Marketing Ploy or Strategic Initiative: An Investigation of Deceptive Advertising: An Abstract

Abstract

Advertising surrounds us whether we are at work, engaging in social activities, or in our homes (Pollay 1986). The number of advertisements that a typical consumer is exposed to has increased from about 500 advertisements to as many as 5000 a day (Walker-Smith 2014). With an average of $120 billion spent on advertising each year in the USA, it is critical that an advertisement be able to cut through the clutter and capture consumers’ processing attention (Campbell 1995). In the face of this challenge, marketers have become more resourceful at enhancing the attractiveness of their marketplace offerings (Romani 2006) and arousing interest and building trust so consumers buy their products (Zhou 2012). While advertising is intended to inform, persuade, or remind consumers about a beneficial product, there is the potential for consumers to fall prey to the unethical manipulation (i.e., deception) of some advertising executions (Amyx and Amyx 2011). Deception in advertising occurs when a marketer creates communication that depicts an incorrect expectation for the attributes of the promoted products and services (Held and Germelmann 2014). Given the abundance of advertising messages, my dissertation examines the phenomenon of deceptive advertising from varying research approaches in three essays. For my dissertation, I will use a methodological triangulation approach, which involves using multiple methods to study a phenomenon (Bekhet et al. 2012). The multiple methods utilized will be: (1) a qualitative study, (2) a meta-analysis, and (3) an experimental investigation of deceptive advertising. In my first essay, a qualitative method was employed to investigate the domain of deceptive advertising. A series of in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with advertising practitioners, who are involved and/or have experience with the creation and/or execution of advertising communication, to obtain their perspectives on issues concerning deceptive advertising. In my second essay, I undertake a meta-analysis to better understand the academic research that contributes to this literature base, examining 183 effect sizes of deceptive advertising from 34 studies published over the past 40 years. The third essay builds on the first two by empirically testing a conceptual model of the impact of deceptive advertising. Specifically, I intend to examine the role of skepticism and the type of company response, following accusations of deceptive advertising, and its impact on the relationship between deceptive advertising and purchase intentions.