Children\u27s Susceptibility to Television Advertising: A Behavioral Test of Cognition and Attitude

Television\u27s alleged effects on children have been the object of considerable debate since the early 1950\u27s. The effects of television commercials, however, have been the focus of only a handful of studies. According to recent FCC figures, television commercials now comprise 20 percent--12 minutes or more per hour--of television broadcast content (Johnson, 1973). Earlier figures reported by Steiner (1963) placed commercials as the third largest content category on television, following movies and comedy-variety, but ahead of action dramas and eight other programming categories. Although content emphasis may have changed over the decade, e.g. an increase in action dramas, advertising is still a paramount content category occupying one-fifth of air time. At today\u27s viewing levels, this means the average child is exposed to approximately 100 television commercials per day (Action for Children\u27s Television, 1971)

A critique of prospect theory and framing with particular reference to consumer decisions

Prospect theory is criticized in this article for being borrowed from psychology without appropriate acknowledgement, for requiring mathematical calculations that are beyond the average person, for not investigating information processing during prospect theory choices, and for lacking application to real-world decisions-such as important product and service choices made by consumers. Further criticism is leveled at the prospect theory-derived technique known as framing, which is based on one-sided presentation of information and would be unethical in most consumer behavior situations

The C-OAR-SE procedure for scale development in marketing

Construct definition, Object classification, Attribute classification, Rater identification, Scale formation, and Enumeration and reporting (C-OAR-SE) is proposed as a new procedure for the development of scales to measure marketing constructs. COAR- SE is based on content validity, established by expert agreement after pre-interviews with target raters. In C-OAR-SE, constructs are defined in terms of Object, Attribute, and Rater Entity. The Object classification and Attribute classification steps in C-OAR-SE produce a framework (six types of scales) indicating when to use single-item vs. multiple-item scales and, for multiple-item scales, when to use an index of essential items rather than selecting unidimensional items with a high coefficient alpha. The Rater Entity type largely determines reliability, which is a precision-of-score estimate for a particular application of the scale

Optimal standard measures for marketing

In this article, the author argues that marketing will not become a science until we agree on an optimal standard measure (OSM) for each of our major constructs. The case for OSMs is made by critically examining the leading alternative measures of four constructs used widely in marketing management ¿ corporate business reputation, corporate ethical reputation, customer satisfaction, and customer recommendation ¿ and showing how we might progress towards designing an OSM for each

Methodological Guidelines for Advertising Research

In this article, highly experienced advertising academics and advertising research consultants John R. Rossiter and Larry Percy present and discuss what they believe to be the seven most important methodological guidelines that need to be implemented to improve the practice of advertising research. Their focus is on methodology, defined as first choosing a suitable theoretical framework to guide the research study and then identifying the advertising responses that need to be studied. Measurement of those responses is covered elsewhere in this special issue in the article by Bergkvist and Langner. Most of the frameworks are derived from the authors\u27 own published work, although other frameworks are noted where appropriate

Visual creativity in advertising: a functional typology

There are many ways in which the visuals of an advertisement can be made creative. In this article, we propose a new typology of visual creative ideas. The typology is functlonal in that the first type, literal product or user visuals, which are noncreative in the usual sense gain selective attention, by a product category-involved audience. The other three types, in contrast, are creative and can force reflexive attention among low-involved audiences. These are called pure attention getters, including the innate erotic, baby, and direct-gaze schemas, and the learned shock, celebrity, and culture-icon and subculture-icon schemas; distortional attention getters, including distortions of object design, function, and relation; and visual conveyors, the last including brand awareness conveyors, functional benefit conveyors, and emotional benefit conveyors. In the presentation, we show print advertisements from around the world that exemplify the types

Biohybrid control of general linear systems using the adaptive filter model of cerebellum

