TV Viewing and Advertising Targeting

Television, the predominant advertising medium, is being transformed by the microtargeting capabilities of set-top boxes (STBs). By procuring impressions at the STB level (often denoted “programmatic television”), advertisers can now lower per-exposure costs and/or reach viewers most responsive to advertising creatives. Accordingly, this study uses a proprietary, household-level, single-source data set to develop an instantaneous show and advertisement viewing model to forecast consumers’ exposure to advertising and the downstream consequences for impressions and sales. Viewing data suggest that person-specific factors dwarf brand- or show-specific factors in explaining advertising avoidance, thereby suggesting that device-level advertising targeting can be more effective than existing show-level targeting. Consistent with this observation, the model indicates that microtargeting lowers advertising costs and raises incremental profits considerably relative to show-level targeting. Further, these advantages are amplified when advertisers can buy in real time as opposed to up front

Consumption of salt rich products: impact of the UK reduced salt campaign

This paper uses a leading UK supermarket’s loyalty card database to assess the effectiveness and impact of the 2004 UK reduced salt campaign. We present an econometric analysis of purchase data to assess the effectiveness of the Food Standard Agency’s (FSA) ‘reduced salt campaign’. We adopt a general approach to determining structural breaks in the time series of purchase data, using unit root tests whereby structural breaks are endogenously determined from the data. We find only limited evidence supporting the effectiveness of the FSA’s reduced salt campaign. Our results support existing findings in the literature that have used alternative methodologies to examine the impact of information campaigns on consumer choice of products with high salt content

Consumer–brand identification revisited: An integrative framework of brand identification, customer satisfaction, and price image and their role for brand loyalty and word of mouth

Consumer–brand identification has received considerable attraction among scholars and practitioners in recent years. We contribute to previous research by proposing an integrative model that includes consumer–brand identification, customer satisfaction, and price image to investigate the interrelationships among these constructs as well as their effects on brand loyalty and positive word of mouth. To provide general results, we empirically test the model using a sample of 1443 respondents from a representative consumer panel and 10 service/product brands. The results demonstrate that identification, satisfaction, and price image significantly influence both loyalty and word of mouth. Moreover, we find significant interrelationships among the constructs: Identification positively influences both satisfaction and price image, which also increases satisfaction. By disclosing the relative importance of three separate ways of gaining and retaining customers, this study helps managers more appropriately choose the right mix of branding, pricing, and relationship marketing. From an academic point of view, our research is the first to explicitly examine the effects of the concept of identification for price management and to integrate variables from the fields of branding, relationship marketing, and behavioral pricing, which have separately been identified as particularly important determinants of marketing outcomes

The Effect of Links and Excerpts on Internet News Consumption

Internet news and search sites often excerpt content from and link to competing news outlets. On the one hand, providing outbound links can make the linking site more attractive, even to the point of stealing traffic from the linked sites. Regulatory policy, such as the European Union's Copyright Directive Article 15 taxing links, is predicated in part on this idea. On the other hand, receiving inbound links can increase a linked site's audience by informing readers about its news content that day. To explore these opposing perspectives, the authors develop a dynamic learning model and fit it to browsing and link data from celebrity news sites. They then simulate how banning links affects consumer browsing and find that linking increases celebrity news consumption, especially among consumers who browse the least. On average, linking benefits both the linking and linked sites. The authors estimate that exposure to a link increases the likelihood of visiting the linked site by .14%. This increase is approximately three times the commonly reported click-through rate for paid display advertisements

The Long-term Effect of Marketing on Brand Sales

Few studies have considered the relative role of the integrated marketing mix (advertising, price promotion, product, and place) on the long-term performance of mature brands, instead emphasizing advertising and price promotion. Thus, little guidance is available to firms regarding the relative efficacy of their various marketing expenditures over the long run. To investigate this issue, the authors apply a multivariate dynamic linear transfer function model to five years of advertising and scanner data for 25 product categories and 70 brands in France. The findings indicate that the total (short-term plus long-term) sales elasticity is 1.37 for product and .74 for distribution. Conversely, the total elasticities for advertising and discounting are only .13 and .04, respectively. This result stands in marked contrast to the previous emphasis in the literature on price promotions and advertising. The authors further find that the long-term effects of discounting are one-third the magnitude of the short-term effects. The ratio is reversed from other aspects of the mix (in which long-term effects exceed four times the short-term effects), underscoring the strategic role of these tools in brand sales

Guided Assembly and Patterning of Intrinsically Fluorescent Amyloid Fibers with Long-Range Order

Fibrillar amyloids exhibit a fascinating range of mechanical, optical, and electronic properties originating from their characteristic β-sheet-rich structure. Harnessing these functionalities in practical applications has so far been hampered by a limited ability to control the amyloid self-assembly process at the macroscopic scale. Here, we use core-shell electrospinning with microconfinement to assemble amyloid-hybrid fibers, consisting of densely aggregated fibrillar amyloids stabilized by a polymer shell. Up to centimeter-long hybrid fibers with micrometer diameter can be arranged into aligned and ordered arrays and deposited onto substrates or produced as free-standing networks. Properties that are characteristic of amyloids, including their high elastic moduli and intrinsic fluorescence signature, are retained in the hybrid fiber cores, and we show that they fully persist through the macroscopic fiber patterns. Our findings suggest that microlevel confinement is key for the guided assembly of amyloids from monomeric proteins