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Recently there has been significant interest in studying consumer behavior in sponsored search advertising (SSA). Researchers have typically used daily data from search engines containing measures such as average bid, [...]

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether or not it is ethical to use sexual appeals in advertising. The study also examines (1) if sex actually sells [...]

This study shows that people feel that advertising has more effect on other people, especially if the advertising is for a product with a negative stigma such as alcohol or cigarettes. The participant's own self-esteem or use of these products had no effect on this belief.

A comparison of relative and nonrelative measures used in comparative and noncomparative advertising supports the validity of the framing correspondence hypothesis. The hypothesis' claim regarding the relationship of encoding frame and response frame to a measure's ability to evaluate advertising effects was validated by a result that nonrelative measures have the ability to surpass relative measures provided that ads have undergone a nonrelative encoding frame. Relative measures are more effective than their nonrelative counterparts in assessing the effects of ads with relative encoding frame.

A research project assessing the noting of print ads based on the methods associated with Dr Daniel Starch and Gallup, is presented. It describes how a noting yardstick was determined, and measures seeing versus noting. It concludes that gaining attention is the first decisive hurdle for adverts in achieving effects, and finds that the results could be relevant to advertising research in general.

A paper illustrating the need to explore better ways to research advertising perceptions is presented. It is argued that there is a need for more information about how perception works and the ways that advertising images are used in order that improved methods for capturing created impressions can be designed. The theories of Episodic Knowing and Semantic Knowing are described.

Persuasive hierarchy models, which are the most widely recognised analytical systems in the area of the links between advertising expenditure and consumer behaviour, present a number of disadvantages. It is necessary to look at other analytical systems if theoretical and practical knowledge in this area are to be more closely combined. It is now time to consider non-English language sources and to undertake wider research into how memory works.

An analytical model to assess the optimal timing of varied long-running advertisement executions is presented. The model incorporates an objective function that maximizes minimum effectiveness. Moreover, the study was able to show a positive return in investment once improved effectiveness of individual advertisements is aimed at executions with relatively low effectiveness.

A research model is developed that examines the comprehension of superimposed information in social idea advertising (ads). These 'info-aid supers' are any superimposed text that are included in an advertisement. The research connects consumer information processing for social idea ads to interest concerns from the point of view of public policy. A number of public policy implications are presented. Suggestions for future research are likewise discussed.

Developments in the area of dynamic optimal control models in advertising since 1977 are reviewed. The models surveyed fall under six categories: competitive models; models with capital stocks generated by advertising, price and quality; sales-advertising response models; models involving more than state variables in the advertising process; cumulative sales models for durable goods; and models combining interaction with other functional areas. Most of these models are based on the assumption of one product, one advertising medium and one market. The survey concludes with a number of testable propositions that should be further examined to find support for the assumptions underlying the dynamics of such factors as sales, advertising, price and quality that are used in existing optimal control models.

Two fundamental orientations toward message comprehension have appeared in advertising research: the traditional objective view, which applies an accuracy criterion to conceptualize and evaluate comprehension, and the subjective view, which applies other criteria related to the individual comprehender and the actual experience of the message. This article develops a framework for four levels of subjective comprehension on the basis of an elaboration criterion. Comprehensive levels are hypothesized to differ in their relations to ad perceptions, attitudes, and memory. Results from an empirical study provide initial support for the framework, including new theoretical insights and explanatory ability beyond the objective orientation. Discussion focuses on implications for advertising theory and consumer research. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Three experiments are presented that investigate the effect of using incongruent information to improve the memorability of complex marketing communications. The basic premise of the research is that incongruency is a multidimensional concept, the components of which may produce countervailing effects on memory. Drawing on research in social cognition and information processing, a theoretical framework is developed that posits two dimensions of incongruency: relevancy and expectancy. Results of the research provide empirical support for the framework and suggest implications for consumer research and the development of ads. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

This study investigated the relation between consumers' memory and use of information in judging brand preferences. The authors used ads to test hypotheses about how pictorial and verbal presentations of previously encountered information and the content of subsequently encountered information affect recall and information use in shaping brand preferences. Even when subjects more easily recalled pictured attributes than verbally described attributes, this picture superiority effect did not influence memory-based preferences. In contrast, externally available information for an alternative brand influenced both recall and preferences. The overall pattern of results suggests that enhancing recallability improves the likelihood that consumers will use a piece of information to compare brands only if other information is unavailable or inadequate. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

