Message framing : keeping practitioners in the picture

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how message framing is commonly used by magazine advertisers.

Design/methodology/approach – Following the classification suggested by Levin et al., the frequency and nature of message framing in magazine advertising is explored using a content analysis of 2,864 advertisements in a sample of popular US magazines.

Findings – Results suggest a lack of consistency between marketing practice and academic findings. Contrary to academic recommendations, advertisers used positive framing in almost all advertising messages. Further, the use of attribute framing and combined attribute and goal framing was more popular than pure goal framing

Research limitations/implications – Although the findings are limited by a judgement sample of US magazines, they do suggest the need for academics to conduct more research on the effectiveness of combined attribute and goal framing techniques.

Practical implications – Of equal importance is the need for practitioners to explore the potentiality of negative framing in their advertising content.

Originality/value – Adopting the Levin et al.'s typology, this paper highlights the need for advertising researchers to engage with practitioners to try to understand current industry practice with regard to message framing. The inconsistencies revealed in this paper point to either an insufficient understanding of message framing by one or both parties or the need for better communication between the two.

Can creativity be managed? An advertising agency case study

Despite the large amount of creativity research which exists the nature of the phenomenon and how it comes about remains contested. Mainstream research assumes creativity is the result of a creative individual's efforts and is an inherent feature of an artefact. An alternate view postulates that creativity is contextual, occurs due to social processes, is subjective and contingent. Lack of agreement has ramifications for practitioners who are faced with a dilemma as to how to approach creativity within organisations. This research looks at creativity within an advertising agency through an alternative lens to see if this is useful and to assess whether it is able to contribute to the debate by providing new insight into the phenomenon. Findings show a number of social processes involved in the construction of creativity in this environment. This paper concludes by arguing that having an in-depth understanding of how creativity happens can provide practitioners with a basis for reflection and the foundation for development of an action plan around the management of creativity.

Determinants of Advertising Effectiveness: The Development of an International Advertising Elasticity Database and a Meta-Analysis

Increasing demand for marketing accountability requires an efficient allocation of marketing expenditures. Managers who know the elasticity of their marketing instruments can allocate their budgets optimally. Meta-analyses offer a basis for deriving benchmark elasticities for advertising. Although they provide a variety of valuable insights, a major shortcoming of prior meta-analyses is that they report only generalized results as the disaggregated raw data are not made available. This problem is highly relevant because coding of empirical studies, at least to a certain extent, involves subjective judgment. For this reason, meta-studies would be more valuable if researchers and practitioners had access to disaggregated data allowing them to conduct further analyses of individual, e.g., product-level-specific, interests. We are the first to address this gap by providing (1) an advertising elasticity database (AED) and (2) empirical generalizations about advertising elasticities and their determinants. Our findings indicate that the average current-period advertising elasticity is 0.09, which is substantially smaller than the value 0f 0.12 that was recently reported by Sethuraman, Tellis, and Briesch (2011). Furthermore, our meta-analysis reveals a wide range of significant determinants of advertising elasticity. For example, we find that advertising elasticities are higher (i) for hedonic and experience goods than for other goods; (ii) for new than for established goods; (iii) when advertising is measured in gross rating points (GRP) instead of absolute terms; and (iv) when the lagged dependent or lagged advertising variable is omitted.

"You can trust me": An examination of trust -in -the -brand advertising appeals

Using trust-in-the-brand appeals in advertising has been a very common practice However, research has yet to examine the effectiveness of such appeals. Can the use of trust appeals in advertising enhance a product's trustworthiness and help the advertiser gain consumers' trust? Might such appeals lead to more favorable attitudes toward the advertised brand? Given the absence of research that speaks to these questions, this dissertation attempts to fill this void by exploring persuasion outcomes of using trust appeals. Specifically, this research aims to assess whether the use of trust appeals affects persuasion; explicate how such appeals may work; anticipate when an ad containing trust appeals may be more or less effective; and finally conduct and report the results of preliminary empirical tests. ^ A conceptual model is offered in the dissertation describing how trust appeals may affect persuasion outcomes. It is proposed that using trust advertising appeals will result in more trust-related thinking, enhance the perceived trustworthiness of the advertised brand, and finally lead to more favorable brand attitudes and trial intentions. This dissertation also examines the differential effectiveness of alternative trust appeals. Elaborate trust appeals that provide substantiation for trust are expected to perform better than simple trust appeals. An implicit elaborate trust appeal is anticipated to outperform an explicit elaborate appeal. ^ Two experiments were conducted. Including a trust appeal in an ad enhanced the perceived trustworthiness of the advertised brand which, in turn, led to more favorable brand attitudes and greater trial intentions compared to a similar ad without the trust appeal. The results also support the proposed mediating role of perceived trust. The empirical test speaking to the hypothesized differential effect of alternative trust appeals provides support for marketing practitioners' efforts in seeking the most effective use of such appeals. Evidence was obtained in the second study demonstrating that an elaborate trust appeal worked more effectively than a simple trust appeal. Contrary to the expectation, this persuasion advantage held regardless of whether the elaborate appeal was in an explicit form or an implicit form. ^

