In the literature, little attention has been paid to instances where companies add an Internet channel to their direct channel portfolio. However, actively managing multiple sales channels requires knowing the customers’ channel preferences and the resulting channel power. Two key components...

In a viral marketing campaign an organization develops a marketing message, and stimulates customers to forward this message to their contacts. Despite its increasing popularity, there are no models yet that help marketers to predict how many customers a viral marketing campaign will reach, and...

In this study, Heckler & Childers' (1992) two-dimensional conceptualization of incongruity is employed and related to the different schemas that consumers use in ad processing. Consumers can relate advertising to expectations about ads for the product concerned from the ad schema or to...

The article reviews the conceptual foundations of advertising polysemy – the occurrence of different interpretations for the same advertising message. We discuss how disciplines as diverse as psychology, semiotics and literary theory have dealt with the issue of polysemy, and provide...

Several authors have proposed frameworks to help advertisers predict and plan advertising effectiveness. Rossiter and Percy's advertising grid (1997) recommends that the ad appeal should match the purchase motivation or attitude base. They suggest that for utilitarian brands informational...

Using weekly data on advertising expenditures in various media and response data on awareness, consideration and choice, we test the hierarchy of effects hypothesis. Our empirical results, based on a simultaneous equations model with pooled parameters across brands, suggest that we can reject...

Advertising grids such as the Rossiter-Percy grid (Rossiter & Percy 1991, 1997) propose that brand-matching advertising is more effective than brand-mismatching advertising. However, for the match hypothesis to hold the brand schema needs to be salient in ad processing and evaluation. In this...

Consumer embarrassment is an important concern for marketers. Yet, little is known about embarrassment in passive situations like advertising viewing. The authors investigate when and why consumers experience embarrassment as a result of exposure to socially sensitive advertisements. The theory...

Contrary to predictions based on cognitive accessibility, heightened gender identity salience resulted in lower perceived vulnerability and reduced donation behavior to identity-specific risks (e.g., breast cancer). No such effect was manifest with identity-neutral risks. Establishing the...

The study investigates the effects of direct and mass marketing communications on the adoption timing of a new e-service among existing customers. The mass marketing communications concern both specific new service advertising and brand advertising from both the focal supplier and competitors....