Terry Daugherty

Impact of 3-D Advertising on Product Knowledge, Brand Attitude, and Purchase Intention: The Mediating Role of Presence

Abstract The conceptualization of a virtual experience has emerged because advancements in computer technology have led to a movement toward more multisensory online experiences. Two studies designed to explore the concepts of virtual experience and presence are presented, with the results largely supporting the proposition that 3-D advertising is capable of enhancing presence and, to varying degrees, ultimately influencing the product knowledge, brand attitude, and purchase intention of consumers. The marketing implications are immediate because the ability to create a compelling virtual product experience is not beyond the current capability of interactive advertising. By creating compelling on-line virtual experiences, advertisers can potentially enhance the value of product information presented and engage consumers in an active user-controlled product experience.s

Exploring Consumer Motivations for Creating User-Generated Content

ABSTRACT The advent of Web 2.0 technologies has enabled the efficient creation and distribution of user-generated content (UGC), resulting in vast changes in the online media landscape. For instance, the proliferation of UGC has made a strong impact on consumers, media suppliers, and marketing professionals while necessitating research in order to understand both the short and long-term implications of this media content. This exploratory study (n = 325) seeks to investigate consumer consumption and creation of UGC and the attitudinal factors that contribute to these actions. The data confirm the established relationship between attitude and behavior and indicate attitude serves as a mediating factor between the use and creation of UGC. With regard to the creation of UGC, the ego-defensive and social functions of attitude were found to have the most explanatory power.

The Role of Virtual Experience in Consumer Learning

Through a series of studies designed to explore important aspects of virtual experience, a new type of product affordances—virtual affordances—is proposed and tested empirically. In addition, the existing geometric and material product taxonomy is extended to include mechanical products within the classification structure. Utilizing these new concepts, 3-D product visualization is compared with traditional 2-D product representations and television advertising. The results largely support the proposition that 3-D product visualization is capable of influencing brand attitude and purchase intention for geometric and mechanical products within e-commerce environments.

Third‐Person Effect and Social Networking: Implications for Online Marketing and Word‐of‐Mouth Communication

Few studies have explored the direct influence of social networking websites (SNWs), and to the best of our knowledge, none have examined the indirect influence of SNWs on users and how that indirect influence leads to word‐of‐mouth related behaviors in SNWs. This study employs the theoretical framework of the third‐person effect theory, which is grounded in psychology, to examine the indirect influence of SNWs and how that indirect influence may potentially contribute to marketing research and practice. Davison’s (1983) third‐person effect (TPE) theory proposes that individuals tend to expect mass media to have a greater effect on others than on themselves. After the analysis of survey data, the current research first explores whether a third‐person effect exists in the SNW context and if it does, how it differs from that in traditional media context. Based on theory and numerous empirical findings, the current research also investigates how the thirdperson effect varies with different referent “others”. Finally, based on the theoretical propositions of previous studies, this study links third‐person effect to behavioral consequences related to word‐of‐mouth communication via SNWs. The results support all hypotheses. This work contributes to consumer psychology and word‐of‐mouth communication research, and generates implications for marketers targeting young consumers and/or those interested in stimulating word‐of‐mouth communication in the SNW context. Limitations are also addressed.

eWOM and the importance of capturing consumer attention within social media

Word-of-mouth (WOM) is widely regarded as one of the most influential factors impacting consumer behavior, yet traditional models were constructed oblivious to the potential of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and social media. In particular, very little is known about the dynamics affecting consumer attention within two-way many-to-many mediated environments even though attention constitutes a critical step. Thus, we construct a conceptual framework that grounds consumer attention within a larger progression of behavioral responses to eWOM. We then conduct an experiment (n = 28) that isolates contextual antecedents of attention to positive, negative, and neutral WOM for both luxury and non-luxury brands within a social media platform. Using behavioral eye-tracking, we find that WOM message valence interacts with brand type to affect attention differently. Implications of these findings for facilitating eWOM are discussed with future research directions suggested.

Organizational Virtual Communities:Exploring Motivations Behind Online Panel Participation

One type of virtual community that has emerged prominently within the commercially-driven marketing research industry is the online panel. Online panels are opt-in, informed consent, privacy-protected subject pools recruited for Web-based research. Unlike virtual communities forged from interpersonal motivations, online panels represent a community of participants who have agreed to provide information at regular intervals over a period of time. This study presents and tests a theoretical framework governed by the functional theory of attitude that serves to explain motivations for online panel participation. Analysis of data from a survey administered to an online panel (N=1,822) indicates that a persons attitude toward joining an online panel will vary by his or her source of motivation, and that an online panel is capable of evoking a sense of community despite the lack of social interaction among members.

