the sake of the environment. Two studies show that consumer motive attributions and attitudes may depend on the brand’s perceived fit with sustainable business practices. Specifically, results show that the brand’s environmental reputation is the strongest predictor of consumers’ responses towards a green demarketing campaign, with effects persisting above and beyond the influences of the brand’s length of commitment to environmental protection and consumers’ brand habits. Implications for practice and future research are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the era of digitally dominated competition, where the effectiveness of Facebook ads prompts the social media marketing strategy, new opportunities arise for most industries. In this context, this study aims to discover and summarize the key optimisations regarding the creative ad components needed to run highly personalized ads based on a user profile. The participants were Facebook users between the ages of 18 and 65+ who were interested in dental services. Qualitative methods were adopted in order to discover suitable options for professionals to grow their business. In the first stage, the A/B split test using the Facebook Ads manager labelled the most effective creative component. In the second stage, an eye-tracking experiment generated 30 heatmaps that showed the differences between the segments. The results show solutions for attracting users by increasing the level of personalization of the ads. They are more beneficial for social media campaigns aimed at brand awareness targeting women and showing them a happy human face. When the target audience is men, technical details are preferred in order for the ad to become more attractive for them. This study enriches the literature and empowers professionals to deploy social media marketing growth strategies to attract users and make them convert to their full potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the acceleration of product updates and the intensification of product competition, product market strategies become the primary consideration for the enterprises, and the advertisement and promotion strategies are considered the two important strategies implemented by enterprises. This paper considers the enterprises of similar products and substitute, their formation of a competition between traditional products and innovative products, and establishes a mixed node-level information diffusion model to describe the dynamic product diffusion process with complex network theories. We implement advertising strategies for potential buyers who have not obtained product information and implement promotional strategies for those who have obtained product information. In accordance with Pontryagin maximization principle, we seek the best strategy to maximize the impact of innovative products and use numerical calculations to simulate the diffusion state of products. We found that the advertisement strategies play a decisive role in the marketing of innovative products. If product promotion strategies are added, the spread of innovative products will be more effective and more influential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research shows that people systematically prefer "authentic" organizations above organizations that are not deemed authentic. Yet, people who desire authenticity may also be unable to detect what is authentic. We propose that endorsement by audiences that match the organization's identity may provide a useful cue for authenticity. Using an experimental approach, we test for audience effects in the context of online reviews about a restaurant's authenticity and find that reviewers whose ethnic identity match the restaurant's cuisine are more influential on third-party perceptions of authenticity and subsequent liking of the restaurant. These experiments demonstrate that the effect works through a stereotype-based inferred expertise mechanism, but do not provide support to the "mere presence" and "ingroup-homophily" mechanisms. We discuss the scope conditions of our theory and explore how our general theory of audience-organization identity match applies to organizations besides restaurants, to audience characteristic besides ethnicity, and to organizational characteristics beside authenticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functional foods are experiencing a growing demand worldwide as consumers seek ways to take control of their health. Despite this growing demand, the lack of a standard definition for functional food for formal categorization and regulation results in many functional food products run into hurdles for consumer acceptance, as many people are not familiar with the concept, and scientific evidence that could increase legitimacy of these products is not widely available. Of the 15 steps the Functional Food Center has outlined for development of functional food products, marketing a product to educate people is closely related to consumer acceptance and is therefore an important step to study to increase success of functional food products. This review article will focus on recent studies that examine carrier/ingredient combinations, information channels, credibility, and consumer targeting and how they can impact consumer intent to purchase or accept functional foods. These studies build off hypotheses tested in pre-existing studies or bring in novel determinants to consider. Finally, advice on marketing based on the results in the included papers and from an industry expert will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Color is an emotional element that moves people's minds. Advertising stimulates people 's emotions, raising the value of goods and promoting consumers' desire to purchase. The color strategy in advertising has become an important element of marketing. In today's competitive environment, color marketing is used as a key management strategy that differentiates itself from other products and determines the success or failure of the company. Based on the Big Data collected by Creative Advertising Center of Korea Advertising Association, this paper analyzed to find elements other than the color marketing strategy used in the existing advertisements. In this paper, we propose a new method to collect color information using K-means clustering based on the advertisement