Maintenance person or architect?

International Journal of Advertising The Quarterly Review of Marketing Communications

ISSN: 0265-0487 (Print) 1759-3948 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rina20

Maintenance person or architect? Gayle Kerr & Don Schultz To cite this article: Gayle Kerr & Don Schultz (2010) Maintenance person or architect?, International Journal of Advertising, 29:4, 547-568 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2501/S0265048710201348

Published online: 07 Jan 2015.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 40

View related articles

Citing articles: 2 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rina20 Download by: [Queensland University of Technology]

Date: 13 September 2016, At: 23:30

Maintenance person or architect? The role of academic advertising research in building better understanding Gayle Kerr and Don Schultz

Queensland University of Technology

This paper suggests that, while advertising has changed, advertising research has not. Indeed, questions asked of advertising research more than 20 years ago have still not been answered. The enormity of change in advertising compounded by the lack of response from researchers suggests the traditional academic advertising research model requires more than routine maintenance. It seeks an architect with vision to redesign an academic research model that is probably broken or badly outdated. Five areas of the academic research approach are identified as needing rethinking: (1) the advertising problem, (2) sample frame and subjects, (3) assumptions regarding consumer behaviour, (4) research methodologies and (5) findings. Suggestions are made for improvement. But perhaps the biggest challenge is academic leadership. This paper proposes the establishment of a blue-ribbon panel to report back on recommended changes or improvements.

Introduction One of the earliest pieces of advice given to most new researchers seeking to get their work published is to concentrate on filling in the gaps in the literature. Thus, the approach is to begin with a strong literature review, including foundational models, often from 1960s and 1970s, and then look for what has not yet been addressed. That gap in the literature then becomes the focus of research output. While this strategy might work well for a rather static field such as biology or chemistry, since it clearly enhances and reinforces previous research, it does not encourage researchers to think outside the existing body of knowledge. It also leads new researchers to assume that any gap must be filled, rather than seeking to identify those that are most important. Thus, the methodology and approach positions researchers as ‘maintenance people’, whose role is to International Journal of Advertising, 29(4), pp. 547–568 © 2010 Advertising Association Published by Warc, www.warc.com DOI: 10.2501/S0265048710201348

547

International Journal of Advertising, 2010, 29(4)

fill holes, rather than build better advertising paradigms. Yet there has been sufficient change in the advertising discipline in the last decade to demand a new vision for academic advertising research, rather than routine development of incremental knowledge. This maintenance approach seems to simply service existing advertising research paradigms. A paradigm, as described by Kuhn (1962, p. 27), is the ‘network of conceptual, methodological and theoretical assumptions’. It evolves from a loose collection of concepts and believers at the pre-paradigm stage into more widely accepted ideas that achieve a social consensus among subscribing academics at the stage of paradigm acquisition (Tadajewski 2008). While it has not specifically been investigated in advertising research, MacInnis (2003, 2005) sums up how the adoption of popular paradigms in the marketing research field has impacted intellectual contribution: It may lead us to adopt rigid rules about what constitutes ‘valid’ research, ‘important’ research and research that advances theory versus practice and to use our expertise as reviewers to evaluate research more on the fit with our own methodological approaches than on its capability to yield intellectual insights that help us to understand a substantive domain. Another potential source of the current status is fear of accepting something unknown or unfamiliar. This problem is further magnified when that unfamiliar thing is studied by people with whom we are not familiar. (Cited in Tadajewski 2008, p. 289)

Evidence of these shared values across the paradigm community is demonstrated in top-tier journals, which seem to prefer publishing mainstream topics rather than counter-intuitive approaches (Tadjewski 2008). Svensson (2006) suggests this has blocked innovation and open-mindedness in marketing research. Perhaps the answer is to examine the research paradigm itself. Popper (1972) suggests the best process is one of natural selection. Knowledge should grow not from social consensus, but through evolution and natural selection. It should grow from trial and error-elimination, and from conjecture and refutation. To that end, this paper incites conjecture and encourages refutation about the current state of advertising research. One thing beyond conjecture, however, is that traditional advertising is undergoing radical change (Rust & Oliver 1994; Zinkhan & Watson 1996; Vakratsas & Ambler 1999; Schultz & Schultz 2004). Commercially, those

548

Maintenance person or architect?

