Kevin Lehnert

Advertising Creativity: The Role of Divergence Versus Meaningfulness

Creativity is seen as an essential component of advertising and is continuing to attract research interest. While there is widespread agreement on the value of creativity, there are two different perspectives on the key components of creativity. One perspective sees creativity as primarily divergence, containing elements of novelty, aesthetic representation, newness, and difference. The second includes, in addition to divergence, the concept of meaningfulness (or appropriateness or connectedness) to the consumer. This view argues that if an advertisement is not meaningful then it simply is not creative. We attempt to find some empirical resolution to this issue. Our findings indicate that divergence is indeed an important element of creativity. Meaningfulness, however, while certainly very important to ad effectiveness, appears to be a distinct and separate construct from creativity.

Advertising creativity and repetition: recall, wearout and wearin effects

Creativity is seen as an important component of advertising, with highly creative ads being easier to recall than control ads. However, the boundary conditions around this effect are less understood. This research examines how creativity influences recall across repeated ad exposures. Additionally, this paper investigates the influence of creativity on advertising wearin/wearout. We utilise creative and control commercials embedded in a television programme for a naturalistic viewing experience, along with a one-week follow-up measure. We find that creative advertisements exhibit higher recall, though repeated exposures reduce this advantage.Further, creative ads are more liked, demonstrate wear in effects more quickly and are less susceptible to wearout.

Why Do Gen Y Students Study Abroad? Individual Growth and the Intent to Study Abroad.

We propose that Generation Y college students’ motivations to study abroad are rooted in the desire for individual growth, which, combined with other motivation factors—gender, parents’ educational level, prior international experience, age, and household income—drives the intent to study abroad. The study samples juniors and seniors in business majors, thereby attempting to shorten the temporal distance between study abroad intent and action. A significant number of students declare intent to study abroad as freshmen, yet fail to act on those intentions when the opportunity presents itself a year or two later. Results showed that the desire for individual growth was significantly and positively related to Gen Y business students’ intention to study abroad. Students’ prior experience visiting foreign countries and younger age positively moderated the effect of the desire for individual growth on intent to study abroad. The time lag between intent and action, and the fact that study abroad is a high involvement activity creates promotional challenges on how to best promote study abroad to Gen Y students. The article suggests practical implications and suggests how schools might increase study abroad participation among Gen Y college students.

Ethical vs. Unethical Advertisements: Evaluation and Recall: An Abstract

This study begins to address the role of those advertisements with an ethical or unethical message. Past research has focused on the role of ethical products or deceptive advertising messages based upon product/service attributes. This research looks at another form of ethical advertising, the role of the message that is independent of the product/service. Those associations of this branded message can impact consumer response and their social judgment of the ethicality of the advertisement. Through an experimental design, with a one-week delay, we note that there are no recall effects based upon the ethical valence of the ad. Those ads judged as unethical were also more negatively evaluated, but the overall evaluation of the ad decreased for both ethical and unethical ads over time. Implications and future research are discussed.

Abstract: Factors Influencing the Unethical Behavior of Business People

Corporate unethical behavior is nothing new. We are constantly bombarded with stories of managers engaging in illegal or unethical behavior. What is unknown are the reasons behind such behavior. Building upon Tenbrunsel and Messick’s (1999) work on ethical framing we investigate the boundary conditions on how we look at ethical decisions. Through a qualitative and quantitative study, we propose that when managers are put into a business frame, they are more likely to solve problems without an ethical view and thus engage in unethical behavior. More importantly, when we extend the business frame from a short-term to a long-term focus, we expect that business decisions would be more ethical. Further, how ethical the corporate culture is would moderate our decisions. Results indicate that ethical framing of problems do result in ethical outcomes, and that a corporate culture helps. However, the role of a strategic short-term and long-term frame is less understood, with managers using short-term business frames exhibiting more unethical behaviors, while long-term business frames are inconsistent in relation to short-term or ethical frames.

Financial Performance and the Competitive Effects of Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract This study examines share price reaction to the enrollment by companies in the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. We find that, on average, in the month of enrollment, shareholders of companies that join the CFBAI experience abnormal return of −3% and so do the shareholders of the immediate competitors that do not join the initiative. However, over the subsequent five years, while the shareholders of companies enrolled in the initiative experience an average abnormal return of +16.6%, that of non-enrolled competitors experience a further abnormal return of −34%. The abnormal returns for the two groups (at the time of enrollment and over the subsequent five years) are uncorrelated and so benefitting at the expense of competitors does not appear to be the motive for enrolling in the CFBAI. The study also provides comparison of number of employees and other important financial ratios before and after enrollment in the CFBAI for the two groups.