© 2015 Wilson, Assaf, Pearson, Rossiter, Dean, Anderson and Porrill. The adaptive filter model of the cerebellar microcircuit has been successfully applied to biological motor control problems, such as the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR), and to sensory processing problems, such as the adaptive cancelation of reafferent noise. It has also been successfully applied to problems in robotics, such as adaptive camera stabilization and sensor noise cancelation. In previous applications to inverse control problems, the algorithm was applied to the velocity control of a plant dominated by viscous and elastic elements. Naive application of the adaptive filter model to the displacement (as opposed to velocity) control of this plant results in unstable learning and control. To be more generally useful in engineering problems, it is essential to remove this restriction to enable the stable control of plants of any order. We address this problem here by developing a biohybrid model reference adaptive control (MRAC) scheme, which stabilizes the control algorithm for strictly proper plants. We evaluate the performance of this novel cerebellar-inspired algorithm with MRAC scheme in the experimental control of a dielectric electroactive polymer, a class of artificial muscle. The results show that the augmented cerebellar algorithm is able to accurately control the displacement response of the artificial muscle. The proposed solution not only greatly extends the practical applicability of the cerebellar-inspired algorithm, but may also shed light on cerebellar involvement in a wider range of biological control tasks

Cerebellar-inspired algorithm for adaptive control of nonlinear dielectric elastomerbased artificial muscle

© 2016 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved. Electroactive polymer actuators are important for soft robotics, but can be difficult to control because of compliance, creep and nonlinearities. Because biological control mechanisms have evolved to deal with such problems, we investigated whether a control scheme based on the cerebellum would be useful for controlling a nonlinear dielectric elastomer actuator, a class of artificial muscle. The cerebellum was represented by the adaptive filter model, and acted in parallel with a brainstem, an approximate inverse plant model. The recurrent connections between the two allowed for direct use of sensory error to adjust motor commands. Accurate tracking of a displacement command in the actuator's nonlinear range was achieved by either semi-linear basis functions in the cerebellar model or semi-linear functions in the brainstem corresponding to recruitment in biological muscle. In addition, allowing transfer of training between cerebellum and brainstem as has been observed in the vestibulo-ocular reflex prevented the steady increase in cerebellar output otherwise required to deal with creep. The extensibility and relative simplicity of the cerebellar-based adaptive-inverse control scheme suggests that it is a plausible candidate for controlling this type of actuator. Moreover, its performance highlights important features of biological control, particularly nonlinear basis functions, recruitment and transfer of training

Control-focused, nonlinear and time-varying modelling of dielectric elastomer actuators with frequency response analysis

Current models of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) are mostly constrained to first principal descriptions that are not well suited to the application of control design due to their computational complexity. In this work we describe an integrated framework for the identification of control focused, data driven and time-varying DEA models that allow advanced analysis of nonlinear system dynamics in the frequency-domain. Experimentally generated input–output data (voltage-displacement) was used to identify control-focused, nonlinear and time-varying dynamic models of a set of film-type DEAs. The model description used was the nonlinear autoregressive with exogenous input structure. Frequency response analysis of the DEA dynamics was performed using generalized frequency response functions, providing insight and a comparison into the time-varying dynamics across a set of DEA actuators. The results demonstrated that models identified within the presented framework provide a compact and accurate description of the system dynamics. The frequency response analysis revealed variation in the time-varying dynamic behaviour of DEAs fabricated to the same specifications. These results suggest that the modelling and analysis framework presented here is a potentially useful tool for future work in guiding DEA actuator design and fabrication for application domains such as soft robotics

Planned Marketing Adaptation and Multinationals' Choices Between Acquisitions and Greenfields

International marketing studies have extensively examined the antecedents of firms' marketing standardization/ adaptation decisions. However, it is unclear whether such decisions, once planned, codetermine the choice between buying and building foreign subsidiaries. Analyzing a sample of 150 foreign entries by Dutch firms, the authors find that the level of marketing adaptation planned for a wholly owned subsidiary is positively related to the likelihood that the subsidiary will be established through an acquisition rather than through a greenfield investment. Moreover, the authors find substantial evidence that this positive relationship is stronger for firms that (1) are establishing relatively larger subsidiaries, (2) have less experience with the industry entered, or (3) are entering less developed countries. The findings show that firms pursuing higher levels of marketing adaptation assign more value to the marketing adaptation advantages of acquisitions over greenfields, especially if the risks associated with implementing the planned adaptation level are high. In addition, firms typically strive for a fit between their international marketing strategy and their mode of foreign establishment. (authors' abstract