image collected by web crawling, and analyzed the correlation between the consumers 'involvement' and the color of the advertisement according to the advertisement category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current market of online advertising, economic agents look to redirect the consumers demand to their products through the use of programmatic advertising. This type of advertising that uses Big Data and artificial intelligence, allows the companies to send advertisements to the consumers that are really interested in their products, which increases the possibility of a "match" between them. While this type of advertising can generate the competition and supply increase to the benefit of the consumers as an effect, it can also generate important risks for the correct operation of the market if they are used as unfair practice (including trademark rights infringement) and damages for the users if they ignore what is done with the data they willingly or unwillingly share. In this article we will analyze how this marketing strategy work, the benefits and risks that it represents, as well as the way such risks are being faced in the United States and European Union countries. The author aims to motivate a much deeper discussion at the South American level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing scenario-based experiments, this paper examines the effect of word of mouth (WOM) on the sender’s intention to give future WOM about the focal service provider and the self-enhancement derived from articulating WOM. Extant WOM literature considers self-enhancement as a key driver of positive WOM. This paper provides empirical evidence that a reverse effect exists and that self-enhancement is also an outcome of WOM behaviour. Results indicate that the impact of WOM on self-enhancement has substantive significance and holds for both positive and negative WOM. The effect of WOM on intentions is only partially supported. Finally, tie strength between the WOM participants partially moderates the relationship between the variables. Importantly, the impact of negative WOM is stronger than that of positive WOM. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The landscape service sector is an important part of the environmental horticulture industry. However, research addressing factors impacting its business and marketing practices are scarce. This manuscript uses data collected via online and mail industry surveys in 2014 and 2019 to investigate U.S. landscape service firms’ advertising and marketing practices and different factors that influence their business strategies by firm type and size. Product mix, advertising method, and the importance of different business factors were impacted by firm type. Landscape service only firms had the most diverse product offerings, while firms with wholesale production had the least diversity. Landscape service only firms primarily used in-person and telephone advertising, while firms with wholesale production used a broader swath of advertising medias to reach a more diversified clientele. Overall, weather and labor related factors had the most impact on landscaping firms’ business practices. Larger firms perceived labor factors as more important than smaller firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the impact of advertisement authenticity and the role of various latent variables in determining customers' pro‐environmental behavior. Data have been collected from 731 respondents belonging to the North Indian region through a convenience sampling technique. Structural equation modeling technique has been employed to measure the impact of identified dimensions on customers' pro‐environmental behavior. The study results validated that pro‐environmental behavior is significantly determined by advertisement authenticity, trustworthiness, threat appeal, environmental threat appeals, and perceived severity. The findings further provide substantial insights that validate the use of threat appeal in green advertising, thus enabling the advertisers, marketers, and government agencies to develop robust and effective marketing strategies for promoting the use of eco‐friendly products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable inventory management is a common issue for any industry. This proposed study explains a representation of mathematical modelling for maintaining sustainability through the preservation technology for deteriorating products and trade-credit strategy for sustainable marketing. Based on the actual life circumstances, it is found that the demand for deteriorated products is influenced by the increasing frequency of advertising and preservation technology. The foremost aim of this study is to maintain sustainability with optimal pricing and optimal strategies to invest in preservation technology and optimal cycle length to take full advantage of the total profit. For solving the model, a classical optimization technique is utilized, and some theoretical results are shown with a graph of the profit function. Couples of experiments compare the proposed results and the existing literature and give some outcomes for different deterioration types. To illustrate and justify the model, a sensitivity analysis conceded for demonstrating the proposed model's flexibility by changing one parameter while keeping others fixed. The result shows that the trade-credit strategy under the preservation technology makes the management's most substantial marketing benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impact of nostalgic advertising and perceived destination types on tourists using four experiments. Study 1a and Study 1b revealed that destination nostalgic advertising is more likely to evoke tourists' history sense and further trigger visit intention, while destination non-nostalgic advertising is more likely to evoke tourists' fashion sense and further trigger visit intention. Study 2a and Study 2b revealed that perceived destination type plays a moderating role in these effects. Nostalgic advertising in utilitarian destinations is more likely to evoke tourists' history sense and further trigger visit intentions, while non-nostalgic advertising in hedonic destinations is more likely to evoke tourists' fashion sense and further enhance visit intentions. These findings have valuable implications