This article examines the differential effects of two types of semantic cues: (1) cues connoting that an advertised price discount exhibits low consistency over time, and (2) cues connoting that an advertised discount is highly distinctive vis-a-vis competitors. Results suggest that, for manipulations of external reference prices with offering price held constant, semantic cues that connote high distinctiveness are more effective in influencing consumers' price-related evaluations when the external reference price is otherwise implausibly high than are semantic cues that connote low consistency. For manipulations of offering prices with external reference price held constant, however, semantic cues connoting high distinctiveness exert more relative influence on price-related cognitions when offering prices are high. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

This article examines the distinction between and the effects of two different types of elaboration on various indicators of ad effectiveness. One type of elaboration, known as item-specific processing, emphasizes the distinctive features of each ad claim. A second type, called relational processing, highlights similarities (e.g., common themes) that link various ad claims. This study shows that recall of ad claims is enhanced when manipulations foster both types of elaboration simultaneously. However, recognition and clustered recall are enhanced only when manipulations invite item-specific and relational processing, respectively. Finally, data on product judgments, consumption intentions, and the correspondence between these types of responses suggest that item-specific processing may have more impact on these measures. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

The estimates of total advertising impact and of its mean duration in distributed lag models are important in budgeting and planning decisions. The typical approach to assessing the short and long term impact of advertising is to perform a sequential test, one on the short term coefficient and one on the lag parameter. However, estimate of the effect on sales involves the ratio of estimated regression parameters. The estimates of these parameters are known to be correlated. Generation of confidence intervals on such key estimates is possible, using information that is typically discarded. This paper develops and illustrates a method for developing these confidence intervals which specifically accounts for the correlation between the standard regression estimates. Examples are used to ullustrate that the conclusion from standard sequential testing procedures can be erroneous. An empirical application then demonstrates the application of the suggested procedure. Finally, we provide insights on the length of this interval as the sample size and other characteristics are varied. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

A study focused on consumers' processing of advertisements that use music. Particular emphasis was placed on the music's attributes, such as its fit to the advertisement's message, and its relations to past emotional experiences, or indexicality. Twenty subjects rated four versions of a television commercial with different types of music in terms of the music's fit and indexicality. Results indicate that advertising executional cues, such as music, can influence the central-route, or message-based, and peripheral, or non-message-based, processing of both attentive and non-attentive consumers. The effect of this influence, however, may be determined by the cue's particular attributes and the consumer's level of involvement.

This study was undertaken to investigate the inclusion of a kosher claim in an advertisement for a familiar and unfamiliar brand of breakfast cereal. Results showed that, as hypothesized, for the familiar brand a kosher third party endorsement led to significantly more kosher attribute-related thoughts, more favorable product attitude and greater purchase intention. For the unfamiliar brand, no significant impact upon these dependent measures was observed given a kosher endorsement. Findings are interpreted from a cognitive perspective regarding the salience of the kosher attribute in a product familiarity context. Managerial implications are discussed. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

