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This study aims to examine how young consumers perceive the advertising effectiveness of endorsements by virtual idols and how endorsements by virtual idols differ from endorsements by real human celebrities such as traditional celebrities and online influencers.

An experimental study was conducted with 400 randomly selected young respondents in China in December 2022. A 3 × 2 factorial design was used to test how the type of celebrity endorser and level of product involvement influence the persuasiveness of advertising aimed at young adults. Among 400 respondents, the average age was 21.5 years. A total of 193 male and 207 female respondents participated in the experiment.

Young consumers find virtual idols, online influencers and traditional celebrities attractive. Although virtual idols are the least credible among the three types of celebrity endorsers, young consumers tend to be more convinced by their endorsements of products with low levels of consumer involvement than those with high levels of involvement. Among the three types of celebrity endorsements, young consumers find traditional celebrities the most effective. In addition, young consumers’ attitudes toward celebrity endorsers mediate the impact of celebrity endorsers’ attractiveness and credibility on their attitudes toward the advertisements. The perceived level of product involvement moderates the transfer of meaning from the attitude toward the celebrity endorsers to the attitude toward the advertisement.

First, when choosing celebrity endorsers to advertise products targeting young consumers, marketing communication practitioners should give priority to the endorsers’ perceived credibility, as young consumers have a variety of views about them that can significantly affect their attitudes toward the advertisement. Second, real human celebrity endorsers are more effective than virtual idols in celebrity endorsements. However, virtual idols may be suited for use in advertisements to promote products with low involvement levels, such as soft drinks.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first experimental study to attempt to analyze the effectiveness of virtual idols in advertising aimed at young consumers. This is also the first comparative study to introduce virtual idols as celebrity endorsers in product advertising and to compare their effectiveness with that of the two other types of commonly discussed celebrity endorsers, traditional celebrities and online influencers.

The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of different brand positions (underdog vs top dog) and comparative advertising on consumers’ brand attitudes. Additionally, this study also aims to demonstrate the effects of inspiration, self-relevance and empathy on the relationship between brand positioning and comparative advertising.

A two-by-three factorial design was employed with brand positions (underdog vs top dog) and three types of comparative advertising (noncomparative, indirect comparative and direct comparative) as the independent variables. Inspiration serves as the mediator, while self-relevance and empathy act as moderators and brand attitude is the dependent variable.

The results show that different brand positions significantly affect brand attitudes, with respondents having a better brand attitude toward the underdog brand. Brand attitude is partially mediated by inspiration. Self-relevance moderates the relationship between brand positioning and brand attitude. However, brand positioning, comparative advertising and empathy do not have interaction effects.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the effect of psychological variables on brand positioning and comparative advertising.

The results suggest that the underdog setting requires a real and honest story because consumers will spot a fake underdog story, which will damage consumer trust in the brand and harm the brand image.

There is a lack of research using psychological variables to demonstrate the effect of being the underdog brand. This study contributes to the literature by employing psychological variables to illustrate the effect of underdog positioning. These findings can help brands develop branding positioning strategies.

This research investigates how consumers who are most active on Facebook during the day vs in the evening differ, differ in their ad consumption, and how advertising effects vary as a function of a key moderator: gender.

Using a survey of 281 people, the research identifies Facebook users who are more intensely using mobile social media during the day versus in the evening, and measures five Facebook mobile advertising outcomes: brand and product recall, clicking on ads, acting on ads and purchases.

The results show that women who are using social media more intensely during the day are more likely to use Facebook to seek information, hence, Facebook mobile ads tend to be more effective for these users compared to those in the evening.

This contributes to the literature by analyzing how the time of day affects social media behavior in relation to mobile advertising effectiveness, and broadening the scope of mobile advertising effectiveness research from other than just clicks on ads to include measures like brand and product recall.

By analyzing the effectiveness of mobile advertising on social media as a function of the time of day, advertisers can be more targeted in their media buys, and so better use their social media budgets, i.e. advertising is more effective for women who use social media (Facebook) more intensely during the day than for those who use social media more intensely in the evening as the former tend to seek more information than the latter.

This research extends media ecology theory by drawing on circadian rhythm research to provide a first demonstration of how the time of day relates to different uses of mobile social media, which in turn relate to social media mobile advertising consumption.

While research on social media advertising has been steadily increasing, little has been explored on how users consume ads when they engage with social media at different periods along the day. This paper extends media ecology theory by investigating time of day, drawing on the circadian rhythm literature, and how it relates to social media usage.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which cultural differences and slogan meaning type affect the role of comprehension in attitude toward the ad (A_ad) and attitude toward the brand (A_brand) formation.

In an online experiment, a total of 256 adult participants from the USA (ranged in age from 19 to 26 years old) and 184 participants from France (ranged in age from 18 to 28) were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions (slogan: single meaning vs polysemous) in a between-subjects experimental design. After getting exposed to the ad, participants responded to questions related to their A_ad, A_brand, comprehension, uncertainty avoidance and demographics.

Results from this research demonstrate the moderating effect of uncertainty avoidance and slogan type (single meaning vs polysemous) on the relationship between comprehension and A_ad. The authors show that for polysemous (and not single meaning) slogans, comprehension results in more favorable A_ad for low uncertainty avoidance individuals than for high uncertainty avoidance individuals. In addition, the authors demonstrate the mediating effect of A_ad in the relationship between comprehension and A_brand.

