Does Humour Influence Perceptions of the Ethicality of Female-Disparaging Advertising?

This article responds to calls for further research on ethical issues in advertising. The study examines whether advertising strategies which use female-disparaging themes are perceived as ethical, and what effect this has on ad and brand attitudes. It also examines whether or not humour assuages ethical evaluations of female-disparaging ads. The findings from an experimental research design, which included 336 British respondents, show that non-disparaging and non-humorous ads are considered to be the most ethical, while disparaging ads (regardless of the level of humour) are considered the least ethical. Across the board, female-disparaging ads are not perceived as ethical; however, high benevolent sexists appear to favour them most. Finally, an ad’s perceived ethicality mediates the relationship between ad disparagement and ad attitudes; likewise, an ad’s perceived ethicality and ad attitudes mediate the relationship between an ad’s female disparagement and brand attitudes. Female-disparaging ads should be avoided given that they are perceived as less ethical and given the impact that advertising has on behaviour, as well as on societal and moral values. Advertisers should also avoid using female-disparaging advertising themes, even light-hearted ones, since they constitute a risky strategy for the ad and the brand as they can backfire and alienate consumers

Impact of Advertising Variability on Building Customer Based Brand Personality under Competitive Environment : Empirical analysis in reference to Mexico

The brand equity is built around brand personality as one of the core dimensions. The psychographic variables like emotions associated with the brand image constitute the personality of a brand. Although the experiences of the consumers with the brand cultivate such personality, advertising plays a dominant role in personality creation. This paper attempts to explore the mechanism that builds brand personality through media communication like advertising and word of mouth. The discussions in the paper integrate advertising variability concepts with brand personality and present viable propositions as managerial implication for building the brand personality considering the variables of marketing communication. The hypotheses set within the integrated framework lead to the construct of advertising model cohesive to the brand personality measures. In building this framework analysis of the concepts of brand equity and advertising, communication, personality and loyalty have been critically examined and tested on the basis of two separate studies conducted in Mexico.Brand personality, Brand Relationship, Adverstising impact

Impact of Advertising Variability on Building Customer Based Brand Personality under Competitive Environment : Empirical analysis in reference to Mexico

The brand equity is built around brand personality as one of the core dimensions. The psychographic variables like emotions associated with the brand image constitute the personality of a brand. Although the experiences of the consumers with the brand cultivate such personality, advertising plays a dominant role in personality creation. This paper attempts to explore the mechanism that builds brand personality through media communication like advertising and word of mouth. The discussions in the paper integrate advertising variability concepts with brand personality and present viable propositions as managerial implication for building the brand personality considering the variables of marketing communication. The hypotheses set within the integrated framework lead to the construct of advertising model cohesive to the brand personality measures. In building this framework analysis of the concepts of brand equity and advertising, communication, personality and loyalty have been critically examined and tested on the basis of two separate studies conducted in Mexico.Brand Personality, Brand Relationship, Advertising Impact

Finding Truth in Cause-Related Advertising: A Lexical Analysis of Brands’ Health, Environment, and Social Justice Communications on Twitter

Consumers increasingly desire to make purchasing decisions based on factors such as health, the environment, and social justice. In response, there has been a commensurate rise in cause-related marketing to appeal to socially-conscious consumers. However, a lack of regulation and standardization makes it difficult for consumers to assess marketing claims; this is further complicated by social media, which firms use to cultivate a personality for their brand through frequent conversational messages. Yet, little empirical research has been done to explore the relationship between cause-related marketing messages on social media and the true cause alignment of brands. In this paper, we explore this by pairing the marketing messages from the Twitter accounts of over 1,000 brands with third-party ratings of each brand with respect to health, the environment, and social justice. Specifically, we perform text regression to predict each brand’s true rating in each dimension based on the lexical content of its tweets, and find significant held-out correlation on each task, suggesting that a brand’s alignment with a social cause can be somewhat reliably signaled through its Twitter communications — though the signal is weak in many cases. To aid in the identification of brands that engage in misleading cause-related communication as well as terms that more likely indicate insincerity, we propose a procedure to rank both brands and terms by their volume of “conflicting” communications (i.e., “greenwashing”). We further explore how cause-related terms are used differently by brands that are strong vs. weak in actual alignment with the cause. The results provide insight into current practices in causerelated marketing in social media, and provide a framework for identifying and monitoring misleading communications. Together, they can be used to promote transparency in causerelated marketing in social media, better enabling brands to communicate authentic valuesbased policy decisions, and consumers to make socially responsible purchase decisions