changes range from what is or should be defined as advertising (Ehrenberg 1999; Richards & Curran 2002) to the methods and approaches used to plan and develop advertising strategy and develop the creative product (Stewart & Furse 2000; Ehrenberg et al. 2002; Morrison & Haley 2003). There is also a major emphasis on advertising measurement and accountability (Jones & Blair 1996; Chowdhury et al. 2007; Malthouse et al. 2007). Many of these changes are the direct result of technological changes in media and messaging, which appear to have created two basic forms of ‘advertising’. One is the traditional outbound approach where marketing organisations develop and implement ‘push’ programmes. This means the marketer creates messages which are then distributed via various forms of generally mass media, i.e. television, radio, newspapers, magazines, outdoor and the like (Belch et al. 2009). The other advertising form is ‘pull’, where consumers or customers access information from the marketing organisation through websites, independent online resources or from other consumers using technologies such as the World Wide Web and the internet, using such tools as social media, blogs and the like (Denegri-Knott et al. 2006; Johnson et al. 2006). Despite all these changes, academic advertising research seems to be caught in a mid- to late 20th-century time-warp (Bogart 1986; Stewart 1992; Taylor 2005; Cho & Khang 2006) – that is, the academic advertising research tools, techniques, methods and approaches used in the past are still being applied today. One must wonder, therefore, two things. While things have deteriorated of late, has the state of academic advertising research ever been exemplary? And, second, how relevant is the current academic advertising research paradigm? Are we really advancing advertising knowledge in this now revolutionary field or simply maintaining the status quo by trying to fill in the knowledge gaps in an increasingly irrelevant inventory of previous research? This paper suggests that the entire basis for academic advertising research needs a new vision. That seems particularly appropriate based on the changes in advertising understanding coming from areas such as neural science, i.e. how the human brain really works (Krugman 2000; Coulter et al. 2001; Shapiro & Krishnan 2001) to the synergistic impact of simultaneous media usage (Chang & Thorson 2004; Stammerjohan et al. 2005) to the need for consumer media consumption measures, not just media distribution (Schultz & Pilotta 2004; Schultz et al. 2005), to

549


the increasing need to identify the financial and commercial impact of advertising activities, not just the attitudinal changes that are commonly measured (Malthouse et al. 2007).

Changes in advertising and advertising research A new vision of advertising There any many examples of how advertising has changed. Mass media is increasingly fragmented, advertising dollars are continually diverted to more measurable disciplines, consumer audiences have become more sophisticated and more time poor (Nowak & Phelps 1994; Rust & Oliver 1994; Schultz & Schultz 2004). Perhaps international media company OMD (2008) sums it up best: Striking changes in consumer lifestyles combined with fragmentation, channel multiplication, digital technology and PVRs have all combined to create tectonic shifts in the media landscape. Inevitably, these changes are eroding the effectiveness of traditional communication and making it harder and more expensive for brands to reach consumers.

Evidence of this shift is seen in global advertising expenditure, which was forecast to have grown by 4% in 2008 and 2009. The developing markets are expected to contribute 65% of that growth and increase their share of the global advertising market from 28% to 32% (ZenithOptimedia 2008). In terms of how this advertising expenditure will be distributed, ZenithOptimedia predicts that, in 2010, television (37%) and then newspapers (23.3%) will still attract the largest share of advertising dollars. However, forecasts see the internet (13.8%) overtaking magazines (11.1%) as the third largest advertising medium. This is already the case in many markets, such as Australia, where the internet has been the third largest advertising medium since 2006 (CEASA 2008). Zenith reports that the internet is growing by 23% per annum globally, but in Australia, for example, this growth has been around 60% between 2004–2006 and 34.5% from 2006–2007 (CEASA 2008). Aligned with advertising expenditure and the omnipresence of technology, we see further evidence of media fragmentation. In 1990, there were 103 TV stations in Europe. In 2004, there were 1100 (OMD 2008). Add to

550


this the potential of new media such as internet television. Google’s vice president, Vint Cerf, suggests that ‘It’s just waiting for its iPod moment’ (OMD 2008, p. 1). OMD Snapshots research shows that the majority of people intend to watch TV online in the future. While 75% of 16–24 year olds say they will watch internet TV when they can view it full screen, 62% of the same age group will watch it in the next six months. This indicates that consumers are changing the way they use media, probably encouraged by the 1600 commercial messages they receive every day (OMD 2008). However, they are making many other behavioural changes as well, such as the way they shop. Nielsen Media surveyed 26,312 internet users in 48 markets. They found that 86% globally (93% Europe, 84% Asia Pacific, 92% North America and 67% Middle East) had purchased on the internet, an increase of 40% in just two years. More than half of these are regular internet shoppers, purchasing at least once a month. The media research chronicling changes such as these, in advertising and consumer behaviour, is global and growing, and affecting the way advertising decisions are being made. Yet underpinning all of these changes is a basic shift in the premise of advertising. Advertising, which has traditionally been defined as outbound, marketer-controlled, persuasive communication, is now something different (Schultz & Pilotta 2004). The traditional push model of advertising was derived from the mid20th-century communication model of sender–message–channel–receiver (Belch et al. 2009). In this model, the marketer hires an advertising agency to create a message and push that message using mass media to consumers. This model was supported in advertising theory by the Hierarchy of Effects models such as Lavidge and Steiner and AIDA (attention, interest, desire and action). The ultimate goal of advertising was to move consumers, who were unaware of the marketer’s product, through a series of logical steps that built interest and desire and, finally, purchase (Belch et al. 2009). This model was problematic in the days of the mass-marketing, massmedia paradigm (Schultz & Schultz 2004). However, with technologyempowered consumers operating in a message-saturated environment, the model becomes as redundant as the CD player. Schultz (2008) has proposed a revision of this model, shown in Figure 1. While marketers continue to push their messages, consumers have erected a shield to block them. Aided

