J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2014) 42:309–321 DOI 10.1007/s11747-013-0352-7
ORIGINAL EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
How brand innovativeness creates advertising flexibility Michael J. Barone & Robert D. Jewell
Received: 19 February 2013 / Accepted: 29 July 2013 / Published online: 20 August 2013 # Academy of Marketing Science 2013
Abstract We advance a broadened conceptualization of advertising context effects by considering how consumer response is influenced by the competitive advertising context. This contextual variable reflects how typically or atypically advertising tactics are employed by brands in a product category. Study 1 demonstrates that employing an advertising tactic that is perceived by consumers as atypical in a category undermines its influence on brand attitudes. Study 2 shows that this persuasion penalty is circumvented by innovative brands through a phenomenon we refer to as advertising flexibility that enables innovative brands to successfully employ advertising tactics under a wider range of conditions than non-innovative brands. A final study provides process evidence for this effect by showing that brand attitudes are determined by advertising content for innovative brands but by considerations of the competitive advertising context for non-innovative brands. Keywords Advertising flexibility . Brand innovativeness . Advertising context . Advertising content Advertising context has been defined somewhat narrowly in prior research as involving elements of the programming environment in which marketers present, and consumers process, advertisements (e.g., Soldow and Principe 1981). Accordingly, research on advertising context effects has typically focused on demonstrating that an advertisement’s persuasiveness can be Both authors contributed equally to the development of this paper. M. J. Barone (*) College of Business, University of Louisville, Room 188, Louisville, KY 40292, USA e-mail:
[email protected] R. D. Jewell College of Business, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242, USA e-mail:
[email protected]
affected by the programming context (e.g., Goldberg and Gorn 1987; Malthouse et al. 2007). Although a large body of research demonstrates that an advertisement’s effectiveness can be influenced by the medium or vehicle in which it is placed (e.g., Murry et al. 1992; Singh and Churchill 1987), these programming-related considerations represent only one dimension of the overall advertising context. To broaden the notion of advertising context beyond programming-level effects, we consider the impact of an additional contextual element. In particular, we explore whether and how an ad’s ability to promote favorable brand attitudes is shaped by the competitive advertising context (i.e., the actual frequency with which marketers use various advertising tactics in a particular product category). We further examine whether the competitive advertising context exerts such an influence by impacting consumer beliefs about tactic typicality (i.e., the perceived frequency associated with marketers’ use of various advertising tactics in that category). Study 1 documents the impact of the competitive advertising context by showing that expert endorser advertising is viewed as less appropriate and creates less favorable attitudes when its use is perceived to be atypical versus typical of a category. These findings extend recent research (Barone and Jewell 2012, 2013) indicating that a comparative advertisement’s typicality impacts its ability to create favorable attitudes by providing initial evidence of similar effects for noncomparative advertisements. In doing so, our research broadens the discipline’s view of context effects on advertising effectiveness by establishing that the influence of the competitive advertising context encompasses noncomparative as well as comparative ads. Studies 2 and 3 illustrate that innovative brands can circumvent the adverse consequences associated with using a tactic that is viewed as atypical of a category. Results from these studies show non-innovative brands to be subject to a persuasion penalty when they attempt to employ advertising tactics that are perceived as atypical of their category. In contrast, an advertising tactic sponsored by an innovative brand is found to
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create favorable attitudes regardless of whether use of the tactic is seen as typical or atypical. Thus, by neutralizing the persuasion penalty that would otherwise result from a marketer’s use of an atypical tactic, an innovative reputation enables an ad’s content to exert its intended influence on attitudes. We refer to this ability of innovative brands to effectively use advertising tactics under a broader range of conditions (including those in which the tactic is perceived to be atypical) than non-innovative brands as advertising flexibility. Furthermore, we document the relative persuasion advantages that advertising flexibility affords innovative brands with respect to persuasion tactics that are atypically used in a product category. In providing evidence of this advertising flexibility effect, we uncover an under-appreciated benefit of innovation and, in so doing, offer advertising managers a basis for better understanding the benefits created by innovation efforts taking place in other areas of the firm. Most critically, we illuminate the process by which the competitive advertising context influences the impact of advertising tactics on brand attitudes (Study 3). In particular, we demonstrate that the weight placed on an ad’s content (i.e., the strength of its message arguments) drives attitudes for innovative brands while the weight associated with the competitive advertising context (i.e., considerations associated with the tactic’s typicality) does so for non-innovative brands. These findings expand upon prior research (Barone and Jewell 2012, 2013) that does not offer insight into the mechanism by which the competitive advertising context influences an advertising tactic’s impact on brand attitudes. In doing so, the current research also contributes to the advertising literature which, to date, has not documented the relative magnitude of the influence exerted by advertising context and content on persuasion. Managerially, the concept of advertising flexibility carries a number of important implications. Advertising flexibility enables innovative brands to effectively employ advertising tactics without regard to whether such tactics are typical or atypical of the category in which they compete. With respect to the use of advertising tactics that are seen as atypical, innovative brands are able to enjoy persuasion advantages (in the form of more favorable brand attitudes) relative to non-innovative brands that encounter persuasion penalties when employing such tactics. This relative advertising advantage can reinforce the competitive edge enjoyed by innovative brands over their less innovative counterparts. Finally, our work contributes to research examining the impact of advertising content on new product introduction. For example, in Chandy et al. (2001), ads presenting information about a new product’s ability to alleviate consumer problems were more effective than those seeking to influence consumer emotions. Similarly, Homburg et al. (2009) found that ads containing information designed to allay consumer risk about a new offering facilitated product introduction to a greater extent than did appeals focusing on the product’s relative
