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Advertisements often use fear appeals to encourage prevention focused behaviors. This approach has been somewhat successful in changing attitudes and behaviors, often encouraging consumers to secede from behaviors such as smoking or to adopt preventative behaviors such as engaging in health screenings. However, health-care marketers have been less successful in efforts to reduce obesity. The obesity crisis has led to an abundance of marketing communications designed to influence weight loss. Many of these focus on fear of physical health risks associated with being overweight which have a certain degree of uncertainty surrounding them. This study aims to examine financial threats that have lower perceptions of uncertainty, and the differential impact this type of threat has on elements of the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM).

A 2 × 2 experimental design is used to examine the differential impact of messages communicating threat of financial and physical risk on evoked fear, perceived uncertainty, perceived susceptibility, efficacy and intention to lose weight.

Overall results indicate that response to weight loss advertising varies given the type of threat presented. Results indicate that there is a greater level of uncertainty associated with physical health threats than that with financial threats. Moreover, even though individuals were more fearful of and felt more susceptible to physical threats, when they believed that the recommended behavior was feasible, financial threat was more influential.

To encourage weight loss and intentions to lose weight advertising in practice and advertising research primarily focus on the physical health risks associated with being overweight as a motivating factor. Current research explores the impact of financial threats on attitudes and behavioral intention and finds that financial threats are perceived as more certain than physical threats, and the communication of financial threats is more salient in its effect on weight loss intentions. An opportunity for future research is to further explore the impact of uncertainty in relation to components of EPPM and how threats varying in degrees of uncertainty may impact weight loss intentions.

Secret consumption refers to consumption of a product in a private situation, with the intent or behavior of hiding the consumption from others. This study contributes to the secret consumption literature by identifying the antecedents of secret consumption along with the explaining mechanism and boundary condition.

An online study with experiment design was conducted to examine the impact of extroversion/introversion, self-presentation and product scarcity on secrete consumption.

The results show that consumer extraverted disposition and the self-presentation motive negatively influence secret consumption intention and suggest this relationship is explained by the self-presentation need. The findings also revealed that perceived product scarcity attenuated the negative impact of extraversion and self-presentation on secret consumption intention.

The findings provide interesting insights into advertising and retailing. In recognizing that secret consumption is a prevalent phenomenon in consumer behavior that may improve actual consumer product evaluation and preference, retailers or brand managers may encourage consumers to consume secretly.

This empirical study is a first attempt to explore the antecedents, mediating mechanism and boundary condition of consumer intention to engage in secrete consumption. The findings of the study provide important implication to theoretical development and managerial applications in advertising and retailing.

This paper aims to explore the consumer insights and ethical concerns surrounding the online payday loan services available in the Google Play Store. This research was conducted to compare whether the presence or absence of debt collection protection acts in a country creates differences in consumer experiences regarding the ethics of payday loan collection. Specifically, the study compares customers’ experiences in both the Indonesian and US markets.

Indonesia and the USA were chosen because they have very different regulatory structures for the payday loan industry. The data was scraped using Python from 27 payday loan apps on the Indonesian Play Store, resulting in a total of 244,697 reviews extracted from the Indonesian market. For the US market, 446,010 reviews were extracted from 14 payday loan apps. The data was further analyzed using NVIVO.

The results suggest that consumers of payday loans in Indonesia and the USA hold positive views about the benefits of payday loan apps, as revealed by the word frequency and word cloud analysis. Notably, customers in both countries did not express any negative sentiments regarding the unethical interest rate charged by the payday loan, contradicting what is commonly reported in academic literature. However, a distinct pattern of unethical conduct was observed in both countries concerning marketing communication and debt collection practices. In the Indonesian market, payday loan companies were found to engage in unethical debt collection activities. In the US market, payday lenders exhibited unethical behavior in their marketing communication, particularly through deceptive advertising that makes promises to consumers that are not delivered.

The study aims to provide evidence on the various experiences of customers in the presence and absence of debt collection regulations using a novel methodology and a large sample, which strengthens the results and conclusions of the study. The study also intends to inform policymakers, particularly the Indonesian government, about the need for specific laws to regulate the debt collection process and prevent unethical practices. Ultimately, the study is expected to protect the rights of consumers from a deceptive marketing communication or unethical debt collection practices in both the Indonesian and US markets.

The purpose of this study is to assess the presence of deceptive advertising practices in wine retailers’ e-mails and, if identified, to analyze the extent and content of these deceptive advertisements.