551


Figure 1: Schultz’s Push-Pull Model of Marketing Communication

Employees/Recommenders/Distributors/Influencers

Web search

Competitors Competitors Agency → Research → Media

Products/services

Marketer

Consumer/ prospect

Messages and incentives Competitors Competitors

Word of mouth

New media forms

by blocking devices such as TiVo, DVR recorders and filters, or through their behaviour, such as avoiding advertising or even mass media, consumers can select the advertising they wish to attend to. In addition to this, consumers can actively ‘pull’ the information they need through web searches, new media such as blogs or forums, and word of mouth. Schultz’s Push-Pull Model of Marketing Communication presents an innovative way of looking at advertising. Is advertising research looking at advertising in the same way? The next section documents the changing trends of advertising research, raising some important issues for exploration. Changing trends in advertising research The subject of advertising research is both prevalent and divergent. It is a subject of additional investigation because of its importance to both the future of the discipline and the career prospects of academics. Numerous papers have analysed the research output across time and in terms of productivity (Barry 1990; Henthorne et al. 1998). Others have chronicled the content of that research, often by journal or author (Yale & Gilly 1988;

552


Edwards & La Ferle 2003; West 2007). Pitt et al. (2005) explored the use of theory in advertising research. Looking at three premier advertising journals across an 11-year period, they found only 17% of articles explicitly incorporated theory, mostly from psychology, sociology and economics. Only a minority of articles used marketing or advertising theory. Some researchers, such as Taylor (2005), focused on specific research issues such as the international advertising agenda, while others, such as Cook and Dunn (1996), considered advertising research from an advertiser-versus-agency perspective. Added to this, numerous papers have focused on methodological issues (Jones & Blair 1996; Ehrenberg 2000) and behavioural effects (Krugman 2000; Schultz & Schultz 2004). This has been complemented by commentary on the state of advertising research across the decades (Bogart 1986; Stewart 1992; Schultz & Kerr 2008). The changing trends in advertising research are summarised in Table 1.

Table 1: Changing trends in advertising research Stream of extant trend research Origins of research articles or productivity

Year 1983, 1988 1985 1990 1998 1998 2003

Key writers Soley & Ried Pasadeos Barry Pasadeos, Phelps & Kim Henthorne, LaTour & Loraas Edwards & Le Ferle

Analysis of research topics or content

1976 1988 1991 2003 2005 2007

Russell and Martin Yale and Gilly Muncy Edwards & Le Ferle Pitt, Berthon, Caruana & Berthon West

Trends in a specific topical area

1991 1994 1994 1994 2000 2005 2005 2005 2006

Schuman, Hathcote & West (corporate advertising) Hyman, Tansey & Clark (ethics) Zinkhan (ethics) Nowak & Phelps (IMC) Sin, Ho & So (advertising research in China) Stafford (international service advertising) Zou (international advertising) Taylor (international advertising) Cho & Khang (internet advertising)

Source: developed from a table from Cho & Khang (2006)

553


From a review of the literature, four clear trends emerge: (1) changes in advertising research appear to mirror changes in the discipline; (2) energy and expenditure at the time of this change proportionally outweigh the expenditure on traditional outbound advertising; (3) the topics of research evolve as the disciplinary change becomes more mainstream; (4) milestone events such as the 20th anniversary of the Journal of Advertising also inflate advertising research output. In addressing the first of these trends, Bogart notes that ‘Some of the best research ever done on advertising was done during the early days of television’ (Bogart 1986, p. 13). Similarly, Stewart (1992, p. 1) observes that ‘profound changes in advertising and the profession that supports it’ are followed by a series of speculations on the future and shape of advertising research. More recently, IMC and the growing importance of database marketing, the internet and communication synergies has impacted the practice of advertising and the agenda of advertising research (Nowak & Phelps 1994; Henthorne et al. 1998). As all of the key advertising journals were established post-television – the oldest, the Journal of Advertising Research, in 1960 – we have little documentation of the research agenda in a print-dominated environment. Nor do we have a chronicle of the advertising research surrounding the advent of radio. However, the advertising research from 1960 onwards suggests that changes such as television, IMC and interactive communication have been a driver of advertising research. This is also evident in the expenditure on advertising research. In 1986, Bogart reviewed changes in advertising and research across the preceding 15–20 years. He reported that, while advertising expenditure had outpaced economic growth during this period, the growth of advertising research had substantially outpaced that of advertising itself (1986, p. 11). While this refers to the early television days, Cho and Khang (2006) report a similar trend in internet-related research. Their study of 15 leading communication, marketing and advertising journals found that 13.3% of research articles were on the internet, which was much larger than the 2.5% of advertising expenditure devoted to the internet in 2003. They further observed that the number of articles produced on internet research is at an increasing rate, in a pattern similar to a convex response curve or diffusion curve. Therefore, there appears to be, across time, greater