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advantages. Our investigation extends such research by demonstrating that the effect of advertising content on consumer response to new product offerings is contingent upon the competitive advertising context in which it is used and the advertised brand’s status as an innovator or non-innovator. Theoretical framework Researchers have long focused on the influence exerted by ad information (i.e., advertising content), as reflected in persuasion models which predict that stronger message arguments will, ceteris paribus, lead to more favorable attitudes (e.g., the Elaboration Likelihood Model; Petty et al. 1983). Empirical research supports this notion in a number of ways, for instance, by demonstrating that, all else equal, detailing one brand’s superiority over another in comparative advertisements produces more favorable attitudes than noncomparative ads (Grewal et al. 1997). Advertising content has also been shown to be important in generating product sales in general (e.g., Tellis 2009) and new product sales in particular (e.g., Homburg et al. 2009). In contrast to this emphasis on advertising content, we focus on the influence of the advertising context. Broadly speaking, the advertising context involves any factor surrounding the processing of an ad that is not directly associated with the content of the ad itself (i.e., does not involve the specific types of claims or other executional elements contained in an ad). Earlier work examining media- and vehicle-based context effects indicates that advertising response is enhanced when the programming is consistent in style, tone, point-of-view, etc. with that of the ad (DePelsmacker et al. 2002; Moorman et al. 2002). Similarly, the affect generated by program content can influence how consumers respond to advertising (e.g., Goldberg and Gorn 1987; Meyers-Levy and Tybout 1997), as can the level of involvement and interest consumers experience with regard to programming (Lord et al. 1994; Murry et al. 1992). Though the number of studies exhibiting these programmingbased effects is impressive, they may embody an overly restrictive view of the advertising context. In contrast, we examine a largely unexplored contextual factor, the competitive advertising context, which involves the frequency with which specific advertising tactics (e.g., expert endorsers, comparative advertising) are employed collectively by brands in a category. By observing the advertising tactics used by marketers, consumers develop typicality beliefs reflecting how commonly a particular tactic is employed by brands (Friestad and Wright 1994).1 Once formed, 1 It is possible that the actions of prominent brands in a category may disproportionately impact perceptions of a tactic’s perceived typicality in a given category. Thus, an advertising tactic employed by a high-profile brand in a category may be particularly salient to consumers in their thinking about the competitive advertising context, disproportionately influencing their development of beliefs about the tactic’s typicality in the category.
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these beliefs provide consumers a basis for assessing whether a marketer’s use of an advertising tactic is appropriate. Although perceptions of a tactic’s appropriateness may be impacted by a number of inputs available to consumers,2 ads perceived as atypical should generally be viewed by consumers as inappropriate for a brand to use (Barone and Jewell 2012). Given that they contradict consumers’ typicality beliefs, atypical advertising tactics should shift consumer attention away from an evaluation of the ad’s content toward a consideration of its use in an inappropriate advertising context (Friestad and Wright 1994), prompting speculation and suspicion about the marketer’s motivation for employing the tactic (Darke and Ritchie 2007; Goodstein 1993). Although consumers encountering an atypical advertising tactic are still likely to process the information it presents, this negative conjecture concerning the competitive advertising context can dilute the positive impact the ad’s content might otherwise exert on attitudes. In contrast, consumers are less likely to contemplate marketer motives during exposure to advertising tactics that are consistent with their typicality beliefs (Friestad and Wright 1994; MeyersLevy and Tybout 1989). Thus, consumers should be relatively unlikely to speculate about issues stemming from the competitive advertising context with respect to typical advertising tactics. Accordingly, an advertising tactic that is encountered in a category in which its use is perceived as typical should be viewed as more appropriate, and result in more favorable attitudes, than when the same tactic is viewed as atypical. Although documented with respect to comparative advertising (Barone and Jewell 2012, 2013), this influence of tactic typicality has not yet been examined with regard to advertising tactics that are noncomparative in nature. Importantly, considerations about the use of an ad tactic in a category may be particularly likely to emerge for comparative ads because the comparisons featured in such ads can cue recall of other competitive information, including considerations of tactic typicality associated with the competitive advertising context (Barone and Jewell 2013). By focusing exclusively on comparative advertising, extant research may therefore offer a relatively liberal test of the influence of tactic typicality. To enhance the generalizability of such research, we offer the following hypothesis to account for the influence of the competitive advertising context on all forms of advertising tactics: H1: The competitive advertising context will influence an ad’s persuasiveness, with more favorable brand attitudes 2
For example, tactics that are generally viewed as offensive (e.g., those containing distasteful images or language) are likely to be viewed as inappropriate for marketers to use regardless of whether they are commonly or uncommonly used by competitors. Similarly, ads sponsored by brands that consumers view negatively may be seen as inappropriate regardless of whether the competitive advertising context suggests they are typically relied upon by other brands.
