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This study aims to investigate whether digital advertising can be effective despite consumer inattention and how certain common combinations of ad characteristics increase or decrease ad effectiveness under conditions of low attention.

Using two online experiments in naturalistic environment, the authors compare ad effects under focussed, divided and incidental attention, for certain ad characteristics, namely, appeal type and (mis)matching between appeal and brand type. The results are analysed using logistic regression.

Ad exposure under low attention does increase brand consideration and choice. The greatest uplift in impact occurs when moving from non-exposure to incidental attention. Under incidental attention, emotive advertising was more effective than rational advertising, as was matching rather than mismatching an emotional appeal to a hedonic brand. Conversely, under divided attention, rational advertising and mismatching a rational appeal to a hedonic brand were more effective.

This research explores the effectiveness of Twitter ads with an emotional or a rational appeal and the (mis)matching between appeal and utilitarian or hedonic brand type. Future research can examine other formats and creative elements of digital advertising that can affect the low-attention processing and the effects that occur.

Intrusive, attention-getting advertising strategies may not be necessary. Certain common creative devices can increase advertising effectiveness despite low attention, so marketers can ensure consumer-centric marketing communication.

There has previously been limited understanding of low-attention mechanisms in advertising and little evidence of ad effectiveness under conditions of low attention. The research also demonstrates that certain ad characteristics, linked to common creative devices, enhance the impact of advertising despite low attention.

There are substantive disagreements about whether encouraging deliberative thinking increases consumer preference in low-involvement product categories. The authors draw on dual-process theory to add rare experimental evidence to this debate. They also investigate whether the effect of deliberative thinking increases with familiarity of the stimuli, as different theories of memory yield different predictions on this point. Finally, they provide evidence on whether the effectiveness of the Fairtrade logo arises more from mere exposure or attention to the ethical claim.

The context for the research is the use of ethical logos in packaged coffee, as this provides a realistic setting for the desired experimental manipulations. The fieldwork consists of two sets of trade-off experiments – rankings based conjoint analysis (n = 360) and best-worst scaling with a balanced incomplete block design (n = 1,628). Deliberative thinking is manipulated in three ways: by varying logos between visual (Type 1 processing) and lexical (Type 2 processing) treatments, by post hoc classification of time taken, and by imposing either time constraints (Type 1) or cognitive load (Type 2) on the completion of the task. Familiarity is manipulated by varying logos between the Fairtrade and a fictional Exchange Ethics logo.

Consumers do have higher preferences in the deliberative treatment conditions; thinking more results in an 18 per cent increase (Cohen’s d = 0.25) in the preference for choices that display an ethical cobranded logo. Surprisingly, the impact of deliberation is not greater for the more familiar Fairtrade logo than the fictional Exchange Ethics logo. This result is inconsistent with strength-based theories of memory, as these predict that deliberation will have a greater effect for more familiar stimuli. However, it is consistent with newer theories of memory that acknowledge familiarity can lead to activation confusion, reducing retrieval of pre-existing knowledge into working memory. The research also shows that the Fairtrade logo has substantial utility to consumers, and that this is approximately 59 per cent due to the ethical claim and 41 per cent due to the familiarity of the logo.

In field conditions, attempts to manipulate deliberation may not be effective or may simply result in reduced attention. Also, the costs of increasing deliberation may outweigh the benefits obtained.

The research confirms the heuristic value of the Fairtrade logo and shows that the effectiveness of ethical logos may increase with additional deliberation by shoppers.

There is relatively little work in marketing that applies dual-process theories to investigate consumer behaviour. The present study extends the use of dual-process theories in marketing, demonstrates a new method to investigate the effect of deliberation on brand choice and shows how deliberation magnifies the effect of endorsing logos, including unfamiliar logos.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to explore how working remotely might impact the superior–subordinate relationship. Specifically, this study examines how immediacy explains articulated dissent, considers how an individual’s attitudes toward online communication predicts immediacy and articulated dissent and compares these relationships in England, Australia and the USA.

Three nations were examined: Australia, England and the USA (n = 1,776). Surveys included demographic questions and the following measures: organizational dissent scale, perceived immediacy measure, computer-mediated immediate behaviors measure and measure of online communication attitude.

The results reveal supervisors’ computer-mediated immediate behaviors and perceived immediacy both positively predict dissent. Some aspects of online communication attitudes positively predict computer-mediated immediate behaviors and perceived immediacy. In addition, attitudes toward online communication positively predict dissent. National culture influences some of these relationships; in each case the effects were substantively larger for the USA when compared to the other nations.

