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Message stream advertising (MSA) has become an increasingly popular option for advertising on mobile social media. However, MSA is often avoided by consumers, and this avoidance deserves more research attention. The purpose of this study is therefore to identify the underlying mechanism and key variables that affect consumer avoidance of MSA in the context of mobile social media.

A face-to-face survey was administered to current mobile users of WeChat (N = 438). Structural equation modeling was conducted to test the relationships in the research model.

Results revealed that mobile consumers employ mechanical avoidance methods (i.e. zipping, muting and zapping) against MSA. The findings also demonstrated that advertising intrusiveness (stimulus) is directly linked to negative emotions, perceived entertainment and sense of control (organism), which, in turn, relate to MSA avoidance (response).

The study contributes to the MSA avoidance literature by using the stimulus-organism-response model to deepen the understanding of consumers' MSA avoidance on mobile social media, and it suggests important managerial implications for advertising practitioners and platform operators.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Social media advertising must engage with consumers, validate their sense of control, and avoid evoking negative emotions.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

This study aims to examine the impacts of brand structure (i.e. brand cohesiveness and similarity) on brand perceptions and the adverse effects of brand extensions.

Data were collected online via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Overall, 188 US residents participated in the 2 (extension typicality: typical and atypical) × 3 (brand cohesiveness: high, medium and low) between-subject experimental design.

Narrow brands are favored over cohesive broad brands, and cohesive broad brands are favored over incohesive broad brands. When new extensions are typical, brand cohesiveness dominates brand similarity in terms of adverse extension effects. Negative extension information exerts more salient adverse effects on narrow brands and cohesive broad brands than on incohesive broad brands. Conversely, when new extensions are atypical, brand similarity dominates brand cohesiveness on adverse extension effects. Negative extension information exerts more salient adverse effects on narrow brands than on cohesive and incohesive broad brands.

Brand cohesiveness is more impactful than brand similarity on brand perceptions. The identical adverse effects of typical extensions on narrow, and broad brands exist only when the portfolio products of the broad brands are cohesive.

Cohesive broad brands have the advantages of being more favored than incohesive broad brands and being less vulnerable to negative atypical extension information than are narrow brands.

This study advances brand research by examining the interplay between brand structure (i.e. category cohesiveness and similarity) and extension typicality on adverse extension effects.

E-commerce live streaming is a new influencer advertising method that allows influencers to interact directly with consumers on e-commerce platforms. Although evidence suggests that influencer live-streaming advertisements (ads) on social media can increase consumers’ buying impulses, little research examined how this similar but new advertising method on e-commerce platforms may influence consumers’ urge to buy impulsively. This study explores the role of influencer credibility, celebrity effect, perceived entertainment, trust and perceived usefulness on consumers’ attitudes toward influencer ads and their urge to buy impulsively.

A questionnaire containing seven constructs was developed and distributed to participants using a convenient sample and snowball sampling approach. The constructs were measured based on validated measurement items from the literature and adjusted according to this study’s focus. A total of 236 valid responses were obtained from the survey and used for data analysis. A partial least squares structural equation modeling approach was employed for parameter estimation and model testing.

The empirical results show that all constructs influenced consumers’ urge to buy impulsively via attitude toward influencer ads. The proposed research model explains 61.7% of the variance in attitude toward influencer ads and 19.4% of the urge to buy impulsively.

This is an early study investigating the relationship between influencer advertising and impulse buying. The results provide valuable insights into improving the design of influencer ads and marketing strategies.

1. I-eIB model tests the mechanism of influencer ads on consumers’ buying impulse.

2. Consumers’ attitude towards influencer ads affects their urge to buy impulsively.

3. Influencer credibility affects consumer attitude via celebrity effect as a mediator.

4. Trust affects consumer attitude via perceived usefulness as a mediator.

5. Entertaining ads help develop favorable consumer attitude.

I-eIB model tests the mechanism of influencer ads on consumers’ buying impulse.

Consumers’ attitude towards influencer ads affects their urge to buy impulsively.

Influencer credibility affects consumer attitude via celebrity effect as a mediator.

Trust affects consumer attitude via perceived usefulness as a mediator.

Entertaining ads help develop favorable consumer attitude.

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.

The primary purpose of the current study was to examine how the presence of two digital ad features – an ad skip option and an ad time display, representing behavioral and cognitive control, respectively – might influence viewer response to in-stream video ads in terms of perceived control, reactance and advertising outcomes.

A 2 (Ad skip option: presence vs. absence) × 2 (Ad time display: presence vs absence) between-subjects experiment was conducted online with 217 participants recruited via Qualtrics.