The study follows an observational research design to examine the accuracy of two claims that were made in 258 marketing e-mails from two major wine retailers in New Jersey, USA: (1) that all wines have 90+ scores; and (2) that these wines are offered at a deeply discounted price.

The study found that only 3.9% of cases accurately supported both major claims made: the wines having 90+ scores and being offered at a discounted price. Both claims were inaccurate in 64.7% of cases. Nearly half (49.3%) of the advertised wines had concealed critic’s scores below 90 points. Recipients were told they could save 37.2% by purchasing from the advertising retailer, but they could have actually saved 12.7% more by buying the wines elsewhere.

The study’s limitations include the small sample size. Variations between different wine retailers and their advertising practices require further investigation.

Advertised discounts and scores may be inaccurate or incomplete, causing consumer confusion and disappointment, erosion of wine advertisements’ as well as wine retailers’ and wine experts’ credibility.

Deceptive advertising can erode consumer trust and lead to unfair practices. Consumers may make purchasing decisions based on misleading information. Deceptive practices create an uneven playing field, giving businesses that engage in them an unfair advantage, hindering market transparency and ethical businesses. Policymakers should develop regulations to protect consumers and ensure fair competition.

An investigation of deceptive advertising practices in the wine industry has not been done before. This exploratory study contributes to consumer awareness and highlights the importance of truthful and transparent marketing practices.

The purpose of this study is to conceptually integrate business to consumer (B2C) into business to business (B2B), with a holistic consumer-centric, technology-reinforced, long-term vision for tourism industries and companies to survive and succeed in the era of new technologies 4.0. The research suggests that the tourism-marketing-new technologies decision-making involves customers as the center of the design and decision process.

The research design includes a qualitative study with 94 in-depth interviews, a literature analysis and a conceptual proposition. The qualitative study follows the tourism consumer desire data analysis, from categorization to integration. The literature analysis applies a systematic literature review approach based on the 29 most up-to-date new-tech papers from peer-reviewed journals. The analysis compares qualitative research findings and literature analysis results and matches the new technology applications with consumer desire understanding. The conceptual framework of tourism marketing/advertising is proposed based on qualitative research and literature analysis.

The qualitative research deciphers that consumers, based on their imagination and memorization, desire therapy and sceneries and connect such desires to the empathetic and resonating advertising messages. The literature analysis synthesizes the new tech applications in tourism and matches the qualitative research findings with the deciphered desires in tourism. The conceptual model proposes that B2C should be integrated into B2B to provide value for both consumers and businesses and opens avenues of research on this topic.

This research has made the following theoretical contributions: it offers an in-depth understanding of consumer desire, often hidden or subconscious, in the field of tourism. Consumer desires regarding tourism are mostly subconscious and exist long before consumers are exposed to advertising messages. These desires reflect the search for therapy and sceneries and become “embodied” – they exist on multisensorial levels and become part of the body and life and will lead consumers into positive perceptions when marketing communications/advertisements resonate with them. In the latter case, they will subjectively judge advertising as “good,” regardless of the advertising design quality. The research also connects consumer research with a new technologies research review and proposes a conceptual framework to integrate business to consumer (B2C) with business to business (B2B). As such, the research makes theoretical contributions to the integration or the “boundary blurring” between B2C and B2B research and practical suggestions that involved industries and consumers may all benefit from such integration. Conceptually, there is a lack of discussions of the pitfalls of new technologies, a dearth of empirical verification of the applications of new technologies in the proposed fields and a shortage of discussions about ethical issues. Qualitative methods, offering an efficient tool for understanding consumer desires in the tourism industry, have their own limits, as discussed in previous research. The sample is limited to the state of New York population and may be influenced by geographic, demographic and psychological characteristics related to the region.

This research provides advertising practitioners, new technology innovators and tourism industries with a framework to face the combined challenges of understanding hidden consumer desires and applying adequate technologies that resonate with consumer desires to tackle relevant issues. The conceptual proposition of this research fills the gap between qualitative consumer research without concrete practical resolution and new technologies applications without in-depth consumer understanding. Through the conceptual framework, the author provides insights into how industries may benefit from consumer understanding. The business relationships among the industries of marketing, tourism and new technologies should be centered around consumers. Thus, B2C and B2B should be naturally integrated into business practices.

