Business- Research Study
Business- Research Study
This research paper has been devised to study the differential effectiveness of the consumer-generated ads over the conventional company ads. The conventional company ads are those, which are devised by the advertisement agency. It studies the effectiveness of the consumer-generated ads by setting up hypothesis and analyzing various factors that drive response for the consumer generated ads. Not only it is based on a theoretical framework related to marketing and advertisement mechanisms, but is also based on empirical data. The primary reason behind this study is to know why CGAs, which are less researched and evaluated, are becoming more effective in the web world as compare to the conventional television ads that are devised by ad companies. The reason behind the study is also to enable the companies to adopt the CGA platforms for running their promotional campaigns with increased effectiveness and for enhanced customer engagement.
Population and sample
The population of focus behind this study is the consumer generated ads themselves and their effectiveness for encouraging consumer engagement. For this purpose, one month of YouTube conversations or response posts were analyzed for eight different high profiled ads. Not only the frequency of the response for the ads was observed and recorded, but also the content of the responses were critically evaluated. The hypothesis behind carrying out this study is that there are four themes or factors, which serve in driving the effectiveness of the CGAs . These four factors are namely the trustworthiness of the ads, the identification of the ads with their creator, judgment of the viewer regarding the executional quality of the ads, and the engagement of the viewers with the ads. These are the themes from which five hypothesis have been derived regarding the differential effectiveness of CGAs.
Was the conclusion accepted or rejected?
The conclusion that has been derived in this study is that though there is a relation between the factors that drive the effectiveness of both the company ad and the CGAs, but it is also evident that there is differential effectiveness of the CGAs. Therefore, this means that the conclusion rejects the null hypothesis as the above-mentioned factors have their effect in driving the effectiveness of the CGAs .
Data collected and statistical tests
Two experiments and a survey were used after the explanatory discussion in the paper. The data collected was based on the posts on YouTube that were made in response to eight CGAs. Based on the response of the viewers, seventeen different attributes of the ads were studied and their effectiveness was evaluated . These attributes were in the form of ad quality, executional quality, lighting quality, sound quality, trustworthiness and so on. The responses were translated into statistical evaluations and then a comparison of their effectiveness was made to study which factors or attributes are stronger in driving the effectiveness of the CGAs.
Key findings
When we talk about the conclusions that have been drawn by the authors, they say that the CGAs have a differential effectiveness in contrast to the conventional ads that are devised by advertisement companies. The first factor they stress is that they induce more trustworthiness for the viewers as they believe or relate to the maker as between himself or herself. They derive such trustworthiness as they feel the ad to be more based on realism and experience of the maker. The quality of these ads is though less in comparison to the conventional ads, but the user does not pay much attention to that because they already have low expectations in terms of quality. They are more concerned about the content of the ad and are not much worried about the quality in the form of the budget, the lighting, the sound etc. They feel the impact with appropriate sound and lighting quality. Similarly, the authors have also stressed about the executional quality. Another conclusion that they have drawn is related to the customer engagement. The customer engagement level in the CGAs such as the YouTube ads is evidently high because of the instant source of feedback. They can instantly engage themselves in the CGAs by giving response as they view it.
Conclusion
Well based on what I have read in this research paper, and based on the current trends that show the increased involvement of masses in CGAs over social media platform, I agree with the authors that CGAs have a differential effectiveness in contrast to the conventional ads.
References
Lawrence , B., Fournier , S., & Brunel , F. (2013). When Companies Don’t Make the Ad: A Multimethod Inquiry Into the Differential Effectiveness of Consumer-Generated Advertising. Journal of Advertising, 42(4), 292-307. Retrieved February 16, 2014