The role of brand loyalty and social media in e-commerce interfaces: survey results and implications for user interfaces

This paper explores the role of brand loyalty and social media in e-commerce interfaces. A survey consisting of 118 respondents was contacted to address the questions relating to online shopping and brand loyalty. Link between the frequency of access and time spent on an e-commerce user interface, and brand loyalty, gender and age profile differences, and the role of social media to branding and on-line shopping was analyzed. It was found that online loyalty differs from offline loyalty and loyalty also differed across genders, showing men were more loyal than women when shopping online. Information shared about products on social media by friends and family played an important role in purchase decision making. Website interface and ease of navigation were also key aspects for online shopping. The research concluded with recommendations to create multimodal websites which are more interactive and targeted so customer experience is enhanced and loyalty is achieved through the use of interactivity and social media

The Role of Country of Origin in Brand Following on Social Media Among U.S. Consumers

An understanding of how consumers interact with brands online is still in its infancy. This study will attempt to explain what motivates consumers to follow brands on social media, looking specifically at the role country and region of origin of products plays in explaining the relationship. Given the personal nature that attracts people to social media to build relationships, it is believed that the personal nature of brands originating from the social media users’ home country will heighten the likelihood that consumers track certain brands and may enhance the relationship that evolves between the brand and the consumer. A model is proposed to explain the relationship, with survey data from U.S. consumers used to begin to establish any links between product origins and brand tracking behavior through social media

Donor Retention: What Do We Know & What Can We Do About It?

Donor retention is key to a sustainable base of individual giving. What drives customers to stay, and what affects their behavior? This paper outlines the actions nonprofits can take to improve donor loyalty

Alter ego, state of the art on user profiling: an overview of the most relevant organisational and behavioural aspects regarding User Profiling.

This report gives an overview of the most relevant organisational and\ud behavioural aspects regarding user profiling. It discusses not only the\ud most important aims of user profiling from both an organisation’s as\ud well as a user’s perspective, it will also discuss organisational motives\ud and barriers for user profiling and the most important conditions for\ud the success of user profiling. Finally recommendations are made and\ud suggestions for further research are given

Moderating effect of the type of brand on the belief-attitude-behaviour model

Drawing from the Signaling theory we built a model of the moderating effects of the type of brand in a belief-attitude-behaviour model, namely brand evaluation, brand attitude and purchase intention. We empirically test this model with 400 consumers in Mexico. Previously we had conducted another survey with also 400 Mexican consumers to classify brands into global, local and glocal. Our results suggest that brand quality, brand familiarity and brand image are common factors that positively influence brand attitude for the three brand categories. In addition, brand attitude is closely linked to brand purchase intention. Moreover, the type of brand moderates the relationship between brand quality and brand attitude, and between brand attitude and brand purchase intention, the relationship being weaker for glocal brands than for local or global

In the mood for a commercial break? A model of consumer response to television commercials during sensitive news

Marketers decided to pull over $100 million worth of commercials from network, cable, local and syndicated TV outlets on the United States market in the first 48 hours of the 2003 Iraq war. Given this loss to advertisers and media, we looked at how consumers respond to commercials during wartime. Would they change their attitude towards products that are advertised during war coverage? Would they consider advertising during such coverage inappropriate? Consistent with previous mood theory study findings, the results suggest a positive relationship between the mood generated by the interest in the program content and support for advertisements during the program. We also found that factors influencing the mood induced by war coverage were support for the President’s decisions and for the war. These findings open the door to a completely new line of research on attitudes towards media contents. Future research could explore the relationship between political ideology of viewers and their mood when watching sensitive news content.advertising context, attitude toward commercials, interest in program content, mood theory, news.