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Sports advertisements such as the Super Bowl showcase products and brands that have invested increasingly large sums financially to gain viewers’ attention. However, how audio features in advertisements impact viewers' behavior remains unexplored.

Using the lens of signaling theory, this research uses advanced data analytics of voice and music audio in Super Bowl advertisements to examine its impacts on viewers.

Results show that advertisement viewers prefer more voiced frames and have a greater liking behavior of voiced frames with a low intensity (less loud) and a higher F1 frequency, which is typically associated with male vocal tracts. A fast music tempo works better for longer advertisements. The model controls for various types of ad appeals. The research underlines the importance of voice and music in signaling successful brand features that are likely to increase the ad-liking behavior of consumers (positive effect).

The current research implies that brands advertising through sports ads must carefully select voice actors and music in order to provide the most positive signals for a brand to have the most significant effect and, thus, a greater return on the high sums invested in the ads.

First, this research contributes in terms of a new research process for using audio analytics in advertising. The detailed research process outlined can be used for future research examining audio and music from advertisements. Second, our findings provide additional support to the important role of voice features (e.g. intensity and frequency) as signals in inducing responses from consumers (Biswas et al., 2019; Hagtvedt and Brasel, 2016). Third, the study surfaces a new theoretical association: the effect of tempo in moderating the relationship between duration and propensity to like an ad.

In this research, we designed and implemented a unique vignette experiment to study the effect of managers' perceptions of institutional distance on foreign location choice, as well as the moderating effect of managerial international experience and preferred entry mode on this relationship.

We employ an experimental vignette methodology (EVM) approach applied in the context of Chinese managers to test the causal relationships depicted in our hypotheses. In this way, we measure the decision-makers' perceptions ex ante, i.e. in conjunction with and prior to a decision about a foreign location choice.

Our findings show that managers' ex-ante perceptions of institutional distance negatively affect decisions on foreign location choice. Also, we find that managerial international experience and preference for high commitment entry modes mitigate the negative effect of managers' perceptions of institutional distance on foreign location choice.

This research study adds to our understanding of the effect of managers' perceptions of institutional distance and managerial contingencies on foreign location decisions. Further, it advances novel experimental design in international business research in general and on foreign location choice in particular.