This article reviews theories that might explain how advertising causes dissatisfaction with the self. It is hypothesized that consumers compare themselves with idealized advertising images. Exposure to such images may change consumers' comparison standards for what they desire or lower perceptions of their own performance on relevant dimensions; the result is lowered satisfaction. Exploratory and experimental research examined these hypotheses in the context of idealized images of physical attractiveness and lowered satisfaction with one's own attractiveness. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Existing research suggests that, relative to males, females often are more concerned with the particulars of message claims when processing advertising messages. This research examines how males process messages, when gender differences in processing are likely to occur, and whether variance in either information availability (the extent of message encoding) or information accessibility (the richness of message encoding) is likely to mediate such differences. The findings suggest that whether gender differences in processing occur depends on the nature of the response task and the level of cue incongruity contained in the message. Differences in the accessibility of message cues and the genders' likelihood of using alternative processing strategies seem likely to account for these findings. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Although advertisers believe that jingles are an effective way to communicate advertising slogans and regularly use jingles, prior research on the use of music in advertising does not always substantiate this belief. An inadequate consideration of how individuals process jingles as opposed to verbal material presented with background music partially explains the discrepancy. In addition, a review of advertising and psychological research on mnemonics and verbal information presented with or without music suggests conditions when presenting advertising slogans as musical jingles enhances memory and when it does not. Two experiments are presented supporting the importance of these conditions, and their results are used to suggest situations in which musical jingles should be used and appropriate research methods to evaluate advertising that employs jingles. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Consumers may have learned to generalize from usage experiences that nationally advertised, name-brand items tend to be higher in quality than unadvertised brands. Such generalization may have prompted the substitution of brand-name evaluations for search in quality assessments of nondurable experience goods. This paper offers theoretical arguments which suggest that if some consumers do not search, all firms in nondurable, experience goods markets can increase their profits if some substitute dissipative advertising (i.e., advertising which ignores information about product performance characteristics) of brand names for product quality enhancements. Undersearching by consumers invites firms to downgrade value in nondurable, experience goods markets. In support of the hypothesized substitution by consumers of brand-name evaluations for search in nondurable, experience goods markets, this paper reports results of a field experiment in which the influences on quality assessments of brand name and product composition were studied in two categories where dissipative advertising is heavily relied upon. Results suggest that branding is relied upon more heavily than search to assess quality, even when brand cues are inconsistent with actual quality levels and search is costless, suggesting that dissipative advertising can be extremely effective. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

This study develops and tests a hierarchical model of advertising effects on viewing time. The ads studied represent a sample of commercials aired during prime-time broadcasts, and the effects are analyzed across the ads rather than across people. Primary emphasis is placed on the attempt to explain a simulated behavioral measure of attention to television commercials - that of channel switching (zapping) and fast-forwarding through ads on prerecorded programs (zipping). In addition, the study demonstrates a chain of effects from the content of television ads, through emotional reactions and attitude toward the ad, to actual viewing behaviors. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

A laboratory experiment replicates and extends prior research on how competitive advertising and retrieval cues affect consumer memory and evaluations of brands. The number and valence of competing ads, presence of ad retrieval cues, and valence of target ads were manipulated. A high level of competitive advertising varying in valence produced interference effects for recall and evaluations. Ad retrieval cues offset these effects and enhanced recall and evaluations even when there were no competing ads. Interference effects were more pronounced for recall of brand claims; cue effects were more pronounced for recall of cognitive responses and evaluations of the advertised brand. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

The effects of word-of-mouth (WOM) communications and specific attribute information on product evaluations were investigated. A face-to-face WOM communication was more persuasive than a printed format (experiment 1). Although a strong WOM effect was found, this effect was reduced or eliminated when a prior impression of the target brand was available from memory or when extremely negative attribute information was presented (experiment 2). The results suggest that diverse, seemingly unrelated judgmental phenomena - such as the vividness effect, the perseverance effect, and the negativity effect - can be explained through the accessibility-diagnosticity model. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

A one-state advertising model that analyzes the impact of fixed and pulsing costs on optimal advertising strategies is presented. Previous research has recommended either the even policy, which involves scheduling exposures evenly; or the chattering policy, which involves alternating between no advertising and high levels of advertising infinitely during the finite planning period. However, the model shows that pulsing policy, which involves alternating between no advertising and high levels of advertising with finite frequency, can be optimal under a reasonable condition due to the interaction of fixed and pulsing costs.

Studies of music in advertising have tended to characterize music as a nonsemantic, affective stimulus working independently of meaning or context. This implicit theory is reflected in methodology an procedures that separate music from its syntax of verbal and visual elements. Consequently, the consumer's ability to judge and interpret music as part of an overall rhetorical intention is overlooked. This article proposes an alternative theory - that music is meaningful, language-like - and calls for both interpretive and empirical research as ways of exploring a richer, potentially more explanatory concept. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

A factorial experiment was developed in which the reputation of the advertising firm and the extremity of the advertising claim were manipulated. Two levels of advertiser reputation, focusing on the expertise and trustworthiness of the sponsoring firm, were developed. Claim extremity was structured on a rank-order scale with product claims as first, third, fifth, or twentieth best among 100 competing brands. Product evaluation was significantly influenced by both independent variables and by the interaction between the two. Measures of ad credibility helped provide an explanation for the findings. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

