Journal of Advertising Research

The Journal of Advertising Research is the R&D vehicle for professionals in all areas of marketing including media, research, advertising and communications.

ARF Members can access full text of JAR articles for the most recent five volumes.
Either log in via My ARF to access 200+ JAR articles »
Or Members can access the full text versions on the JAR site »
Not a Subscriber? Subscribe to the Journal of Advertising Research »
 

Latest Issue Preview - Engaging With Digital China

December 2011, Volume 51, No. 4 View full abstracts of the Current Issue

Editorial: Engaging With Digital China
Geoffrey Precourt

Marketing on the Razor’s Edge: The Need for Smarter Decisions as the Economy Goes Sideways
Pat LaPointe, Managing Editor of MarketingNPV, on the dangers of scaling back investments in research in the current economic environment, and to how to build a more strategic role for marketing.

Are You Blinded by the Heavy (Buyer) … Or Are You Seeing the Light?
In her first column for the Journal, Jenni Romaniuk from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute asks why market research tends to overlook light buyers who typically form the majority of customers a packaged goods brand has, acquires and loses.

The Globalization of Social Media: Consumer Relationships with Brands Evolve in the Digital Space
Graeme Hutton and Maggie Fosdick share findings from five years of Universal McCann’s Wave initiative. Established in 2006, Wave’s geographical coverage has mushroomed from just 15 countries in Wave 1 with a sample of 7,500 to 54 countries in Wave 5 polling more than 37,600 consumers in 2010. Learn how the dynamics, behaviors, and even structures of the ecosystem have evolved and changed dramatically.

Optimizing Market Segmentation for a Global Mobile Phone Provider for both Targeting and Insight
Marc O’Regan, Kantar, Kalidas Ashok, MaPS, and Olga Maksimova, and Oleg Reshetin, both Mobile Telesystems, describe a complex 5-country segmentation of the mobile telephony market on behalf of MTS, a leading global mobile phone provider. The solution combined survey data on more than 10 thousand respondents and billing data on more than 80 million customers for both targeting and insights.

Which Broadcast Medium Better Drives Engagement? Measuring the Power of Radio and Television with Electromyography and Skin-Conductance Measurements
James Peacock, Peacock Research, Scott Purvis, Gallup & Robinson and Richard L Hazlett, John Hopkins School of Medicine compared the ability of radio and television advertisements to generate emotional responses and engage consumers using facial electromyography. Find out how the facial EMG methods demonstrated a sensitivity to finding differences in emotional response between commercials and type of medium.

Introducing the Ad ECG: How the Set-top Box Tracks the Lifeline of Television
Robert J. Kent, University of Delaware and David A. Schweidel. University of Wisconsin-Madison use granular data from a large system of set-top boxes to observe the audience decline and rebuild during commercial time.

ENGAGING WITH DIGITAL CHINA

Consumer Adoption Intentions toward the Internet in China: The Effects of Impersonal and Interpersonal Communication Channels
Susan Wei and Gary L. Frankwick (both Oklahoma State University); Tony Gao (Northeastern University); and Nan Zhou (City University of Hong Kong and Wuhan University) explore media-substitution in an accelerated digital age. The authors explore such critical questions as the following: “Can the Internet compete with, supplement, or replace traditional media in terms of attracting consumer attention in China? Which advantages does interactive content have over the pages of newspapers and magazines?”

Assessing Celebrity Endorsement Effects in China: A Consumer-Celebrity Relational Approach
Kineta Hung (Hong Kong Baptist University); Kimmy W.Chan (Hong Kong Polytechnic University); and Caleb H. Tse (University of Hong Kong) explore an aspect of marketing and research that has long been a staple of all kinds of branding in the West: Can star power translate into sales with a celebrity endorsement? In brief, the three authors contend that three core Chinese cultural values—collectivism, risk aversion, and power distance—can drive returns on celebrity-driven programs as star worship leads to value-transfer that can affect brand purchase intent.

Regulating Political Symbols: China’s Advertising Law and Politicized Advertising
Although many of the challenges and opportunities in China are familiar to marketers the world over, evolving practices in a bourgeoning market still have to contend with tradition and cultural institutions. Xin Zhao (University of Hawaii/Honolulu) and Jeff Wang (City University of Hong Kong) point to a situational speedbump that demands obeisance in any advertising effort: “The use of key political symbolism should never contradict the Party’s line at the denotive level as regulated by China’s advertising law. The sacredness of the Party can be transformed only in positive ways. Calling for rebellion against cherished Party symbols is unlikely to be well received by government censors at a time when the Party seeks to promote a harmonious society.”

The China Puzzle: Strategic Thinking in the World’s Fastest Growing Advertising Market.
The Warc Prize for Asian Strategy—what its sponsors call “the first Asian competition set up to reward brilliant strategic thinking in marketing”—produced a passel of case studies that provide keen, fresh insight into Asian marketing. Additionally, to demonstrate theory in practices, we have selected two case studies, both featuring global marketer McDonald’s, to conclude our China package.

Incremental Clicks: The Impact of Search Advertising
In this meta-analysis of 446 studies, David X. Chan, Yuan Yuan, Jim Koehler, and Deepak Kumar, all from Google, examined how the number of organic clicks changed when search ads were present and when search ad campaigns were turned off. The authors develop a statistical model to estimate the fraction of total clicks that could be attributed to search advertising.

Comprende Code Switching? Young Mexican-Americans’ Responses to Language Alternation in Print Advertising
“Code switching” in advertising refers to the alternation between two languages in a single advertisement. The initial findings of Melissa Bishop, University of New Hampshire, and Mark Peterson, University of Wyoming, suggest that Spanish/English codeswitched print advertisements would be more effectively placed within an English-language print medium rather than a Spanish-language print medium among Mexican-American young adults.

View full abstracts of the Current Issue | Download the December Editorial (PDF)