Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Toncar, Mark
• Fetscherin, Marc

Titel

A study of visual puffery in fragrance advertising

Ist Teil von

• European journal of marketing, 2012-02, Vol.46 (1/2), p.52-72

Ort / Verlag

Bradford: Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Purpose - This paper aims to investigate visual exaggerations of fragrance advertisements by comparing subjects' expectations resulting from print ads to their subsequent product evaluations. It then considers whether the actual scents fall short, meet or exceed these expectations.Design methodology approach - By means of a semiotic analysis the authors capture the corresponding literary attributes of the ads to develop adjective pairs describing the meaning of the ads. Interviews are conducted to assess the meaning that consumers draw from the fragrance ads and the authors supplement these findings by performing a blind olfactory product evaluation of the fragrances. Paired sample t-tests are used to compare subjects' ad expectations to their subsequent product evaluation of the actual scent.Findings - These results show that the visual cues and imagery in the fragrance ads appear, under certain conditions, to result in product expectations that exceed actual product evaluations, suggesting the existence of visual puffery. The authors also found that the more abstract descriptors of the ad resulted in significantly higher expectations, while the more concrete descriptors resulted in significantly lower expectations than the actual product evaluation.Research limitations implications - A small sample size of homogenous consumers limits the generalizability of the results. No measures of attitude effectiveness were taken.Practical implications - Visual puffery may be effective and help marketers, even in countries where verbal puffery is illegal, to use another means to reach consumers.Originality value - This paper investigates an under-researched area in advertising. A multi-method approach and primary data are used to assess subjects' ad expectations of a fragrance and the actual product evaluation and demonstrate the existence of visual puffery.