The impacts of comparative ads used by retailers to compare their store brands with national brands

PurposeThe research aim is to investigate the impacts of comparative ads used by retailers to compare the prices of their store brand (SB) products with those of equivalent national brand (NB) products. More specifically, this research examines if consumers perceive retailers as legitimate when they use comparative ads to compare the prices of their SB products to those of equivalent NB products, and how effective are these comparative ads in terms of actual purchases. This research also explores for which SB type (economy, standard or premium) and consumers are comparative ads most effective.Design/methodology/approachThis research investigates consumers' reactions to comparative ads used by retailers to compare the prices of their SB products with those of similar NB products through an experiment within a store laboratory. A between-subject design has been used. The participants of the first/second/third group (n1 = 93/n2 = 92/n3 = 91) were exposed to ads comparing the prices of retailer's economy/standard/premium SB food products with their equivalent NB food products, in the same product category. The participants of each group carried out a shopping trip in the store laboratory.FindingsConsumers consider retailers legitimate when they use comparative ads. This favourable evaluation improves their attitude towards these ads. However, the impact of retailers' legitimacy of (1) means, (2) objectives and (3) historical legitimacy on consumers' attitude towards comparative ads depends on the SB type (economy, standard and premium). By contrast, comparative ads are effective in terms of consumers' attitude towards these ads and towards SBs, along with purchase intention and actual purchases of these brands, whatever the SB type. Lastly, this research highlights that comparative ads for SBs are mainly directed at consumers with high levels of price consciousness and resistance to NBs.Research limitations/implicationsThis research only tested the impact of direct comparative advertising and an extrinsic attribute (price). The research experiment was conducted on a convenience sample, which limits its external validity.Practical implicationsThis research encourages retailers to use comparative advertising for their SBs (economy, standard and premium) for several reasons. First, this study suggests that comparative advertising is an effective tool for retailers to shape or improve consumers' attitude towards SBs, via their attitude towards comparative ads. Second, this research proposes that comparative advertising contrasting the prices of SB products with those of NB products could increase retailers' in-store sales of their SBs. Lastly, this research underlines that comparative advertising is particularly effective for consumers with high levels of price consciousness and resistance to NBs.Originality/valueThis research supplements previous research in the field of SBs and comparative advertising. Previous research on comparative advertising has examined NBs exclusively (Dianoux et al., 2013; Beard, 2018). Comparisons between SBs and NBs are lacking. This research thus validates the use of this specific form of communication for SBs, given the paucity of studies of the effects of the use of mass media communication on SBs (Nenycz-Thiel and Romaniuk, 2014; Gendel-Guterman and Levy, 2017).

Comparative Advertising: Proposed Guidelines for Middle Marketers

This article presents a review of comparative advertising from a theoretical perspective and uses a combination of literature review and content analysis as a research methodology. The main objective of the article is to propose a legislative framework for marketers in the Middle East for using comparative advertising. Advertising plays a significant role in promoting and marketing products and brands. Comparative advertising affects consumer behaviour, decision making and consumerism following the ethical standards of advertising which control the form of competition between products which affects the brand image and the relation between consumers and the products. While competition between brands becomes hostile in some cases, the purpose of competitive or comparative advertising is to compare the entity of a product to the entity of its competitor on the basis of one or more product characteristics, as part of an advertising campaign. Known to have two different types: direct and indirect, where the name of the competitor is specifically mentioned, and superiority is established over them within the direct form, as for the indirect the product places superiority over its competitors without explicitly mentioning the name, which is widely seen in the Middle East advertising campaigns. This research aims to study the ethical standards of comparative advertising, implications of direct comparative advertising on consumer behaviour through content analysis of comparative ads to set guidelines for using other product’s name or trademark in advertising within the Middle East. The lack of availability of the empirical data on comparative advertising in the Middle Easts presents both a challenge and an opportunity for academicians. The paper concludes with the notion that comparative advertising is an effective way to attract consumers, and it is recommended to be used in the Middle East with the proposed guidelines.

Comparative versus Noncomparative Advertising: A Meta-Analysis

Previous research and reviews on comparative advertising report mixed results. The authors report the results from a meta-analysis that examines the efficacy of comparative advertising. The analysis shows that comparative ads are more effective than noncomparative ads in generating attention, message and brand awareness, levels of message processing, favorable sponsored brand attitudes, and increased purchase intentions and purchase behaviors. However, comparative ads evoke lower source believability and a less favorable attitude toward the ad. Additional analyses of moderator variables find that market position (sponsor, comparison, and relative), enhanced credibility, message content, and type of dependent measure (relative versus nonrelative) affect some of the relationships between advertising format and cognition, brand attitudes, and purchase intentions. New brands comparing themselves to established brands appear to benefit most from comparative advertising.

Shaping the Route to Attitude Change: Central versus Peripheral Processing through Comparative versus Noncomparative Advertising

A two-group LISREL model was used to test the hypothesis that comparative ads tend to be processed centrally whereas noncomparative ads tend to be processed peripherally. Results show that AAd is a significant predictor of AB only in the noncomparative case, whereas AB-conation consistency is higher for comparative ads.

Associative Positioning Strategies through Comparative Advertising: Attribute versus Overall Similarity Approaches

The authors compare the relative effectiveness of comparative/noncomparative and product-based/non-product-based advertising in the implementation of an associative strategy for cognitive brand positioning. Two metaconstructs, cognitive accuracy and cognitive clarity, are defined, each within an attitude model and a probabilistic multidimensional scaling model. The results from these very different methodological and conceptual approaches indicate that direct comparative advertisements are superior in engendering overall brand positioning, whereas only product-based direct comparative ads are superior in engendering brand positioning at the attribute level, and only in terms of positioning clarity.