This study is the first to cross-culturally analyze dissent and immediacy. In addition, this study considers the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic influences the superior–subordinate relationship.

Previous research on age-related loyalty is sparse, contradictory and suffers from methodological limitations and criticisms. This study aims to apply two methodological advances to fresh purchasing data to give a much clearer picture of age-related differences in brand loyalty.

An online brand choice survey (n = 1,862) is used to examine age-related loyalty within three low-involvement categories in New Zealand. The polarisation index (φ) is adopted as the measure of loyalty to control for confounding influences present in prior research. Results for chronological age are validated through comparison with results for measures of cognitive, biological and sociological age, as well as household life cycle.

Contrary to prior research, age-related differences in loyalty are detected in two of the three low-involvement categories studied. The third category does not show detectable loyalty for any age group. Although differences in brand loyalty are broadly present across all age measures, no alternative measure outperforms chronological age in detecting variations in age-related loyalty.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first evidence that age-related brand loyalty is present in low-involvement categories. However, effects are small and easily obscured by confounding factors. More research is needed to determine how results vary by category.

Despite showing minor differences in loyalty, older consumers still purchase from a wide portfolio of brands and so should not be ignored by marketers. Future research can investigate loyalty for older consumers by adopting the method of analysing differences in polarisation (φ) for chronological age groups.

Previous contradictory findings and methodological concerns about measurement of age-related loyalty are resolved through use of the polarisation index (φ) as a measure of loyalty and by confirmation that chronological age performs as well as any other age measure.

This paper aims to show that strength-based theories of memory provide only a partial description of how consumers retrieve brands from memory. Dual-process theories of memory such as the Source of Activation Confusion (SAC) model provide a more robust explanation of brand retrieval by accounting for the separate effects of brand familiarity and category knowledge.

This paper examines brand image associations for 27 brands in three product categories using marketing field data. The authors apply a quasi-experimental approach to divide respondents into four groups based on their levels of brand familiarity and category knowledge. The authors compare brand retrieval for each group to test whether the SAC model, a dual-process theory of memory, or traditional strength-based theories of memory better explain brand retrieval.

Familiar brands are harder to remember when consumers know more about the product category. This effect cannot be explained by strength-based theories of memory, but it is a prediction of the SAC model. This outcome is a critical test that discriminates between competing theories of brand retrieval.

Researchers may draw on the SAC model to identify new ways of analysing brand image data to better understand how consumers retrieve brands from memory. This includes, above all, developing methods to separately measure the effects of brand familiarity and category knowledge.

To maximise the chance that consumers will remember brands, managers of highly familiar brands should avoid promoting category knowledge through their branding and communications strategies. By contrast, managers of less familiar brands should promote category knowledge by linking their brand to episodes of category consumption.

This work illustrates that a quasi-experimental approach can be used to extend quantitative psychological models from laboratory experiments to marketing field data. It also illustrates the use of a critical empirical test to discriminate between competing theories in marketing.

Industry-wide crises involving consumer products place consumers at risk. Consumers rely on institutions that constrain corporate practice and control product quality to reduce risk. As institutions vary by country, country-of-origin (COO) acts as a salient cue for consumers to identify institutional quality and thus evaluate risk when making purchase decisions. However, in the era of globalisation, identification of institutional quality becomes complex as global value chains involve different countries such as brand origin (BO) and country-of-manufacture (COM). Therefore, this research investigates how BO and COM individually and jointly affect consumers' institutional perceptions and subsequent purchase decision-making in the presence of systemic risk.

This research includes three studies (n = 764) employing surveys and choice modelling experiments with samples from China and the USA.

The results show that BO and COM relate to different institutional perceptions. BO evokes perceptions of legitimacy and the regulatory environment, while COM evokes perceptions of the normative and the regulatory environment. The combination of BO and COM determines how institutional quality is communicated and further affects consumers' legitimacy perceptions, preferences and willingness to pay a price premium.

This research contributes to understanding the effect of BO and COM in the context of complex value chains from an institutional perspective. It also provides implications for leveraging complex COO cues with BO and COM information to improve consumers' institutional perceptions.

Discusses Mitchell’s recent proposal for astrological segmentation which demonstrates the extremes to which segmentation and targeting can be taken if we uncritically accept their core assumptions. Proposes that although Mitchell’s proposal can be subjected to a number of minor criticisms, it can only be finally disposed of by critically examining whether astrological segments really are associated with a stable set of preferences, and whether targeting these segments actually gives a higher return than other approaches. Once the stability of segments, the logic of targeting, and the empirical evidence are examined, it turns out that not only is Mitchell’s approach unsupported, but so are most other segmentation and targeting efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss Armstrong et al.’s (2016) finding that ads that more closely follow evidence-based persuasion principles also achieve higher day-after-recall.