Selecting an IMC Career: Influences, Choices and Destinations

Integrated marketing communication incorporates both customer and non-customer stakeholder groups. While the literature commonly refers to this distinction as marketing communication and corporate communication, respectively, and practitioners accept the need for these roles, this study aims to explore the student perspective. US-based research suggests that students are more interested in marketing communication activities such as promotion that target customer stakeholders, and less interested in corporate communication activities that target non-customer stakeholders including employees, investors, and government (Bowen, 2003). The findings of this study match its US counterpart, and present implications for both the education and practice of marketing communication

The Impact of Internal Market Orientation on Staff Service Behaviours

The impact of service direction, service training and staff behaviours on perceptions of service delivery are examined. The impact of managerial behaviour in the form of internal market orientation (IMO) on the attitudes of frontline staff towards the firm and its consequent influence on their customer oriented behaviours is also examined. Frontline service staff working in the consumer transport industry were surveyed to provide subjective data about the constructs of interest in this study, and the data were analysed using structural equations modelling employing partial least squares estimation. The data indicate significant relationships between internal market orientation (IMO), the attitudes of the employees to the firm and their consequent behaviour towards customers. Customer orientation, service direction and service training are all identified as antecedents to high levels of service delivery. The study contributes to marketing theory by providing quantitative evidence to support assumptions that internal marketing has an impact on services success. For marketing practitioners, the research findings offer additional information about the management, training and motivation of service staff towards service excellence.

The ZMET Technique: A New Paradigm for Improving Marketing and Marketing Research

For decades, marketing and marketing research have been based on a concept of consumer behaviour that is deeply embedded in a linear notion of marketing activities. With increasing regularity, key organising frameworks for marketing and marketing activities are being challenged by academics and practitioners alike. In turn, this has led to the search for new approaches and tools that will help marketers understand the interaction among attitudes, emotions and product/brand choice. More recently, the approach developed by Harvard Professor, Gerald Zaltman, referred to as the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) has gained considerable interest. This paper seeks to demonstrate the effectiveness of this alternative qualitative method, using a non-conventional approach, thus providing a useful contribution to the qualitative research area.

Measuring Consumer Loyalty : the loyalty orientation scale

Reflecting its importance to thc financial success of organisations, interest in consumer loyalty continues unabated. However, there are still many unanswered questions about its conceptualisation and measurement.These questions must he resolved before academics and practitioners can usefully apply the concept. We argue that consumer loyalty is best conceptualised as a multi-dimensional phenomenon. Based on this multi-dimensional view, we develop and test a new measure of consumer loyalty. We hypothesise a threedimensional structure containing affective, temporal and instrumental dimensions, Results from a preliminary test are reported. The results indicate that the construct can be reprcxeuted with two dimensions: affective and temporal loyally. As an additional check on the reliability of our results, we find significant correlations between these two dimensions and a measure of behavioural loyalty.

Emerging strategies for sponsorship on the Internet

Internet sponsorship is a rapidly evolving communications platform at a fledgling stage for sponsorship-linked marketing. The complex and involving nature of the phenomena offers new research opportunities and the potential for innovative marketing strategies. The Internet presents the opportunity to combine aspects of traditional event/activity sponsorship and media sponsorship innovatively and to extend marketing strategy in new directions. This paper presents an overview of emerging Internet sponsorships strategies, identifies virtual and reality sponsorship opportunities, and explores emerging sponsorship extension strategies that relate to media, brand, channel development, consumer experience, and networking. Finally, future directions for researchers and practitioners are suggested.

Working at the interface : the descriptive relevance of Grunig and Hunt’s theories to public relations practices in south east Queensland schools

This article examines the relevance of James Grunig and Todd Hunt’s (1984) theories to public relations practitioners’ roles in south east Queensland schools. It focuses in particular on the two-way symmetric model in this context. The geographical boundaries of the research mean that this article is intended primarily as an exploratory, descriptive analysis of a specific area rather than an exhaustive treatise on the general topic of public relations in Australian schools. However, it is hoped that it will prove useful in identifying bases for further study and discussion.

Advertising education in Australia: Looking back to the future

In Australia, advertising is a $13 billion industry which needs a supply of suitably skilled employees. Over the years, advertising education has developed from vocational based courses to degree courses across the country. This paper uses diffusion theory and various secondary sources and interviews to observe the development of advertising education in Australia from its early past, to its current day tertiary offerings, to discussing the issues that are arising in the near future. Six critical issues are identified, along with observations about the challenges and opportunities within Australia advertising education. By looking back to the future, it is hoped that this historical review provides lessons for other countries of similar educational structure or background, or even other marketing communication disciplines on a similar evolutionary path.