Companies increasingly involve consumers in the process of developing advertising and other marketing actions. An important question that has not been explored is whether brands benefit from communicating to consumers who had not been involved in the co-creation process that a target ad was developed by a fellow consumer. The authors propose a skepticism–identification model of ad creator influence, which hypothesizes that disclosing to an audience that an ad was created by a consumer triggers two opposing effects: skepticism about the competence of the ad creator and identification with the ad creator. Four studies demonstrate that the effectiveness of disclosing advertising co-creation depends on factors that hinder skepticism and heighten identification with the ad creator. Specifically, attributing the ad to a consumer is shown to increase persuasion when the audience (1) has limited cognitive resources to scrutinize the message, (2) is given background information about the ad creator that enhances source similarity, and (3) has high loyalty toward the brand. The implications of these findings on marketing theory and practice are discussed.
BergerSeymour, M. (1977), “Social Comparison, Modeling, and Perseverance,” in Social Comparison Processes: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives, SulsJerry M., and MillerRichard L., eds. Washington, DC: Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, 209–234.
5.
BerthonPierre, PittLeyland, and CampbellColin (2008), “Ad Lib: When Consumers Create the Ad,”California Management Review, 50(4), 6–30.
6.
BrockTimothy (1965), “Communicator–Recipient Similarity and Decision Change,”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1(6), 650–54.
7.
BuschPaul, and WilsonDavid T. (1976), “An Experimental Analysis of a Salesman's Expert and Referent Bases of Social Power in the Buyer–Seller Dyad,”Journal of Marketing Research, 13(February), 3–11.
8.
CampbellJennifer D., and FaireyPatricia J. (1989), “Informational and Normative Routes to Conformity: The Effect of Faction Size as a Function of Norm Extremity and Attention to the Stimulus,”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(3), 457–68.
9.
ChaikenShelly, and MaheswaranDurairaj (1994), “Heuristic Processing Can Bias Systematic Processing: Effects of Source Credibility, Argument Ambiguity, and Task Importance on Attitude Judgment,”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66(3), 460–73.
10.
EaglyAlice, and ChaikenShelly (1984), “Cognitive Theories of Persuasion,” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 17, BerkovitzLeonard, ed. New York: Academic Press, 267–359.
11.
ErtimurBurçak, and GillyMary C. (2012), “So Whaddya Think? Consumers Create Ads and Other Consumers Critique Them,”Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26(3), 115–30.
12.
FournierSusan (1998), “Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research,”Journal of Consumer Research, 24(4), 343–73.
13.
FriestadMarian, and WrightPeter (1994), “The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How People Cope with Persuasion Attempts,”Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1), 1–31.
14.
GibsonBryan (2008), “Can Evaluative Conditioning Change Attitudes Towards Mature Brands? New Evidence from the Implicit Association Test,”Journal of Consumer Research, 35(1), 178–88.
15.
HecklerSusan E., and ChildersTerry L. (1992), “The Role of Expectancy and Relevancy in Memory for Verbal and Visual Information: What Is Incongruency?”Journal of Consumer Research, 18(4), 475–92.
16.
JiangLan, HoeggJoandrea, DahlDarren W., and ChattopadhyayAmitava (2010), “The Persuasive Role of Incidental Similarity on Attitudes and Purchase Intentions in a Sales Context,”Journal of Consumer Research, 36(5), 778–91.
17.
KardesFrank, R. (2002), Consumer Behavior and Managerial Decision Making.Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
18.
KelmanHerbert, C. (1961), “Process of Opinion Change,”The Public Opinion Quarterly, 25(1), 57–78.
19.
KieslerCharles A., and CorbinLee H. (1965), “Commitment, Attraction, and Conformity,”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2(6), 890–95.
20.
LiuWendy, and GalDavid (2011), “Bringing Us Together or Driving Us Apart: The Effect of Soliciting Consumer Input on Consumer's Propensity to Transact with an Organization,”Journal of Consumer Research, 38(2), 242–59.
21.
LynchJohn G.Jr., and SrullThomas K. (1982), “Memory and Attentional Factors in Consumer Choice: Concepts and Research Methods,”Journal of Consumer Research, 9(1), 18–37.
22.
MartinLeonard L., SetaJohn J., and CreliaRick A. (1990), “Assimilation and Contrast as a Function of People's Willingness and Ability to Expend Effort in Forming an Impression,”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(1), 27–37.
23.
McGuireWilliam (1985), “Attitudes and Attitude Change,” in Handbook of Social Psychology, 3d ed., LindzeyGardner, and AronsonElliot, eds. New York: Random House, 223–346.
Meyers-LevyJoan, and TyboutAlice M. (1997), “Context Effects at Encoding and Judgment in Consumption Settings: The Role of Cognitive Resources,”Journal of Consumer Research, 24(1), 1–14.
26.
PageMoreau C., and HerdKelly B. (2010), “To Each His Own? How Comparisons with Others Influences Consumers’ Evaluations of Self-Designed Products,”Journal of Consumer Research, 36(5), 806–819.
MuñizAlbert M.Jr., and O'GuinnThomas C. (2001), “Brand Community,”Journal of Consumer Research, 27(4), 412–32.
29.
MuñizAlbert M.Jr., and SchauHope Jensen (2005), “Religiosity in the Abandoned Apple Newton Brand Community,”Journal of Consumer Research, 31(4), 737–47.
30.
PallakSuzanne, R. (1983), “Salience of a Communicator's Physical Attractiveness and Persuasion: A Heuristic Versus Systematic Processing Interpretation,”Social Cognition, 2(2), 156–68.
31.
PettyRichard E., and CacioppoJohn T. (1986), Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change.New York: Springer-Verlag.
32.
PinelElizabeth C., LongAnson E., LandauMark J., AlexanderKira, and PyszcynskiTom (2006), “Seeing I to I: A Pathway to Interpersonal Connectedness,”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(2), 243–57.
33.
PreacherKristopher J., and HayesAndrew F. (2008), “Asymptotic and Resampling Strategies for Assessing and Comparing Indirect Effects in Multiple Mediator Models,”Behavior Research Methods, 40(3), 879–91.
34.
SchwarzNorbert, and BlessHerbert (1992), “Constructing Reality and Its Alternatives: An Inclusion/Exclusion Model of Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Social Judgment,” in The Construction of Social Judgments, MartinLeonard L., and TesserAbraham, eds. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 217–45.
35.
SchauHope Jensen, and AlbertM. MuñizJr. (2008), “Share the Brand: Communally-Embedded Consumer-Generated Content,” in Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 35, LeeAngela Y., and SomanDilip, eds. Duluth, MN: Association for Consumer Research, 209–212.
TajfelHenry, and TurnerJohn C. (1986), “The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior,” in Psychology of Intergroup Relations, 2d ed., WorchelS., and AustinW.G., eds. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 7–24.
38.
TaylorAaron B., MacKinnonDavid P., and TeinJenn-Yun (2008), “Tests of the Three-Path Mediated Effect,”Organizational Research Methods, 11(2), 241–69.
39.
WilsonElizabeth J., and SherrellDaniel L. (1993), “Source Effects in Communication and Persuasion Research: A Meta-Analysis of Effect Size,”Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 21(2), 101–112.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