554


research interest than advertising expenditure on innovation in advertising practice. The nature of this research interest also appears to change as the innovation becomes more mainstream. Wimmer and Dominick’s (2000) four developmental phases of media research suggest that research on an advertising medium changes from an initial definition to further exploration of its use and the users. This is followed by a third phase, which considers the effects of the medium on our society and its advertising, leading to a final phase, which looks at medium improvement, exploring advanced applications and future directions. In applying this model to internet research, Cho and Khang (2006) found evidence of these phases being researched concurrently. They reported that research looked at the effects of internet advertising, while still seeking to define the medium and explore its use and users. There was no evidence of the final phase of development. Yale and Gilly (1988) also documented some shift in content areas across a decade. While advertising practice remained a strong topic of advertising research, interest in social issues appeared to decline across the decade, while research in advertising effects rose in prominence. The final observation from Table 1 is that some milestones will artificially inflate the research agenda. This was evident when the 20thanniversary issue of the Journal of Advertising in 1998 produced a number of descriptors of research achievement (Henthorne et al. 1998; Pasadeos et al. 1998) or when West (2007) produced a definitive piece for the 25thanniversary of the International Journal of Advertising.

Issues in advertising research More than 20 years ago, Bogart (1986) identified six challenges to advertising research. These were: (1) the pre-eminence of syndicated media audience research, which Bogart described as supporting a commodity view of advertising; (2) the decline in innovative advertising and media research; (3) the telephone as the main method of personal interviews, and the implications of this for representative sampling; (4) advanced statistical techniques that discern ‘the needles of causality in haystacks of complex data’ (1986, p. 14); (5) the rise of focus groups as participatory research with client as co-conspirator; (6) evaluating advertising individually and without context. While many of these challenges relate to methodological

555


issues, sampling frame and the interpretation of data, some raise larger questions about the purpose and practice of research itself. Commenting on the state of advertising research six years later, Stewart (1992) again raised many of these issues. He was particularly concerned about the context of the advertising research, relating this to the concept of ‘socially enacted environments’. He suggested that the focus of advertising research has largely been on how advertising controls consumer behaviour: ‘Indeed a typical research paradigm within the field uses relatively naïve consumers, fictitious products, forced exposure to advertising for a single product and measures that are designed to identify incremental changes’ (Stewart 1986, p. 7). Stewart urged further research that moved beyond traditional measures of association to indicators of real understanding of consumer behaviour. He was particularly concerned with the effect of advertising, posing some important questions of advertising research (Stewart 1992, p. 1): • Does advertising work, and if so, when and why? • Should advertising effects be determined with absolute or relative measures? • How are the media related to advertising response? • How is advertising related to the larger marketing mix? • How can research support advertising’s inherent creative function? Another issue in advertising research emerges from the new fields of advertising research, such as the internet. Research shows that there appears to be a wide dispersion of individuals and universities involved in this research, which Cho and Khang suggest is ‘a positive sign for dynamic disciplines’ (2006, p. 157). However, most of this research is being conducted by new researchers, who are neither professors, nor scholars identified in previous research. This point is perhaps connected with the issue of quality. In the same study, Cho and Khang (2006) reported that only 14.5% of internet-related journal articles explicitly mentioned or used theory. This suggests that although new fields of research provide opportunities for developing researchers, perhaps some theoretical rigour is lacking in this work. Therefore, in summary, the issues raised about advertising research across time are likely to fall into some basic categories. These include

556


Figure 2: Changes in advertising and issues in advertising research

• Consumers • Technology Advertising • Media changes • Agency • Budget

Research changes

Issues

• Disciplinary change reflected in research agenda • More research energy than ad expenditure • Research topics evolve as change matures

• Theoretical underpinnings • Methods and measures • Treatments of consumer • Innovation

obvious concerns about methodology, sampling frame and how we should be analysing and interpreting the data. However, there are also some larger questions raised about the fundamental nature of the research and the problem to be studied, and the context in which both the advertising and the consumers are researched. Or, as Stewart observed in 1992, ‘It is curious and a bit embarrassing that more than ninety years of advertising research still leaves open the question of advertising effectiveness’ (p. 4). In summary, Figure 2 shows how changes to the advertising discipline impact upon the changes to the research paradigm, and how this raises a number of issues for consideration. These, more fundamental, issues are explored in the next section.

Building academic research innovation through a better model Based on a review of the changes in advertising and the response of advertising research to these changes, this paper suggests that the advertising academic research model appears to be broken. The literature review would suggest three things. First, that when advertising changes, a disproportionate amount of energy needs to be spent researching it. Second, the amount and nature of research should evolve as the change to this discipline becomes more mainstream. And, third, advertising research still