for destination marketers seeking to develop effective marketing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of aDResearch ESIC: International Journal of Communication Research / Revista Internacional de Investigación en Comunicación is the property of ESIC Business & Marketing School and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background: The gambling industry has developed many types of gambling on Internet in recent years. Gambling is a social activity for a majority of the world population, but problem gambling (PG) can emerge. The trajectories of gamblers from initiation to PG development are influenced by many variables, including individual and environmental variables and also variables linked to the gambling characteristics. Marketing has been reported to influence gamblers' perceptions and behaviors, but this is not as clear for digital marketing. Digital gambling marketing is broad, ranging from the marketing of gambling websites to communication and advertising on the social media and networks. The objective of this article was to fill this gap by conducting a systematic literature review in order to answer the following questions: (1) What are the strategies of digital gambling marketing? (2) What is the effect of this exposure on gambling representations, intentions and practices? Method: A systematic review was conducted following the PRISMA guidelines on Pubmed database (Medline) from February 2020 to March 2020 and Scopus. Existing papers published between January 2000 and February 2020 were identified by searching with this algorithm: ((("internet"[MeSH Major Topic] OR (communications[All Fields] AND media[All Fields])) OR ("social media"[MeSH Terms] OR ("social"[All Fields] AND "media"[All Fields]) OR "social media"[All Fields])) AND "gambling"[MeSH Major Topic]) AND ("marketing"[MeSH Terms] OR "marketing"[All Fields]), in title, keywords or abstract. Results: Ninety-one candidate studies were selected, 21 studies were selected for the systematic review. Sport appeared as a specific target of online gambling marketing. A growing range of platforms for online sport betting and the development of strategies on the social media were identified. Regarding content, a systematic association between sport and gambling was highlighted. Vulnerable populations, such as young people, appeared to be at high risk of exposure to gambling marketing. Conclusion: Little data is available on the strategies of digital gambling marketing or on exposure to it. Sport could be the first target for future research to understand how the industry is targeting specific populations, and what influence these strategies could have on PG development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the work of Naomi Wolf who described a transition in commercial advertising inspired by the feminist movement, I examine the ways commercial marketing strategies have changed in the wake of the election of Donald Trump and the #MeToo movement. This shift illuminates the ideological functions of advertisements with regard to understandings of gender and nature. Employing Benson Saler's family resemblances approach, and further drawing on the work of David Chidester and Katheryn Lofton I show that advertisements function in religion-resembling ways in pop culture. By examining a number of corporate advertisements between 2004 and 2019, I show a shift in some corporations' marketing strategies in light of political tensions concerning sexual harassment and climate change in the United States. These changing strategies also represent a call to action by forming community around shared causes, urging consumers to choose wisely and think about something bigger than themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Universidad & Empresa is the property of Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Senora del Rosario and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Largely overlooked by scholars, dime novels, especially romance, enjoyed spectacular popularity in French Canada in the 1940s and 1950s. Based on an analysis of the editorial peritexts of the 'Police-Journal' (P-J) series, the present paper seeks to understand the marketing strategies used to sell dime novels, deployed by the most important popular publisher in Quebec. In the first section, we show how P-J attempted to present itself as "the best in the business." It constantly heralded its success and extolled the global quality of its publications. In the second section, we demonstrate how the publication of separate series did not stop P-J from trying to attract readers to its entire catalog. The third section analyses how P-J navigated the troubled waters of a French-Canadian society torn between the more emancipated aspirations of an increasingly urbanized population and its elites' conservative ideology. P-J had to offer a product that was exciting enough to appeal to the crowd, yet sufficiently innocuous to avoid censorship. Overall, our paper underscores P-J's pioneering marketing practices in French Quebec. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The Internet is dominated by free web services that depend on advertising revenues and powerful marketing tools to support their business models. Targeted online advertising enables websites to increase their advertising revenues by selectively displaying advertisements according to users' browsing behavior, sociodemographics, and interests. Yet targeting also creates negative consumer reactions, and websites confront increasing regulatory pressures to inform consumers about their practices. It is critical for such advertising-supported websites to address those challenges proactively. In one scenario experiment and two field studies, the authors show that a normative reciprocity argument is generally more effective than the current industry practice of using a utilitarian argument related to advertising relevance to increase acceptance of targeted online advertising. However, in some cases, this dominance switches depending on specific website characteristics such as website utility and level of user-generated content. Managers of free websites should remind their users of the free services they enjoy when asking permission to target them online or to use their personal information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]