This study demonstrates the facilitating effect of positive mood on brand attitudes for readers of print advertising and explores contingencies and cognitive processes underlying that effect. Mood appears to affect the amount of total cognitive elaboration, bias the evaluation of argument quality, and peripherally affect brand attitudes. An experiment using print ads reveals that positive moods create less elaboration, which results in more heuristic processing and reduces the extent to which message evaluation - itself favorably influenced by positive moods - mediates brand attitudes. The effect is greater when the reader has a low need for cognition and when the ad contains weak message arguments. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

This study investigated one particular way that contextual materials can affect the processing of ambiguous product information in print ads. It was proposed that prior exposure to contextual factors can prime certain product attributes and subsequently increase the likelihood that consumers interpret product information in terms of these activated attributes, thereby affecting the evaluation of the advertised brand. Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis, and the results demonstrated that specific attributes relevant to evaluating the advertised brand varied in their accessibility as a function of the context and that these variations influenced brand attitudes. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Two strategies for varying the content of ads over repeated presentations are distinguished, and the effectiveness of these strategies are examined at two different levels of consumer motivation to process the ads. Consistent with the hypotheses, experiment 1 found that a cosmetic variation strategy (variation in nonsubstantive features of an ad across multiple presentations) had greater impact on attitudes when motivation to process the ad was low (as induced by low personal relevance of the product). Experiment 2 found that a substantive variation strategy (variation in relevant product attributes across multiple presentations) was more influential when motivation to process the ad was high. These results are consistent with the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

There is discrepancy between practitioners' views of comparative advertising and null findings by academics. However, in most studies, subjects' attention to and memory of the comparative claims were inflated, which may have precluded effects on these variables and on purchase intentions. This study manipulated market share and type of comparative claim, used nonforced exposure, measured attention via a computerized magazine, and assessed memory and purchase intentions after a 24-hour delay. Some findings are that direct comparative claims attract attention and thereby enhance purchase intentions for low-share brands but detract from purchase intentions for established brands by increasing awareness of competitors and sponsor misidentifications. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

In this article, advertiser-supported media, such as television, are analyzed as an industry selling audiences to advertisers. A simple stylized model is used to demonstrate that increased competition leads to less of a price decline (in extreme cases, maybe even a price increase) than would be expected in other industries. This arises because audience diversion introduces terms similar to conjectural variations in equilibrium output. Further, in this model, it is shown that if greater competition makes advertisers better off, it makes the media-consumers worse off and vice versa. The extension to mixed subscriber-advertiser supported media is demonstrated to lead to similar, albeit attenuated, conclusions. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.), Oligopoly in Advertiser-Supported Media Most media tend to be suppliers of advertising time or space. As private corporate entities, firms in such industries can be expected to act as profit-maximizers. [...]

Evidence suggests that some consumers react to promotion signals without considering relative price information. We adopt Petty and Cacioppo's Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to explain this behavior in terms of the ELM's peripheral route to persuasion in which the promotion signal is taken as a cue for a price cut. Experimental results show that low need for cognition individuals react to the simple presence of a promotion signal whether or not the price of the promoted brand is reduced, but that high need for cognition individuals react to a promotion signal only when it is accompanied by a substantive price reduction. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

We examined the effects of knowledge, motivation, and the type of message on ad processing and on product judgements. The data suggest that, regardless of subjects' prior knowledge, they could be motivated to process message information in detail. However, experts differed in the types of information that prompted detailed message processing. Experts are more likely to process a message in detail when given only attribute information, while novices are more likely to do so when given benefit (or benefit and attribute) information. Experts and novices also differed in how they processed messages; experts' detailed message processing was evaluative, while novices' was more literal. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Three experiments demonstrate that the allocation of subconscious resources during the processing of ads can influence the evaluation of the brand names or logos included in the ads. The evaluation of a brand name is shown to depend on its placement relative to the ad's focal information. Increases in brand name evaluation are attributed to matching activation - the elaborated processing of nonattended material in one hemisphere when the opposing hemisphere is the primary processor of the attended material. Implications for the design and layout of print ads and for the influence of advertising on purchase behavior are discussed. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)