557


struggles with fundamental questions about its purpose and practice that were asked more than two decades ago. Based on this, five areas of the current academic advertising research model are identified as requiring attention: (1) the advertising problem being studied; (2) the sample frame and subjects; (3) the consumer behaviour assumptions; (4) the research methodologies and analytical techniques employed; (5) the findings. Each of these is discussed below. The advertising problem being studied If advertising has changed as much as many observers believe, are the academic advertising research issues being studied still appropriate? Is ‘filling the gaps in the literature’ of traditional outbound, mass marketdelivered ‘push’ advertising, using attitudinal change and association as the basis for determining ‘success’, still as relevant as it perhaps once was? As Bogart suggested in 1986, ‘Improving the quality of our measurements is a meaningless exercise if the measurements themselves lack meaning’ (p. 15). Are we measuring what is relevant, or even what we think we are measuring? For example, if the new forms of advertising using interactive communication, such as mobile, wireless, the internet, word-of-mouth and the like, are increasingly prevalent, how do we measure them in combination with traditional media to determine overall or combined effects? More importantly, if consumers have instant or almost-instant access to unlimited amounts of seemingly unbiased web-delivered product/service information, why would or should they attend to or process and store traditional advertising information? It is this question of the importance and value of advertising in today’s consumer-controlled marketplace that raises many of the questions about what the academic community should be researching and investigating. We have seen that the model of advertising has changed. What was relevant 20 or so years ago may not be relevant today. Working out what it is that really needs to be studied, and making sure we study what we think we are studying, is really needed and necessary, and is likely to be the greatest challenge to academic advertising research. As we have seen from the comments of marketing scholars, questioning the research paradigm is a universal academic pastime. In management, ‘organisational scholars have stopped asking big, important questions and

558


instead have devoted an increased focus on technical precision and management projects’ (Pfeffer 2005, cited in Tsui 2007, p. 1359). However, big and novel questions are often less pondered in a more mature academic field. Given the changes in advertising, one would think that all our questions should be big or, at least, appear to be important. The sample frame and subjects How relevant is academic advertising research conducted among a typical convenience sample of ‘undergraduate students in a Midwestern US college’ when we live in a global marketplace? Clearly, cultural differences abound. Consumers in India, China, Brazil and other emerging economies bring dramatically different cultures, experiences and backgrounds to any advertising research study, not just those found in western cultures. It seems, however, that much, if not most, of the published academic advertising research has a decidedly western, and especially US, bias. For example, Tsui (2007) compared current issues of four leading journals from North America and Europe, finding 11.5% non-North American authors, reviewers and references in the North American journals, but 37.4% North American authors, reviewers and references in the European journals. Tsui (2007, p. 1354) suggests ‘a greater dominance of the North American research paradigm in Europe than the reverse’. This is no doubt a product of the strong and sizeable advertising academic community in the US, but it is also an artefact of publication. Many of the key advertising journals, such as Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research and Current Issues in Advertising Research, are US based. This creates major questions about the dominance of US-based research, as well as the value and importance of advertising research in other geo/ cultural areas. The same problem occurs when academic researchers compare current findings with previous studies, particularly those conducted prior to the introduction of the World Wide Web and interactivity in all its forms, i.e. SMS, blogs, social networks and the like. This is expected practice for dissertation research. Yet one can only wonder how comparable the student samples used in the research experiments of the 1960s and 1970s are with the students currently occupying classroom seats in 2008. Should we separate more recent studies from their predecessors? If so, where

559


does the dividing line fall? It would seem that our traditional assumption that findings among sample populations are comparable, regardless of the time frame, is fraught with problems – despite the predominance of this assumption and its application in academic research. In short, how important is respondent background, knowledge, experience, culture and technology in making any type of longitudinal comparison? Consumer behaviour assumptions Advertising models such as AIDA and the Hierarchy of Effects are based on a behaviourist stimulus–response view of the world, i.e. measuring impact and effect through various types of association and attitudinal change. These traditional behaviourist psychological models assume that marketers can influence consumers through exposure to advertising messages. In this, message frequency becomes a critical variable in generating advertising effects. These consumer behaviour models also assume linear consumer responses – that is, the consumer moving through a defined or identifiable pattern of thought processes on the way to purchase behaviour. Thus, marketers can ‘manage’ consumer response through communication exposure, which can be measured by recall and regurgitation of advertising messages. The new neural research studies on how the human brain really ‘works’ challenge most of these long-held assumptions. Thus, one must question whether much of the historic academic advertising research is relevant today, given what we now know about how the human mind is constructed and how people actually take in, process and store advertising information. In short, is the traditional behaviourist consumer research model still applicable, or does it require a more innovative iteration? Research methodologies employed Twenty years ago, Bogart (1986) suggested that advanced statistical techniques were finding causality in complex data. Today, this is even more the case, and statistical elegance is often a determinant of research quality, regardless of the research questions being addressed or the contribution being made to knowledge. While it is important to understand the validity and reliability of the individual advertising study, are we ignoring