The authors used nationality as a proxy for culture. Future research should include other cultural dimensions in the development of conceptual models and analysis of data. Another limitation is that the authors used a college student sample for this research. A more representative sample should be used in future research to examine cultural differences in interpreting adverting messages. One other limitation concerns the measurement tool the authors used to measure objective versus subjective comprehension in this research. While the theoretical foundations of the two modes of comprehension are clear and robust, improved measurement tools can enhance the validity and reliability of future research. Finally, the authors suggest that future research examine the effect of such variables as figure-ground contrast, figure attractiveness, stimulus repetition, prototypicality, symmetry and semantic or visual priming that may impact the processing of brand slogans.

This study argues that the processing of brand slogans in advertising is impacted by culture. Individuals from different cultures perceive and comprehend brand slogans differently. This study contributes to the research stream that examines the influence of cultural dimensions on the effectiveness of advertising by focusing more precisely on the impact of uncertainty avoidance (one of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions). In the case of single meaning slogans, advertisers might diminish the use of objective comprehension advertising strategies to influence both individuals with high and low uncertainty avoidance. In the case of polysemous slogans, advertisers should consider that consumers with high uncertainty avoidance (vs low uncertainty avoidance) are impacted more by subjective comprehension (vs objective comprehension) when forming A_ad and A_brand.

This research contributes meaningfully to the marketing literature by examining previous work on ad slogan processing through subjective vs objective comprehension and extending the analysis by incorporating culture as an important factor.

This study aims to assess the impact of functional green advertising receptivity and emotional green advertising receptivity on consumers' green purchase intention. The authors then examine the mediating role of perceived competence and perceived warmth. Furthermore, the authors explore the moderating effect of power distance belief (PDB) on the relationships between green advertising receptivity with different appeals and consumers' perceived competence and perceived warmth respectively.

Based on the online survey platform, a total of 468 responses were obtained in China from January to March 2022. 408 valid replies were collected and analyzed in this study. The research hypotheses were empirically verified with bootstrap approach.

The empirical results indicate that both functional green advertisi\ng receptivity and emotional green advertising receptivity are significantly positively correlated with green purchase intention, and perceived competence and perceived warmth play the mediating role. Besides, PDB significantly strengthens the relationship between functional green advertising receptivity and perceived competence, but weakens the incentive effect of emotional green advertising receptivity on perceived warmth.

The psychological mechanism of the receptivity of green advertising with different appeals affecting green purchase intention remains unclear. This is one of the first studies to uncover how functional green advertising receptivity and emotional green advertising receptivity influence green purchase intention. Besides, the impact of PDB on the formation process of consumer perception is also a black box. By clarifying and comparing the moderating role of PDB on the relationships between advertising receptivity with different appeals and consumers' perceived competence and perceived warmth, this study contributes to the research on the effectiveness of green advertising.

The main purpose of this study is to contribute to the literature concerned with improving the effectiveness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) advertising by considering how such ads are pre-tested.

Two similar video ads were produced: one using an informative appeal and the other using an emotional appeal. The latter appeal is more widely used by practitioners. Each ad was designed to promote the CSR credentials of the same (fictitious) company. A web-based experiment (n = 244) was used to test both using two types of measure: first attitude towards the company (such as its image) and second the feelings evoked by the ad.

As predicted from theory, the ads promoted similar evaluations of the company but the evaluations measured by evoked feelings differed significantly. The information-based ad evoked more positive emotions, less negative emotions and more positive attitudes toward the ad. If the ads had been pretested using only measures of evoked feelings, the more emotive treatment would have been rejected.

The study shows why CSR ads should be pretested and why such tests should include multiple measures. It also illustrates how informative CSR video ads can be better received but how both informative and emotional appeals can be used when communicating a company's CSR.

There is little research relevant to the pretesting of ads designed to communicate a company's CSR. Signaling theory can help explain why comparable (CSR) video ads can be evaluated as similar in their effect on company related evaluations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how gamification in advertising affects the effectiveness of advertising on social media.

Drawing from the gamification literature, immersion, achievement and social interaction features were identified as features, and advertising effectiveness factors were brand attention, brand liking and recall. A questionnaire was used for collecting data, and a structural equation modeling approach was applied to examine the model.

The results indicated that immersion, achievement and social interaction features affect advertising effectiveness. Furthermore, advertising effectiveness factors had a significant effect on purchase intentions.

The study contributes to the combination of gamification in advertising by offering characteristics for gamification that can enhance advertising effectiveness through brand attention, liking and recall. Finally, it provides managerial guidance on how they can use gamification in their advertising process.

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.

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.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are gaining popularity as investments and personal indulgences, prompting brands to integrate them into marketing campaigns. Thus, understanding consumer personality traits toward NFTs is essential for success. This study presents a model that explores how social comparison orientation (SCO) influences perceived exclusivity and financial benefits of NFT marketing, subsequently impacting experiential evaluations, willingness to purchase NFTs and brand loyalty.

We conducted two experiments to test our model. Study 1 used a quasi-experiment with 1,053 participants and tested the model using partial least squares–based structural equation modeling. In Study 2, we aimed to investigate the causal influence of SCO on NFT marketing effectiveness. We employed a one-factor experiment (social comparison prime: high SCO vs. control) with 123 participants.

NFT users frequently engage in social comparisons and prefer branded NFTs that offer exclusivity (social value) and financial benefits (economic value). Social and financial superiority derived from NFTs enhances branded NFT experiences, leading to a stronger willingness to purchase NFTs and building brand loyalty. Perceived exclusivity, financial benefits and experiential evaluation mediate the effects of SCO on willingness to purchase NFTs and brand loyalty.

This study explores the effectiveness of NFT marketing through the lens of social comparison theory. In doing so, we examined the relationship between SCO and NFT marketing outcomes, revealed the causal influence of SCO on perceived exclusivity and perceived benefits in NFT marketing and shed light on the serial mediation of value- and experience-related constructs.