Understanding and Defining the Socially Conscious Consumer

With the growing research on the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, there is relatively little research on the makeup of the socially conscious consumer. This is particularly true with regard to their response to socially responsible initiatives. We address this gap through a qualitative study which ascertains the general mindset and makeup of the socially conscious consumer. Results indicate that socially conscious consumers use rational economic models in their consumption decisions, weighing the costs and benefits of their choices. This group also displays a general skepticism with respect to CSR tactics. This has distinct implications for managers, as it becomes more important for them to change the consumer’s view towards marketing than to enhance the existing social viewpoints of the consumer.

White Lies and Pardons: The Role of Consumer Forgiveness in Relationships with Service Providers

This paper investigates what happens in a consumer/service provider relationship when the provider intentionally deceives the customer. More concretely, the current research explores how consumers react to different levels of deception on the part of the service provider. Furthermore, how does the consumers relationship with the brand impact how they respond to the deception? After experiencing a significant deception, is the committed consumer more likely to forgive the provider with whom they have a strong relationship, or will a stronger relationship result in a more pronounced perception of betrayal and thus cause a greater negative response between the customer and the firm? Results indicate that those who were devoted to the relationship did indeed not display negative psychological effects or generate negative firm attitudes after a firm significantly misbehaved. On the other hand, those less devoted reported a decrease in attitude toward the brand and suffered increased negative mood following the bad behavior. This pattern fits with the idea that individuals often treat their preferred brands as relationship partners.

Do Pro-Social Ads Influence Social Attitudes and Consumer Response

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities can be an important tool for businesses to connect with their stakeholders. While there is growing research on the impact of CSR, there is relatively little research on how socially conscious consumers respond to socially responsible initiatives. We address this gap by quantitatively investigating the role of consumer’s social attitudes and their response to social message advertisements. Results indicate that some socially conscious consumers are generally leery of advertising and this can extend to CSR tactics. A consumer’s general attitude towards advertising mediates the relationship between their pro-social viewpoints and their attitude towards the brand, and this process is moderated by the content of the advertisement (i.e., CSR focused or neutral). The findings show that pro-social consumers do react differently to pro-social vs. traditional advertisements. This has distinct implications for managers, as it becomes more important for them to understand the pro-social attitudes of the audience before investing in CSR-focused advertising.

The spillover effect of international trade and investment flows: spotlight on Arab unrest

ABSTRACT:The economic and political grievances of Arab youth is fueling social and political upheaval across the Arab world and is reviving the call for equitable and inclusive economic development. The Arab world, where young people constitute a significant proportion of the population, is lagging behind other developing regions over human development. Indeed, addressing the human development challenge has become a necessity and strategic path to achieve peace and security in the Arab world. The purpose of this article is to investigate the spillover effects of economic globalization, economic flows, and restriction on trade and capital on Arab human development. This article attempts, both theoretically and empirically, to answer four questions. First, could economic globalization fulfil the promises of human development in the Arab world? Second, whether actual economic flows (trade, FDI and portfolio investment) to the Arab world have been enough to make meaningful contributions in terms of human welfare. Third, do Arab countries’ restrictions on trade and capital diminish human development? Fourth, whether Arab countries’ governance impede actual economic flows’ development potential. We opted for the Generalized Method of Moments “System GMM” to analyze the effects of international trade and capital flows and openness to trade and foreign capital on Arab human development. The statistical approach, designed for dynamic panel model, helps account for unobserved country specific effects and endogenous determinants. Our panel consists of 18 Arab countries for which data is available on all variables and covers the period between 1990 and 2011. The system GMM models reveal that economic globalization increases the rate of human development both in aggregate and via two channels: international trade and capital flows and trade and investment regimes. These findings highlights the positive effects on human development of a more globalized economy where international trade and capital flows plays a significant role. We also find considerable backing of our hypothesis that openness to trade and capital will likely accelerate human development in the Arab world. The results are consistent with the conjecture of trade and free-market theories of that nation may benefit from engaging in international trade. We conclude by stressing the need for Arab economies to globalize further and they must implement outward-oriented policies that maximize the benefits and minimize the costs of economic globalization more effectively. The Arab world stands at a crossroads and the continuous unrest is a stern wake-up call to tackle the human development challenge.