560


the advancement of knowledge because of our focus on the methodologies and techniques employed? In short, does our increasing capacity to develop statistical capability overwhelm the value of the research contribution to advertising understanding? This preoccupation with statistics is in part related to their greater acceptance by reviewers and journal editors, which commonly results in greater publishability. Is it possible that this statistical bias could see the qualitative scholars driven from the field? Isn’t there still a place for insights in academic research, even if they can’t be proven at the 0.01 level of significance? A final consideration is that statistical analysis is based on the assumption of a normal curve. In that type of analysis, outliers are often excluded. Yet, we have increasing evidence today that the 80/20 rule exists in most actual consumer behaviours – that is, small numbers of customers provide disproportionate levels of advertising response and product purchase. Knowing what the ‘average’ or middle-rank group of customers do often has little relationship or relevance to what or how the ‘best’ or ‘worst’ customers behave. Is it possible that academic statistical analysis today provides less insight than it once did, even though the tools themselves have become increasingly more sophisticated. Have we also lost our own confidence to judge what is truly innovative research so that we occupy a statistical stronghold as a refuge from freer and more innovative thought? In advertising research, we have, on occasion, seen controversy incited by prescriptive methodological paradigms. Some of those involved, such as Ehrenberg (1997, 2000) have applauded such controversy. Yet from different paradigm communities, we see a shared admiration for both rigour and relevance that is, it is to be hoped, greater than any paradigm alone. It is on this that any solution for advertising research must build. The findings Historical knowledge of respondents has always been a problem. That problem has been exacerbated by current respondents who have almost instant access to global knowledge with just a few keystrokes through a website’s search engine. Thus, is the academic tradition of comparing previous findings with those determined earlier a relevant methodology

561


today? Is what we think we know what we should know … or is it just the results we have developed to fill a gap in the literature?

The ‘to do’ list Five areas of academic advertising research have been identified as requiring repair. The following section offers some starting points. Neural knowledge Given the knowledge and understanding of how the human brain probably works, coming from the new neural investigations, it is likely that we should revisit and revise the basic academic assumptions of how consumers take in, process, store and recall advertising information. Du Plessis (2007) not only demonstrated the benefits that neuroscience offers advertising, but also showed the limitations in our understanding of the link between the two. His work and that of others has shown us that our historic assumptions about information processing may not be accurate, informative or very useful. Dynamic systems It seems obvious that advertising today exists and operates not only as a dynamic element in the marketing communication mix but in a dynamic, non-linear marketplace. Rather than the historical linear approaches currently in use, how can we develop research methodologies that provide relevant information in this continuously evolving and changing system? Is what we knew yesterday as relevant to tomorrow as we would like to think? Networks Advertising does not exist in isolation. How can we understand the networks of advertising usage and involvement consumers create for themselves, often independent of what the marketer intended? Clearly, we need new processes and systems to understand any advertising effects.

562


What are those processes, and how can they be developed, tested and implemented? Synergy Today, we tend to observe, investigate and measure advertising in splendid isolation. Yet, advertising is commonly only one element in a marketing communication programme. How do we understand the impact, effect and synergy that probably occurs at the consumer level for the many and varied promotional messages to which the consumer is exposed? How do they interact and how do they combine? And, most important, are they additive, multiplicative or, in some cases, even negative? We really don’t know. Cultural Increasingly, we are learning that multicultural issues, which are often sublimated in western culture-biased advertising research, are real and important. Do all cultures think and process information in the same way? Is a junior class in a Midwestern university a relevant population for any research project other than for that Midwestern city? Certainly it seems the culture of the respondents has much to do with the results obtained. Clearly, there are other issues that should be investigated in any revision or revamping of academic advertising research. These, however, seem to be the primary ones. The question then is: What can or should be done?

Being the architect – not the maintenance person Speaking of academic advertising research, Bogart (1986, p. 13) cautioned that ‘Quality is not just a matter of methodology and procedures; it has to do with intellectual content.’ While we continue to fill in the gaps, to refine our methodology and amplify our statistical techniques, we lose sight of the bigger issues. It should be the intellectual content of our research that drives the discipline forward – not the statistical technique or the publishing imperatives. The European Advertising Academy, in association with an organisation of research leadership such as ESOMAR, would appear to be the logical

563


group to start an investigation into (a) whether or not academic advertising research needs to be revisited, and perhaps revised, (b) if so, what areas are most important and relevant, and (c) if needed, how might those revisions be addressed. The approach proposed is simple: 1. a partnership between the European Advertising Academy and ESOMAR should take on this task 2. the leaders of these research institutions should appoint a Blue Ribbon panel to investigate the issues discussed in this paper or others that might arise 3. the panel should report back to the Academy on its findings at the next International Conference on Research in Advertising 4. at that point, the membership can determine next steps, if any are needed. This article has raised the issue of whether we are really filling in the gaps of an academic research model, in need of more than routine maintenance, or whether an architect, such as an academic organisation, should seek a new vision for academic advertising research to build both innovation and productivity for advertising academics and practical outcomes for the advertising industry. We believe it is beyond a single author to suggest a solution, for that solution may prescribe a paradigm and the whole problem begins anew. We feel it is for a community of our brightest minds, representing different research paradigms and different cultural backgrounds, to be the architect and to find the way forward.

References Barry, T. (1990) Publication productivity in the three leading U.S. advertising journals: inaugural issues through 1988. Journal of Advertising, 19(1), pp. 52–60. Belch, G., Belch, M., Kerr, G. & Powell, I. (2009) Advertising and Promotion: An IMC Perspective. Sydney: McGraw-Hill. Bogart, L. (1986) Progress in advertising research? Journal of Advertising Research, June/July, pp. 11–15. Chang, Y. & Thorson, E. (2004) Television and web advertising synergies. Journal of Advertising, 33(2), pp.75–85.

