Purpose
This paper aims to examine the effects of narrowing social distance with celebrity endorsers (i.e. via close relationship social categories) and their origin (i.e. local or international) on ...consumer attitudes about advertisements. It is proposed that using such a relational approach to celebrity endorsement, where celebrities are framed as socially close social categories, leads to more favorable attitudes toward the advertisement.
Design/methodology/approach
A pilot test on actual advertisements and three laboratory experiments tested the proposed hypotheses on the effects of varying celebrity social distance levels, with self-referencing as mediator, on attitudes toward the advertisements.
Findings
Celebrity endorsements are more effective when the advertisement features celebrities as socially close social category; furthermore, these effects are more pronounced when the celebrity is local as opposed to foreign. The study also proposes that consumer self-referencing vis-a-vis celebrities’ social distance through framed social categories mediates these effects.
Originality/value
Anchored in the identity and social identity theories, implications on relational approaches to celebrity endorsements and international marketing communications are discussed together with the fact that Asian culture inherently subscribes to relational celebrity endorsements.
An experiment involving 140 Singaporean students with four advertisements classified as either high or moderate in degrees of incongruity is used to investigate the influence of incongruity on the ...effectiveness of humorous advertisements. As predicted, participants' perceived humor, attitudes toward the advertisement and the brand, and purchase intention are higher for humorous advertisements containing moderate incongruity than for those containing extreme incongruity.
Over the past decade, new techniques have been developed to entice and persuade advertisement viewers. One technique, which has grown in popularity, is the use of drones to capture images within an ...advertisement. While drones are particularly familiar to military use, new regulations have allowed businesses and amateurs to easily obtain and use drones to create images. With that in mind, this study aims to provide evidence that the verticality of images, i.e., those produced by the drone, can affect information processing of advertising, specifically, angles at which the images are being produced having a greater effect on the viewer than images produced at ground level. We propose a theoretical framework which suggests that mental simulation plays a mediating role between the advertisement watched and Attitude towards the Advertisement (Aad). By creating our own stimuli to eliminate outside discrepancies and focus on images, we were able to carry out an online experiment in which 67 university students participated. Results obtained show how drone images affect Aad as well as the mediating role of mental simulation. Implications for theory and practice are also discussed.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of personalization of advertising and adding an advertising cue to advertisements on Facebook, on 9-to-13-year-old children’s awareness of ...selling intent, attitude towards the advertisement (Aad) and word-of-mouth (WOM) intention.
Design/methodology/approach
A 2 (personalized ad vs non-personalized ad) × 2 (advertising cue vs no advertising cue) between-subjects design was tested among 167 Belgian children aged 9-13 by means of an in-class online experiment.
Findings
Personalization combined with an advertising cue increases the awareness of selling intent but influences neither Aad nor WOM intention. Awareness of selling intent does not affect WOM intention. Personalization does not increase Aad. Aad has a positive effect on WOM intention.
Research limitations/implications
Implementing a clear advertising cue enhances children’s awareness of selling intent of personalized advertising but does not affect behavioral intention. Public policy, the advertising community and the educational system should take these insights into account when developing regulations, ethical advertisements and educational packages to improve children’s understanding and responses to contemporary advertising formats.
Originality/value
The study is the first one to investigate the joint effect of advertising personalization and an advertising cue on awareness of selling intent and on evaluative and behavioral responses of children. Additionally, the role of Aad and awareness of selling intent for the development of WOM intention is explored.
A rhetorical figure (for instance the antithesis in “Come in and find out” in a Dutch perfume ad) communicates an advertising message in an artfully divergent way. Two types of rhetorical figures are ...frequently distinguished, namely schemes (superficial decorations such as rhyme and alliteration) and tropes (meaningful deviations such as metaphors and puns). However, until now little attention has been paid to rhetorical figures that can be found in combinations of text and image (i.e., verbo-pictorial rhetorical figures). In this article, an experiment and interviews are presented on the effects of non-rhetorical figures, verbo-pictorial schemes and verbo-pictorial tropes on attitudes towards advertisements. In the experiment, twelve real-life advertisements (4 per category: non-rhetorical figure, scheme, and trope) were presented to 92 participants. The results show that attitudes towards ads with verbo-pictorial tropes (and advertisements without rhetorical figures) are less favourable than those towards advertisements with verbo-pictorial schemes. This could be explained by the fact that relatively more participants failed to come up with successful interpretations of the ads with these tropes and that attitudes were less favourable towards advertisements that were unsuccessfully interpreted than towards advertisements that were successfully interpreted.
The purpose of the study was to examine the effectiveness of the communication of the region of origin in print advertising messages for wine bearing a GI label. An experimental design was used to ...manipulate the region of origin presentation in print advertisement (absent vs pictorial vs pictorial-textual) while measuring participant’s attitude towards the advertisement and purchase intention. Results provide empirical support to the appropriateness of highlighting the geographical area by combining textual – pictorial cues to induce a positive attitude towards the advertisement and purchase intention in consumers. The paper has useful implications for both marketing academics and professionals.