Social implications of this research include three major points: first, the understanding of consumer desire for therapeutic power in tourism, which invites more attention to tourism as part of social well-being design instead of a purely for-profit business. Second, a profound comprehension of what consumers need and desire, without which the applications of new technologies may cause severe societal problems. Third, a way to tailor to consumers’ individuality and desires for advertising/marketing that may be considered abusive, stressful and socially destructive if applied in a nonpersonal manner.

Conceptually, this research adds consumer desire, an originally B2C concept, to the B2B context regarding the new technology applications in tourism marketing/advertising. It contributes to the B2B literature by proposing a strong consumer-centric approach, especially the consumer desire understanding, that is not yet investigated in the B2B literature; and a combination of empirical study and literature analysis and the matching of the two for better practice of advertising/marketing, tourism and new technologies applications.

As a result of increasingly pervasive public social media use over the past decade, brands and marketers have begun to use internet memes as digital advertising vehicles, with some using specialized professionals to create memetic ad content. Despite this, little scholarly research on the phenomenon has appeared. This study aims to provide exploratory evidence for how older members of Generation Z (Gen-Z), a digitally native cohort, perceive and regard brands’ use of internet memes as advertisements.

A series of six focus groups conducted with older Gen-Z undergraduates at a large Western US university yields consonant and dissonant beliefs and perspectives about this emergent and conceivably powerful advertising and marketing practice.

Participants express that memetic advertising has potential for nonserious, lighthearted brands with a consistent social media presence but less potential for serious brands or brands that try to appropriate meme culture for financial gain. The importance of humor, cultural narratives and social connections as they relate to internet meme culture is inherent in these discussions.

This study joins a small body of work examining the effectiveness, viability and limitations of memetic advertising as an online advertising venture. Implications and prescriptive advice are offered.

This study investigates two important research questions. First, does YouTube advertising create value for customers to activate their inspired-by state (motivation), or does customer engagement in advertised brands have a mediating role? Second, does the inspired-by state influence customers’ inspired-to state (action) to purchase the advertised brand?

This study employs Ducoffe’s advertising value model to investigate how customers’ engagement mediates perceived advertising value and their inspired-by state. The authors split customer inspiration into two primary states: inspired-by (i.e. the early interest in taking action) and inspired-to (i.e. the intention to act), demonstrating that the latter is positively influenced by the former. The study employs SmartPLS V3.2.9 to analyze survey data from 360 respondents in Pakistan – an emerging market.

This study found that informativeness, entertainment, creativity and incentives exerted a significant positive impact on perceived advertising value. The perceived advertising value of YouTube ads fails to influence customers’ inspired-by state directly; however, customer engagement positively mediates the relationship between the perceived advertising value of YouTube and customers’ inspired-by state. Finally, the customers’ inspired-by state is successfully converted into an inspired-to state.

This study has numerous practical implications for advertisers and marketers seeking to optimize social media advertising and marketing performance.

YouTube ads shape consumer behavior, empowering informed choices; authentic engagement transforms the advertising landscape.

This study is the first to examine the perceived advertising value of YouTube ads for eliciting customers’ inspired-by state, assessing the mediating role of customer engagement as a mechanism. Moreover, the authors examine the role of customers’ inspired-by state as a predictor of the inspired-to state.

Skippable video advertising offers users the option to skip directly to their desired video content after viewing a limited amount of advertising and is becoming a format increasingly preferred by advertisers. This study constructed a mediator model based on advertising attitude to examine the influence of users' perceived control and perceived intrusiveness on brand attitude and advertising avoidance intention in skippable video ads.

The study considered the structural equation model using a self-reporting measure method. The research model was tested using a sample of 302 respondents.

The results showed that perceived control positively affected ad and brand attitude and negatively affected advertising avoidance intention. Perceived intrusiveness negatively affected attitudes toward the advertising and the brand but positively affected advertising avoidance intention. Ad attitude and brand attitude had no significant influence on advertising avoidance intention. The results also confirmed that ad attitude mediates the path from perceived control and intrusiveness to brand attitude.

This study further enriches the theoretical development of skippable video ads and expands the perspective and scope of interactive advertising research.

Online advertising becomes an essential tool to reach the target audience. One of the most widely used strategies is re-targeting. Firstly, this study explores the impact of ethics, privacy and ads' perceived benefits (ad effectiveness and ad relevance) on consumers' attitudes toward online advertising. Secondly, the study investigates the mediating effect of attitudes toward re-targeting online advertising on consumers' purchase intentions. Finally, the study investigates the moderating effect of the perceived ethicality of re-targeting online advertising on consumers' purchase intentions.

