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Although ambivalence (the coexistence of positive and negative components of an attitudinal target) is common in consumers' lives, prior research is mixed in terms of when and how it influences consumers' behavior. We theorize that ambivalence-evoked arousal causes people to focus on the immediate consequences of a consumption choice. Thus, ambivalence enhances approach behavior when immediate outcomes associated with consuming the focal product are positive, as is often the case with risky products. In six studies across multiple product categories, we show that adolescents' and young adults' (from the U.S. and France) ambivalence toward a risky product enhances willingness to pay for, intention to use, and interest in positive information about risky products. We also show that the heuristic cue of information about salient social norms moderates the relationship between ambivalence and approach behavior toward a risky product: the effect of ambivalence on approach behavior is enhanced when descriptive norms are higher and attenuated when lower., Author(s): Anne Hamby [sup.1] , Cristel Russell [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.184764.8, 0000 0001 0670 228X, Boise State University, , 1910 University Drive, 83702, Boise, ID, USA (2) grid.261833.d, 0000 [...]

Multiple research problems specific to advertising emerge from there, including whether and how the advertising industry should address the ethical and legal issues surrounding the possibility of AI-generated advertising content containing false or misleading information as well as strategies for designing and implementing AI-powered advertising in a socially responsible and ethical manner. In her editorial, the previous editor, Shelly Rodgers ([16]) proposed an AI classification schema to systematically understand and develop subdomains in the emerging AI advertising research field along the following three dimensions: AI type, AI function, and learning type. The lack of transparency and consumers' limited ability to understand AI technology and the mechanism and processes of AI-powered advertising would affect advertising outcomes. Since ChatGPT was released on November 30, 2022, followed by Microsoft's announcement of its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered new Bing search engine on February 7, 2023, and Google's Bard release on March 21, 2023, it seems AI generally has taken over conversations across all sectors of society. [Extracted from the article]

Advertisers and marketers increasingly adopt and invest in audiovisual formats for their communications. In contrast, academic researchers often rely on static visual stimuli to test advertising- and marketing-related research questions. In this research note, we discuss whether and how academic research could benefit from the ability to develop and use dynamic audiovisual stimuli and we consider the validity-related trade-offs inherent in their use. We first outline the components researchers should consider in constructing dynamic audiovisual stimuli. Then, in an attempt to reduce barriers to creation of dynamic audiovisual stimuli in advertising research, we review tools researchers can use to design realistic dynamic stimuli. We conclude with ways in which the use of dynamic stimuli can open new research approaches, thus expanding advertising-related theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research tests the proposition that brands suffer prejudice and discrimination due to animosity toward a country with which they have a strong stereotypic association. In the first study, attitudinal data collected across a range of brands that vary in terms of the strength of the brand–country association indicate that brands with strong stereotypic association with a country suffer direct prejudice, in the form of more negative attitudes, related to animosity. When the brand–country association is less strong, the relationship between animosity and brand attitudes is moderated by the strength of the stereotypic association. In the second study, the level of brand–country association is manipulated experimentally to provide additional evidence of its moderating role on the relationship between country animosity and both prejudice toward (more negative brand attitudes) and discrimination against (less choice) a new brand.

This research examines how consumers react to corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs that vary in geographic focus. Three experiments compare consumers' patronage of a company in response to local and distant CSR initiatives. The extant egocentrism literature suggests that a CSR activity focused locally, and thus, with greater personal relevance, should increase patronage of the company responsible for the CSR activity. Indeed, this egocentric bias, exhibited in the form of increased purchase intentions or actual choices, is found across all three studies. However, these egocentric tendencies are moderated by consumers' superordinate identities. In study 1, consumers' greater intentions to patronize a company whose CSR activity is domestic vs. foreign are moderated by their sense of global identity. In study 2, consumers' increased choices of a company whose CSR activity is in their home state vs. a distant state are moderated by levels of environmental consciousness. Finally, in study 3, increased patronage of a company whose CSR activity focuses in consumers' home city vs. a distant city depends on the salience and level of consumers' superordinate group identity.

In an era of unprecedented consumer access to media and the tools to control narrative delivery, speed, and exposure to transmedia content, there is no longer the illusion of a cohesive narrative managed by a recognized singular author or unified authorial voice. Instead, consumers carve their own trajectories through brand narratives. Our multimethod inquiry of television series viewing, based on a combination of interviews, diaries, video recordings followed by member-check interviews and online forum analyses, identifies two key forces that guide narrative navigation: how consumers manage a text's gravitational pull and its permeability to transmedia content. We find that consumers shape their own trajectories by adopting and/or moving between nine documented narrative positions. This more nuanced understanding of narrative consumption in a transmedia environment offers new insights for the study of narrative brand spaces and brand storytelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consumer literature on branding to date coalesces around the notion that brands are constantly contested. Brand contestation arises where the actions of consumer brand actors meet, and sometimes confront, those of the brands' legal owners. This article integrates the extant branding research, a qualitative prestudy, and two complementary empirical studies to advance a theoretical process model of brand contestation. First, an in-depth analysis of thirty historical cases reveals its dynamics and how both the magnitude of contestation and the momentum of mobilization affect brand contestations' scope and evolution. Second, interviews with upper-level marketing and branding executives add an emerging perspective that brand managers can use the energy generated by consumers' contestation to develop antifragility—a brand's ability to grow and thrive as a result of contestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on product placement, the integration of brands/products within entertainment content, has flourished over the past three decades, culminating in several review articles. This article conceptualizes product placement as a commercial intertext to enable the development of novel research questions that account for the interconnections of the placement and a web of intertextual connections. Contextualizing product placement as a message within a system of sociocultural, marketing communications, and textual cross-references opens new opportunities for research that extend beyond the well-documented executional characteristics of the placement. Illustrative research questions are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]