564


Cho, C. & Khang, H. (2006) The state of internet-related research in communications, marketing and advertising: 1994–2003. Journal of Advertising, 35(3), pp. 143–163. Chowdhury, R., Finn, A. & Olsen, G. (2007) Investigating the simultaneous presentation of advertising and television programming. Journal of Advertising, 36(3), pp. 85–97. Commercial Economic Advisory Service of Australia (CEASA) (2008) Available online at: www.ceasa.com.au . Accessed on March 5, 2008. Cook, W. & Dunn, T. (1996) The changing face of advertising research in the information age: an ARF Copy Research Council survey. Journal of Advertising Research, 36(1), pp. 55–72. Coulter, R., Zaltman, G. & Coulter, K. (2001) Interpreting consumer perceptions of advertising: an application of the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique. Journal of Advertising, 30(4), pp. 1–22. Denegri-Knott, J., Zwick, D. & Schroeder, J. (2006) Mapping consumer power: an integrative framework for marketing and consumer research. European Journal of Marketing, 40(9/10), pp. 950–971. Du Plessis, E. (2007) A view on the prospects for neurological research and advertising engagement and effectiveness. International Journal of Advertising, 26(1), pp. 129–132. Edwards, S. & La Ferle, C. (2003) Trends of the American Academy of Advertising Conference Proceedings: 1983–2002, in L. Carlson (ed.) Proceedings of the 2003 Conference of the American Academy of Advertising. Clemson: AAA, pp. 210–220. Ehrenberg, A. (1997) Description and prescription. Journal of Advertising Research, 37(6), pp. 7–14. Ehrenberg, A. (1999) The Emperor’s old clothes: a rejoinder. International Journal of Advertising, 18(1), pp. 19–28. Ehrenberg, A. (2000) Repetitive advertising and the consumer. Journal of Advertising Research, 40(6), pp. 39–48. Ehrenberg, A., Barnard, N., Kennedy, R. & Bloom, H. (2002) Brand advertising as creative publicity. Journal of Advertising Research, 42(4), pp. 7–18. Henthorne, T., LaTour, M. & Loraas, T. (1998) Publication productivity in the three leading US advertising journals: 1989 through 1996. Journal of Advertising, 27(2) pp. 53–63. Hyman, M., Tansey, R. & Clark, J. (1994) Research on advertising ethics: past, Present, and Future. Journal of Advertising, 23(3), pp. 5–15. Johnson, G., Bruner, G. & Kumar, A. (2006) Interactivity and its facets revisited. Journal of Advertising, 35(4), pp. 101–113. Jones, J. & Blair, M. (1996) Examining “conventional wisdoms” about advertising effects with evidence from independent sources. Journal of Advertising Research, 36(6), pp. 37–54. Krugman, H. (2000) Memory without recall, exposure without perception. Journal of Advertising Research, 40(6), pp. 49–55. Kuhn, T. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

565


MacInnis, D. (2003) Responsibilities of a good reviewer: lessons learnt from kindergarten. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 31(30), pp. 344–345. MacInnis, D. (2005) Them versus us: woes on the bifurcation of the academic marketing discipline. Journal of Marketing, 69(4), pp. 14–16. Malthouse, E., Calder, B. & Tamhane, A. (2007) The effects of media context experiences on advertising effectiveness. Journal of Advertising, 36(3), pp. 7–19. Morrison, M. & Haley, E. (2003) Account planners’ views on how their work is and should be evaluated. Journal of Advertising, 32(2), pp. 7–17. Muncy, J. (1991) The Journal of Advertising: a twenty year appraisal. Journal of Advertising, 20(4), pp. 1–11. Nowak, G. & Phelps, J. (1994) Conceptualizing the integrated marketing communications’ phenomenon: an examination of its impact on advertising practices and its implications for advertising research. Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, 16(1), pp. 49–66. OMD (2008) ONMedia newsletter, February. Available online at: www.omd.com.au/ newsrooms/onmedia-2008feb.html. Accessed on March 5, 2008. Pasadeos, Y. (1985) A bibliometric study of advertising citations. Journal of Advertising, 14(4), pp. 52–59. Pasadeos, Y., Phelps, J. & Kim, B. (1998) Disciplinary impact of advertising scholars: temporal comparisons of influential authors, works and research networks. Journal of Advertising, 27(4), pp. 53–66. Pitt, L., Berthon, P., Caruana, A. & Berthon, J. (2005) The state of theory in the three premier advertising journals: a research note. International Journal of Advertising, 24(2), pp. 241–249. Popper, K. (1972) Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. London: Oxford University Press. Richards, J. & Curran, C. (2002) Oracles on advertising: searching for a definition. Journal of Advertising, 31(2), pp. 63–77. Russell, T. & Martin, C. (1976) Sources of scholarly publications in marketing, Advertising and Public Relations. Journal of Advertising, 5(Summer), pp. 29–34. Rust, R. & Oliver, R. (1994) Notes and comments: death of advertising. Journal of Advertising, 23(4), pp.71–78. Schultz, D. & Kerr, G. (2008) Filling in the gaps or plugging the holes: why the academic advertising research model needs maintenance. Conference Proceedings Icoria 2008, Antwerp. Schultz, D. (2008) Marcom challenges in a push-pull marketplace. Presentation at Queensland University of Technology, March. Schultz, D. & Pilotta, J. (2004) Developing the foundation for a new approach to understanding how media advertising works. Presentation at ESOMAR/ Advertising Research Foundation, Geneva. Schultz, D. & Schultz, H. (2004) IMC: The Next Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill. Schultz, D., Pilotta, J. & Block, M. (2005) Implementing a media consumption model. Presentation at ESOMAR/ARF Conference, Montreal. Schumann, D., Hathcote, J. & West, S. (1991) Corporate advertising in America: a review of published studies on use, measurement, and effectiveness. Journal of Advertising, 20(3), pp. 35–56.

