E. Lincoln James

Advertising ethics: A contextual response based on classical ethical theory

F. P. Bishop argues that the ethical standard for advertising practitioners must be utilitarian. Indeed, the utilitarian theory of ethics in decision-making has traditionally been the preference of U.S. advertising practitioners. This article, therefore, argues that the U.S. advertising industrys de-emphasis of deontological ethics is a reason for its continuing struggle with unfavorable public perceptions of its ethics — and credibility. The perceptions of four scenarios on advertising ethics and the analyses of the openended responses of 174 members of the American Advertising Federation to those scenarios suggest that advertising practitioners need a stricter adherence to deontological ethics than is indicated in this study.

An Information Content Comparison of Magazine Ads across a Response Continuum from Direct Response to Institutional Advertising

Abstract Resnik and Sterns (1977) fourteen-item information scale was used to compare the relative information value of direct response, product/store image, and institutional ads contained in eighteen magazines. Content analysis of 8,470 ads revealed that direct response ads tend to differ significantly from both product/store image and institutional ads in terms of the number of information cues they contained as well as the kinds of information conveyed. Specifically, as one moves from lower levels of information content to higher levels, the proportion of direct response ads shifts from significantly smaller to significantly larger proportions when compared to both product/store image and institutional ads. Further, direct response ads were found to be more likely to exhibit nine of the fourteen kinds of information cues examined.

Consumer Expectations of the Information Content in Advertising

Eight basic types of advertising were identified, based on the tasks they were expected to perform. These were: corporate; brand image; political; retail; public service; advocacy; direct response, and comparative advertising. Student subjects exposed to the different categories of advertisements provided a total of 4,485 statements about the kind of information they would expect to find in each type. Trained coders then classified these statements into several dimensions of information expectations associated with each of the eight different types of advertisements. Overall, three identifiable information expectation themes emerged: (1) expected information about products and services; (2) expected information about organizations or companies, and 3) expected puffery/hype. Puffery was expected to be found in all types of advertisements examined apart from comparative advertising. However, consumers appeared to perceive puffery as advertising information to be ignored.

The Information/Puffery Profile and Magazine Advertisement Readership

This study examines the relationship between the amount of information and puffery in magazine advertisements, and its impact on widely-employed readership scores. Magazine advertisements for cars which had been studied by Gallup and Robinson were used in the investigation. Gallup and Robinsons proved name registration and favourable buying attitude scores were correlated with information and puffery content for both foreign and domestic advertisements. Findings suggest that information content leads to a more favourable buying attitude score for foreign advertisements while puffery is more closely related to proved name registration scores for the domestic advertisements. Conclusions are drawn concerning how other marketing factors might influence magazine advertisement reading dynamics. Social concerns about the value of information vis-´-vis puffery in advertising are also discussed.

Subcultural Differences among Direct Marketing Television Shoppers

A national mail survey was used to gather information from direct marketing television shoppers about their attitudes, motivations, social environment, and attributions about their shopping behaviors. Subcultural differences between Black, White and Hispanic shoppers were analyzed by means of multiple discriminant analysis. The data revealed more differences between Black and White shoppers than between Blacks and Hispanics or Hi-spanics and Whites.