Attitudes to Online AdvertisingNew Formats and New Perspectives stars

Abstract

Technological advances such as the mobile phone and the Internet have reshaped the advertising industry, where society, businesses and consumers have transformed their behaviour profiting from the new media of communication and advertising. In this context, engaging and creating long-term emotional bonds with consumers are essential as technologies enable a rapid two-way information exchange, which is the key factor in advertising. This doctoral thesis seeks to delve deeper into advertising formats and media under present-day conditions during the communication process. It also looks at advertisements from three perspectives that reflect the continuously changing and improving technologies, which requires that advertisers and researchers collaborate and work hand in hand. The first perspective analyses the effect of SMS advertising messages through mobile phones and smartphones working under the constraints of permission-based marketing. The replication of the well-known and widely cited paper by Tsang, Ho, and Liang in 2004 obtained some contradictory results; specifically, the only variable found to actually positively affect attitude was entertainment. The proposed model of attitudes, intentions and behaviour is interconnected. At the same time, permission-based mobile marketing is on the rise due to high exposure to advertisements. Mobile advertising plays a significant role in the digital world, where consumers respond and react according to the content of the message. The second perspective focuses on the gender encoding process through the use of original digital video format in online advertising. Content analysis is performed on 324 original digital videos that have won awards from professional marketers. The results show that there is no significant association between gender and any of the ten studied attributes (mode of presentation, credibility, role, age, argument type, reward type, product type, background, setting, and end comment). Hence, women and men are equally portrayed in non-stereotypical activities and roles. However, central figures are more likely to be men than women. It is worth highlighting the change in women’s role according to advertisers’ and marketers’ criteria, especially regarding original digital videos. The third perspective considers the process of communication with images and user feedback specifically on Instagram. Based on the stimulus-organism-response model, a content analysis is conducted of 1,094 pictures from 69 countries. Two different studies have been conducted, one by ordinary least squares and the other one by cross-country cluster. The results are consistent with the model, where attributes in Instagram photographs are associated with the success of a country’s image or the image of a tourist destination. The presence of people, animals and water have a positive impact on the engagement of Instagrammers, while the lack of authenticity and the constant exposure to photographs of the same country have the opposite effect. In fact, both studies on tourism and Instagram spotlight the relationship between likes and comments and the content of tourism promotion photographs on Instagram. The results aim at understanding users’ behaviour, thus, helping destination management organizations in general, and more specifically, countries. The doctoral thesis closes with discussions and main conclusions, contributions, managerial implications and recommendations for future lines of research.