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arising when the advertising tactic is perceived as typical versus atypical of the product category. We have theorized that the competitive advertising context, as reflected in consumers’ perceptions of an advertising tactic’s typicality in a category, should shape judgments about the tactic’s appropriateness (Friestad and Wright 1994). These appropriateness perceptions can subsequently influence the tactic’s impact on attitudes (Goodstein 1993; Shiv et al. 1997). As such, our framework suggests that the impact of the competitive advertising context on attitudes should be mediated by perceptions of appropriateness associated with an advertisement. H2: The influence of the competitive advertising context on an advertisement’s persuasiveness will be mediated by perceptions of the tactic’s appropriateness. We next consider if the competitive advertising context effect predicted in H1 depends on whether or not the advertised brand possesses an innovative reputation. Negative conjecture about atypically used advertising tactics can be mitigated when an alternative rationale for a marketer’s use of such tactics becomes apparent to consumers (Friestad and Wright 1994). As a result, providing consumers a basis for positively construing a brand’s use of an atypical tactic should attenuate the persuasion penalty otherwise anticipated for such tactics (H1) if consumers view this behavior as appropriate within the context of the brand’s innovative reputation. The ability to effectively employ advertising tactics under a wide range of marketplace conditions (including those in which a tactic is not typically used in a category) allows innovative brands to benefit from advertising flexibility. This is in contrast to non-innovative brands that lack advertising flexibility and are therefore constrained to effectively using only those tactics that are typically employed by competitors in the category (H1). Thus, the effects of the competitive advertising context on brand attitudes will be moderated by whether or not the brand possesses an innovative reputation: H3: Brand innovativeness will moderate the influence of the competitive advertising context on an ad’s persuasiveness such that (a) attitudes will be more favorable when the tactic is perceived to be typical versus atypical for non-innovative brands and (b) attitudes will be unaffected by perceptions of the tactic’s typicality for innovative brands. Because the weight placed on the strength of the ad’s content will be undermined by negative conjecture associated with a non-innovative brand’s use of the tactic (H1–H2), attitudes should be driven more by the competitive advertising context than by the ad’s content. Conversely, contextual considerations for advertising tactics employed by innovative brands should be muted, enabling the strength of the ad’s
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message arguments to drive attitudes regardless of the competitive adverting context. In other words, greater weight will be accorded to the content provided in an innovative brand’s ad than to the context in which it used. We therefore anticipate observing a shift in the weight given to advertising content versus advertising context depending on whether the advertised brand is seen as innovative. H4: Attitudes will be driven primarily by advertising context for non-innovative brands but by advertising content for innovative brands. Study 1 tests if using atypical tactics impairs the appropriateness of, and attitudes associated with, endorser advertising (H1 and H2). Study 2 explores if brand innovativeness moderates the impact of the competitive advertising context on attitudes created by comparative advertising (H3). Study 3 provides process evidence by examining how brand innovativeness shapes the weight consumers accord to advertising content versus advertising context (H4).
Study 1 Method and procedure Pretest A pretest (n=100) was conducted to develop measures capable of tracking whether tactic typicality beliefs covary with differences in the frequency with which a particular advertising tactic is utilized by brands in a category. An additional objective of this pretest was to develop the tactic typicality manipulation subsequently employed in Study 2. Drawing upon the posited relationship between the competitive advertising context and the formation of tactic typicality beliefs, this manipulation involved varying results from what was ostensibly a survey of ads used by brands in the DVD category. In the typical (atypical) condition, participants were provided with a description of a representative set of six DVD player ads, five (one) of which included a consumer testimonial, the focal advertising tactic in the pretest. Participants then completed a set of five measures assessing tactic typicality, that is, how typical or atypical they felt testimonial advertising was of the DVD player category (see Table 1 for a description of these measures from the main study). Using a criterion of eigenvalue > 1, the analysis revealed the extraction of one factor that accounted for 94% of the variance (factor loadings ranged from .95 to .98). A reliability analysis also demonstrated the internal consistency of these measures (α=.98). Responses to these measures were therefore averaged and submitted to an ANOVA with typicality condition (typical, atypical) as the independent variable. Testimonial ads were viewed as more typical (F (1, 99)=68.94, p