566


Shapiro, S. & Krishnan, S. (2001) Memory-based measures for assessing advertising effects: a comparison of explicit and implicit memory effects. Journal of Advertising, 30(3), pp. 1–13. Sin, L., Ho, S. & So, S. (2000) An assessment of theoretical and methodological development in advertising research on mainland China: a twenty-year review, Journal of Advertising, 22(2), pp. 53–69. Soley, L. & Reid, L. (1983) Advertising article productivity of the U.S. academic community, Journalism Quarterly, 60(Autumn), pp. 464–469. Soley, L. & Reid, L. (1988) Advertising article productivity updated, Journalism Quarterly, 65(Spring), pp. 157–164. Stafford, M. (2005) International Services Advertising (ISA): defining the domain and reviewing the literature. Journal of Advertising, 34(1), pp. 65–86. Stammerjohan, C., Wood, C., Chang, Y. & Thorson, E. (2005) An empirical investigation of the interaction between publicity, advertising, and previous brand attitudes and knowledge. Journal of Advertising, 34(4), pp. 55–68. Stewart, D. (1992) Speculations on the future of advertising research. Journal of Advertising, 21(3), pp. 1–18. Stewart, D. (1986) The moderating role of recall, comprehension, and brand differentiation on the persuasiveness of television advertising. Journal of Advertising Research, 26(2), pp. 43–48. Stewart, D. & Furse, D. (2000) Analysis of the impact of executional factors on advertising performance. Journal of Advertising Research, 40(6), pp. 85–89. Svensson, G. (2006) The paradoxnoia of top journals in marketing. European Journal of Marketing, 40(11/12), pp. 1153–1168. Tadajewski, M. (2008) Incommensurable paradigms, cognitive bias and the politics of marketing theory. Marketing Theory, 8(3), pp. 273–297. Taylor, C. (2005) Moving international advertising research forward: a new research agenda. Journal of Advertising, 34(1), pp. 7–16. Tsui, A. (2007) From homogenization to pluralism: international management research in the academy and beyond. Academy of Management Journal, 50(6), pp. 1353–1364. Vakratsas, D. & Ambler, T. (1999) How advertising works: what do we really know? Journal of Marketing, 63(1), pp. 26–44. West, D. (2007) Directions in marketing communications research: an analysis of the International Journal of Advertising. International Journal of Advertising, 26(4), pp. 543–554. Wimmer, R. & Dominick, J. (2000) Mass Media Research: An Introduction. California: Wadsworth. Yale, L. & Gilly, M. (1988) Trends in advertising research: a look at the content of marketing-oriented journals from 1976 to 1985. Journal of Advertising, 17(1), pp. 12–22. ZenithOptimedia (2008) Global Facts and Forecasts. Available online at: www.zenithoptimedia.com/gff. Accessed on March 5, 2008. Zinkhan, G. (1994) Advertising ethics: emerging methods and trends. Journal of Advertising, 23(3), pp. 1–4.

567


Zinkhan, G. & Watson, R. (1996) Advertising trends: innovation and the process of creative destruction. Journal of Business Research, 37(February), pp. 163–171. Zou, S. (2005) Contributions to international advertising research: an assessment of the literature between 1990 and 2002. Journal of Advertising, 34(1), pp. 99–111.

About the authors Gayle Kerr was awarded her PhD from the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. She is an Associate Professor in Advertising and Integrated Marketing Communication in the School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations at QUT. Her main areas of research are in advertising self regulation, advertising management, IMC and advertising and IMC education. Gayle is founding President of the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Advertising. Don E. Schultz is professor (emeritus-in-service) of integrated marketing communications at The Medill School, Northwestern University, USA. He is also president of the consulting firm, Agora, Inc. He holds appointments as a visiting professor, Cranfield School of Management, Bedfordshire, UK, adjunct professor, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, and visiting professor, and School of Business, Hull University, UK. He has been a visiting professor at Tsinghua University and Peking University, Beijing, China, and Hanken, the Swedish School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland. Address correspondence to: Gayle Kerr, Queensland University of Technology, Level 10, Z Block QUT, 2 George Street, Brisbane, Qld 4000, Australia Email: [email protected]

568