Research Yana Avramova

Abstract

International charity organizations reach out to people around the world with calls for helping those in need. Given the key role of private donations, understanding what makes charity appeals more or less effective in promoting helping behavior is crucial. Since charity communication often transcends national and linguistic borders, aiming to persuade both native and foreign language speakers, a vital question for non-profit organizations is how the use of a foreign language influences communication effectiveness in multilingual societies. Past research in linguistics and psychology shows that using a foreign language systematically influences information-processing, decision-making, and choice. Such foreign-language effects (FLE) demonstrate, for instance, that processing information in a foreign language reduces a number of decision biases (e.g., loss aversion, Hot Hand fallacy), induces lower risk and higher benefit perceptions, promotes utilitarian moral reasoning, and leads to more lenient judgments of transgressions of moral and social norms. Although a number of mechanisms have been proposed to underlie the FLE, the leading explanation for most findings pertains to reduced emotional resonance and reduced imagery in the foreign language. Surprisingly, almost no research exists on the implications of FLE for persuasive communication. Therefore, extending past work to the novel domain of non-profit marketing, we propose three experimental studies. Study 1 tests the impact of positively-framed and negatively-framed charity appeals presented in the native vs. foreign language. Study 2a and Study 2b go further to test whether language moderates two well-established phenomena in helping behavior – the identified victim effect and the identified intervention effect. Critically, in addition to the key outcomes – donation intention and donation amount – the proposed studies will also measure a number of mediating variables (positive and negative affect, sympathy for the victims, mental imagery vividness, perceived impact of the donation/intervention) in order to disentangle competing predictions and gain more insight into the processes driving FLE. In sum, the proposed research will advance our understanding of the factors that increase the effectiveness of charity appeals and of how using a foreign vs. native language affects perception, judgment and behavior. Importantly, our results will be relevant to practitioners, as they could help them design more effective social marketing campaigns, eventually contributing to human welfare.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Avramova Yana

Research team(s)

• Marketing

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Brand placement –the purposeful incorporation of brands into entertainment content– has been growing steadily for the last decade and is now also gaining ground in the realm of books. Although branded products are often used by writers to increase realism or to describe a character's lifestyle or personality, brands are sometimes included for commercial purposes. Many authors, marketing experts, and advertisers seem to agree on the acceptability and persuasive potential of brand placement in books. And yet, this topic is still severely understudied. The proposed research adopts an interdisciplinary perspective and experimentally investigates how placements are processed and how they influence brand and story responses. Specifically, it studies the impact of key placement factors (i.e., if a brand appears in the narration or dialogue of a story; the number of times a brand is mentioned) on brand evaluation in two media (text and film); the role of (1st, 3rd person) narrative perspective in text; and the effectiveness of placement disclosures. It also tests the psychological mechanisms driving these effects by measuring potential mediating variables (placement perceptions, critical processing, identification with characters, story engagement), and employs important, yet unstudied, outcome measures (willingness to pay, real brand choice; story and author perceptions). The findings have significant implications for both theory and practice (advertisers, marketers, policy-makers).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Dens Nathalie
• Co-promoter: De Pelsmacker Patrick
• Fellow: Avramova Yana

Research team(s)

• Marketing

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Marketers are increasingly using brand placement (a.k.a. product placement), the (paid) inclusion of branded products or brand identifiers through audio and/or visual means within mass media content (television shows, movies, books, songs, etc.) to deliver their commercial messages more persuasively than through traditional advertising. This research proposal extends two basic brand placement frameworks with seminal advertising effectiveness theories (e.g., persuasion knowledge, accessibility-diagnosticity, priming) to develop an integrative framework incorporating relevant brand placement characteristics that, until now, have largely been ignored. The research proposes a series of 4 studies, including 4 different types of moderators: characteristics of the brand placement (e.g., prominence, plot connection), context effects (e.g., programme perceptions), integrated marketing communication (e.g., interaction with other forms of communication, such as traditional advertising) and disclosure (the explicit revelation that brands in the programme or movie are placed in return for sponsorship or payment). In each of the studies, different dependent variables (brand recall, attitude toward the brand, purchase intention, attitude towards brand placements, consumer activation, etc.) are measured. That way, the proposed research should enable us to develop a comprehensive framework on the effectiveness of brand placement, studied from different perspectives. In the first study, relevant brand placement characteristics (e.g., length, position on screen, character interaction, etc.) are charted based on a content analysis. Through qualitative research (focus group discussions and in-depth interviews), we assess how viewers process brand placements with varied characteristics. Next, we test how combinations of different characteristics contribute to brand placement effectiveness in a series of field researches and experiments. A second study investigates to what degree the effectiveness of different brand placement characteristics may be context-dependent. Whether someone likes or dislikes the programme, can influence the reaction tpwards the placements in the programme. The programme genre (thriller, comedy) may also play a role. Through a number of field and lab experiments, we investigate the interaction between characteristics of the placement and characteristics of the context, on relevant effectiveness measures. In a third study, the interaction of brand placement and other communication formats (e.g., traditional advertising) is researched. How can communication enhance the effect of brand placements, or can communication for competing brands cause confusion? The content (e.g., endorser) and the timing of the communication are also considered. The fourth study includes a series of related experiments on the effects of disclosure (the explicit revelation that brands are placed in the programme or movie in return for sponsoring or payment) on various outcomes (persuasion knowledge, brand placement effectiveness, programme liking, attitude toward brand placements, etc.). The research will manipulate disclosure in different ways: disclosure vs. no disclosure, timing of disclosure (before, during, after programme), level of disclosure (generic, general product category, brand specific) and disclosure modality (visual, auditory, audiovisual).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Dens Nathalie
• Co-promoter: De Pelsmacker Patrick
• Fellow: Avramova Yana

Research team(s)

• Marketing

Project type(s)

• Research Project