The author evaluates the importance of Armstrong et al.’s result and considers the criticisms that their work only examines some aspects of persuasion and that their dependent variable is known to have a low correlation with sales.

Armstrong et al.’s result provides a major advance in the knowledge of persuasive advertising. While they do not examine all aspects of persuasion, the scope of their tests is still very extensive. Day-after-recall is also arguably a better measure of advertising effectiveness than sales impact, due to the difficulty of identifying small sales changes among the random fluctuations that constantly occur in most markets and given the known processes by which consumer memory operates.

By synthesising prior work on advertising and consumer memory, the author provides a simple model of how advertising interacts with memory. This model explains why ad recall ought to be poorly correlated with sales, and highlights the need for Armstrong et al.’s result to be followed by further research into how contextual cues at the point of purchase affect memory retrieval and brand choice.

There has been long‐standing interest in the duplication of audience between media vehicles, starting with work by Agostini and later developed by Goodhardt, Ehrenberg and Collins into the “duplication of viewing law”. The aim of this paper is to further extend duplication analysis to radio listening. As radio markets are believed to have many partitions, the paper considers whether an un‐partitioned duplication analysis provides an adequate description of market structure.

The paper reports the results of a weekly radio diary with 1,129 responses in a regional New Zealand radio market. This data has special characteristics suitable for this research: the market has experienced rapid expansion in station numbers with substantial attempts at format segmentation, providing a strong test of the un‐partitioned nature of the duplication analysis; use of a single regional market avoids the aggregation bias inherent in national data; use of primary research allows the inclusion of non‐commercial stations, which are not included in syndicated radio research in this market.

Duplication of listening does broadly follow the duplication of viewing law. Contrary to industry belief, most of the deviations from a mass market are not due to micro‐formats (e.g. classic rock) but rather are explained by a broad partitioning of the market between “talk” and “music” segments, although the paper also identifies a unique station that still deviates from its parent partition.

The duplication of listening law does hold for this market, showing that radio stations compete largely on the basis of cumulative audience. However, it also provides a tool for identifying partitions and benchmarking station performance within this broad market structure. Future research could consider demographic or psychographic correlates of market partitions, alternative methods of purchase‐based segmentation such as nested logit, latent segmentation and Hendry analysis, and breaking duplication analysis down from weekly level to dayparts.

Station and network managers can apply this methodology to identify partitions and benchmark brand performance in their own markets. They should expect to usually compete on the basis of cumulative audience rather than station loyalty, as customer loyalty tends to be a feature of the partition rather than the station. Media planners should also be aware of the duplication of listening law when designing media schedules: greater frequency can be achieved by choosing a set of stations with high duplications (generally higher share stations); greater reach can be achieved by including some smaller stations with low duplications.

This is the first application of duplication analysis to radio audiences, and the confirmation of the law goes against practitioner expectations. It is also a rare example of how duplication analysis can be used to identify not just segments, but also individually unique stations. Therefore, while this research disconfirms prior expectations it also provides a new tool for practical segmentation of radio markets.

The purchase distribution of consumer packaged goods has been extensively modelled by the negative binomial distribution (NBD). As the characteristics of packaged goods differ from those of subscription services, the latter may be a boundary condition for NBD. In this study, the authors aim to test whether NBD extends to a subscription service. Also, NBD assumes non‐heterogeneous purchase behaviour. The authors determine whether augmenting the model with a covariate (customer tenure) to account for consumer heterogeneity will produce a better fitting model.

Phase 1 fitted a base NBD model using a random set (n=1,546) of mobile‐telecommunication consumption (monthly billed amount). Phase 2 extended the base model by incorporating customer tenure as a covariate, and re‐fitting the model.

NBD does apply to subscription markets. Also, accounting for heterogeneity in customer tenure produces a better model fit, and shows that with increasing tenure individual consumption declines but total consumption increases due to fewer light buyers.

The NBD fit suggests that mobile‐telecommunication consumption is habitual, and casts doubt on the effectiveness of marketing programs such as loyalty programs to spur the consumption. The fit also establishes that NBD can serve as a benchmark against which the effects of marketing actions can be evaluated. A potential limitation is the continuous, rather than discrete, nature of the service consumption data.

By extending NBD's boundary condition, this study further attests to the model's robustness in modelling purchase behaviour. It illustrates the technique of augmenting the model with marketing covariates to improve model fits.