Does customization impact advertising effectiveness? An exploratory study of consumer perceptions of advertising in customized online environments

Customized online environments, such as content aggregators, are an emerging technology and little empirical research has been undertaken to investigate the effects of consumer exposure to advertising within these media environments. Using a 2 × 2 × 3 factorial design, this study examines the effect of customization, desire for control, and type of advertising on a consumers attitude toward advertising, content recognition, and behavioral intention for interacting with advertising. The results indicate that subjects who thought they were exposed to a customized media environment had greater behavioral intention for interacting with advertising. However, subjects who thought they were exposed to advertising via a non-customized online environment had a more positive attitude toward advertising than those who thought they were exposed to advertising through a customized environment. In summary, customized environments create a sense of engagement for consumers, however, the types of advertising used within these environments require further investigation to determine what is optimal. For high control consumers, degree of customization was not found to impact the recognition of media content. In turn, consumers with a low desire for control had reduced recognition of media content when they thought they were exposed to a customized environment.

Handbook of Research on Digital Media and Advertising: User Generated Content Consumption (1 volume)

Media professionals today are facing numerous changes within mass media that will continue to impact the creation and delivery of persuasive messages. The Handbook of Research on Digital Media and Advertising: User Generated Content Consumption bridges the gap between professional and academic perceptions of advertising in new media environments through defining the evolution of consumerism within the context of media change. Containing findings from international experts, this Handbook of Research provides coverage of practical issues related to consumer power shifts, economic issues related to media exposure, and definitions to understand the dynamics involved with consumerism.

Experiential ecommerce: A summary of research investigating the impact of virtual experience on consumer learning

In recent years, few questions have been of greater interest to consumer researchers, as well as to marketers of consumer products, than the viability of the internet as a platform for commercial transactions. At the heart of this debate is the issue of whether or not the internet provides anything that is substantially new or different from traditional business-to-consumer (B2C) channels. We believe that, indeed, the internet does provide some unique opportunities to marketers in their quest to better understand and ultimately influence their target customers. In particular, retailers on the internet have an unprecedented opportunity to personalize the shopping experience and control the shopping environment. In this chapter we will examine three specific psychological mechanisms that can play a central role in influencing the interaction between shoppers and recommendation agents in electronic marketplaces. PERSONALIZATION AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO INFLUENCE Thanks to Moore’s Law, marketers now have the ability to remember and respond to the tastes and preferences of many individual consumers. Advances in technology, and techniques for database marketing, have created the opportunity for retailers to resurrect business practices over one hundred years old. At that time, the local shop owner was able to develop individual relationships with each of his customers, providing them with personalized service and product recommendations. Don Peppers and Martha Rogers (1997) explain it this way: We are facing a paradigm shift of epic proportions – from the industrial era to the Information Age. As a result, we are witnessing a meltdown of the massmarketing paradigm that has governed business competition throughout the twentieth century. The new paradigm is one to one (1:1) – mandated by cheaper and faster data management, interactive media, and increasing capabilities forfor a grant to initiate this research and Theresa Cai and Harshavardhan Gangadharbatla for their invaluable help during the data collection. Consumers learn about products from the experience of interacting with people, objects and the environment. However, an experience is more than simply the passive reception of external sensations or subjective mental interpretations of a situation. Rather, an experience is the result of an ongoing transaction that gains in quality, intensity, meaning, and value integrating both psychological and emotional conditions (Mathur, 1971). These conditions are ultimately accomplished via the generation of thoughts and/or sensations brought together creating the experience (Hirshman, 1984). A product purchase is in many ways not the purchase of a physical good itself but of an experience that the product affords (Pine II and Gilmore, 1998). Thus, the role of consumer learning about a product prior to the purchase is mainly to assess what consumption experience the product can offer and how well it can meet the expectations of the anticipated experience (Hoch and Deighton, 1989). Research has documented that consumers learn about products through indirect experience, such as advertising, and via direct experience, such as product trial it has been speculated that the type of medium may limit the effect of advertising and a more powerful medium for communicating the details and experiences of a product, such as the Internet, could have a stronger impact on consumer learning (Moore and Lutz, 2000). Three-dimensional (3-D), multiuser , online environments constitute a new revolution of interactivity by creating compelling virtual experiences (Waller, 1997). McLuhan and McLuhan(1988) suggest that within any medium there is a connection between the human mind, the technology, and the environment that serves to immerse users. It is the interactive nature of the Internet that immerses consumers and offers the greatest potential to marketers because of the ability to offer user-controlled product interactive experiences (Schlosser and Kanfer, 2001). Since most products are 3-D objects that are experienced with the senses, the use of dynamic 3-D visualization in ecommerce is increasing as companies seek to give users a virtual experience of the product. The implications are that a 3-D virtual product experience is a simulation of a real or physical product experience and can be construed to be located between direct experience and indirect experience within the spectrum of consumer learning. To fully understand the impact of a virtual experience and the use of 3-D product …

The Adoption of Persuasive Internet Communication in Advertising and Public Relations Curricula

Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate the diffusion of Internet communication into the curricula of advertising and public relations programs. While the establishment of any new medium is a process that develops over time, the Internet has taken hold faster than other mass media. This explosion has caused many scholars to ask whether advertising and public relations curricula have kept pace. An online survey administered to a sample of advertising and public relations educators (n=253) explored the perceived attitude, adoption, and innovation attributes associated with persuasive Internet communication. The results indicate that educators have integrated persuasive Internet communication into their curricula, and many have adopted specialized courses in this topic. Compatibility, observability, and trialability predict the rates of adoption.