The results of the online experiment show that the presence of the ad skip option and ad time display related to a higher level of perceived control, predicting lower ad intrusiveness and ad irritation and more favorable attitude toward the ad.

The findings confirm that an ad skip option and an ad time display could minimize negative responses to in-stream video ads by increasing perceived control and reducing viewer reactance.

The findings provide empirical evidence that multiple dimensions of control features (i.e. behavioral and cognitive) can increase perceived control and strengthen its impact on advertising outcomes.

Informed by social representation theory, the study aims to explore how marketing workers represent their activities on social media.

A naturalistic data set of 17,553 messages posted on Twitter by advertising workers was collected. A sample of over 1,000 unique messages from this data set, incorporating all external links and images, was analysed inductively using structured thematic analysis.

Advertising workers represent marketing work as a series of fun yet constrained activities involving relationships with clients and colleagues. They engage in cognitive polyphasia by evaluating these productive differences in both a positive and negative light.

The study marks a novel use of social representation theory and innovative social media analysis. Further research should explore these relations in greater depth by considering the networks that marketing workers create on social media and establish how, when and why marketing workers turn to social media in their everyday activities.

Marketing workers choose to represent aspects of their work to one another, using social media. Marketing managers should support such activities and consider social media as a way to understand the lives and experiences of marketing workers.

Marketing researchers have embraced digital media as a route to understanding consumers. This study demonstrates the value of analysing digital media to develop an understanding of marketing work. It sheds new light on the ways marketing workers create social relationships and enables marketing managers to understand and observe the social aspects of effective marketing.

Although endorsers are thought to be highly effective when they match-up with a product, the current understanding of endorser match-up offers little insight for distinctions between equally attractive and trustworthy endorsers who have equivalent expertise in the product category, yet still diverge in their performance. Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to understand how a match between social judgments (i.e. warmth vs competence) of a celebrity endorser and specific advertising appeals (i.e. symbolic vs utilitarian) can improve consumer responses to an endorsement.

A preliminary study empirically distinguishes perceptions of warmth and competence from prevailing celebrity endorser evaluative criteria. Then, the authors conduct multiple 2 (warmth vs competence) × 2 (symbolic vs utilitarian) between-subjects experiments to demonstrate the effect of matching social judgments and advertising messaging, across celebrity genders (i.e. male and female), forms of marketing communications (i.e. print ads and interactive online ads) and types of brands (i.e. well-established and new/unknown).

The findings demonstrate that matching celebrity endorser social judgments with the appropriate type of advertising messaging positively influences consumer response to the brand for both male and female endorsers. Additionally, despite a commonly held belief that celebrity endorsements are more effective at changing attitudes than actual behaviors, for interactive online ads, the authors find that the match strategy can motivate consumer response through two different pathways. For well-established brands, the match improves overall brand response predominately through cognitive and behavioral mechanisms. Alternatively, for new or unknown brands, the match initially impacts affective responses, which are subsequently related to consumers shopping a brand’s product category, rating a brand higher in customer recommendations, choosing a brand’s products over top competitors and paying more for the brand’s offerings.

The main contribution of this research is the demonstrated support for an alternative and effective application of the match-up hypothesis, based on a fit between the endorser and the advertising messaging itself.

Given that many consumers are skeptical about environmentally based advertising campaigns, the purpose of this study is to propose an optimized message strategy to facilitate consumer engagement with green messages in social media contexts.

Four empirical studies are conducted using self-report questionnaires to test proposed hypotheses with a focus on the interplay between claim specificity and benefit appeals in green advertising on social media.

The current study examines the interaction effects of claim specificity and benefit appeals on consumer engagement in social media. Specifically, the results reveal that when the message claim is abstract, using other-benefit appeals produces more positive consumer engagement than using self-benefit appeals. Moreover, the results illustrate that self-enhancement motivates consumers to engage with green product advertising messages when the advertising appeal is abstract and the advertising message is associated with benefits for others. Finally, it is found that consumers’ self-construal level moderates the interaction effect of claim specificity and benefit appeals type on consumer engagement on social media.

This paper has practical implications to both social media managers and advertisers in the green product industry: a match with advertising claim specificity and construal level (i.e. social distance: self-benefit vs other-benefit) should be ensured to increase consumer engagement on social media. In addition, self-enhancement and self-construal should be considered for a better message strategy in social media contexts.

The findings make important contributions to the literature in that we extend the applications of construal level theory to social media contexts as a valid theoretical tool to identify optimized green message strategies. As such, it provides future researchers and practitioners in the domain of green campaigns with useful guidelines to boost more consumption of green products.