Participants (n = 307) were recruited through an online survey platform (MTurk) in the USA. The sample consisted of 65% male and 35% female respondents. The majority are aged 25–34 years, followed by 35–44 years (20%), 45–54 years (14%), 18–24 years (8%) and 55 years and older (6%).

The results show that ad effectiveness and ad relevance influenced consumers' attitudes toward re-targeting. This study shows that consumers are willing to trade their privacy for better search quality. Moreover, perceptions toward the ethicality of re-targeting ads moderated the relationship between consumers' attitudes and purchase intentions.

This study will make several contributions. First, the study will extend the consequential theory in the context of online advertising. Second, the study will assist companies in using re-targeting strategies. The results will reveal which factor is the most important factor impacting consumers' attitudes toward re-targeting strategies.

This is one of the first few papers investigating consumers' perceptions of the ethicality of re-targeting online advertising.

The purpose of this study is to review and synthesize the literature on in-app advertising, identify gaps and propose future research directions.

The authors use a systematic literature review (SLR) approach, following the PRISMA guidelines, to investigate the current state of research in in-app advertising. The study uses 44 shortlisted articles from the Scopus and Web of Science databases. Using the Theory-Context-Characteristics-Methodology (TCCM) framework, the authors analyze the gaps in theory, context, characteristics and methods.

Using thematic analysis, the authors identify five main themes in the in-app advertising literature, namely, ad platform optimization; mobile app user psychology and behavior; ad effectiveness; ad fraud; and security, privacy and other user concerns. The findings show the need for empirical research, with a strong theoretical foundation in emerging ad formats of in-app advertising, user behavior and buy-side of in-app advertising.

This is a maiden study to conduct a domain-based SLR in the emerging field of in-app advertising using the TCCM framework. The authors highlight the key differences between in-app advertising and mobile web advertising. The authors propose theories in the advertising field that could be used in future empirical studies of in-app advertising.

El propósito de esta investigación es revisar y sintetizar la literatura sobre la publicidad en Apps, identificar lagunas y proponer futuras direcciones de investigación.

Utilizamos un enfoque de revisión sistemática de la literatura, siguiendo las directrices PRISMA, para investigar el estado actual de la investigación en publicidad en aplicaciones. El estudio utiliza 44 artículos preseleccionados de las bases de datos Scopus y Web of Science (WoS). Utilizando el marco Teoría-Contexto-Características-Metodología (TCCM), analizamos las lagunas en teoría, contexto, características y métodos.

Mediante un análisis temático, identificamos cinco temas principales en la literatura sobre publicidad en aplicaciones, a saber: optimización de plataformas publicitarias; psicología y comportamiento de los usuarios de aplicaciones móviles; eficacia publicitaria; fraude publicitario; seguridad, privacidad y otras preocupaciones de los usuarios. Nuestros hallazgos muestran la necesidad de investigación empírica, con una sólida base teórica en los formatos publicitarios emergentes de la publicidad en Apps, el comportamiento del usuario y el buy-side de la publicidad en Apps.

Se trata de un estudio pionero para realizar una revisión sistemática de la literatura basada en el dominio en el campo emergente de la publicidad en Apps utilizando el marco TCCM. Destacamos las principales diferencias entre la publicidad en aplicaciones y la publicidad en la web para móviles. Proponemos teorías en el campo de la publicidad que podrían utilizarse en futuros estudios empíricos sobre la publicidad en Apps.

本研究旨在回顾和总结有关应用内广告的文献, 找出差距并提出未来的研究方向。

我们采用系统性文献综述方法, 遵循 PRISMA 指南, 调查应用内广告的研究现状。研究使用了 Scopus 和 Web of Science (WoS) 数据库中的 44 篇入围文章。利用理论-背景-特征-方法（TCCM）框架, 我们分析了理论、背景、特征和方法方面的差距。

通过主题分析, 我们确定了应用内广告文献的五大主题, 即广告平台优化; 移动应用用户心理和行为; 广告效果; 广告欺诈; 安全、隐私和其他用户关注点。我们的研究结果表明, 有必要在应用内广告的新兴广告形式、用户行为和应用内广告买方等方面开展实证研究, 并奠定坚实的理论基础。

这是一项首次使用 TCCM 框架对新兴的应用内广告领域进行基于领域的系统性文献综述的研究。我们强调了应用内广告与移动网络广告的主要区别。我们提出了广告领域的理论, 可用于未来的应用内广告实证研究。