Betrayed by the Buzz? Covert Content and Consumer–Brand Relationships

By Christy Ashley, Hillary Leonard. 2009

116 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Brands are increasingly sponsoring online communications that do not identify their commercial source as a way to break through advertising clutter and to circumvent consumer cynicism toward traditional advertising. The results of lab studies indicate that these covert actions decrease trust in and commitment to brand users and that this effect is strongest when the brand user's emotional connection to the brand is threatened. Thus, use of covert marketing campaigns to overcome challenges with advertising may be done at the expense of the strongest consumer–brand relationships. Given the potential for loss of trust in and commitment to a brand in an environment in which brand relationships hold high value, brand marketers may have an incentive to discontinue covert marketing efforts without policy intervention. Alternatively, marketers could go to greater lengths to cover their tracks, which could have important implications for policy and consumer welfare.

Subfields: Marketing, Sociology and Political Science, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5429e39c91e8f59572a9de2127bad08cc68a1648

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Marketing

  1. M. Bügel
  2. Andrew T. Stephen
  3. Ruth N. Bolton
  4. Barak Libai
  5. Ko de Ruyter
  6. Hans Risselada
  7. Peter C. Verhoef
  8. P. K. Kannan

In Sociology and Political Science

  1. Andrew T. Stephen
  2. Ruth N. Bolton
  3. Barak Libai
  4. Ko de Ruyter
  5. Hans Risselada
  6. P. K. Kannan
  7. Lauren Grewal
  8. Hongshuang Li

In Strategy and Management

  1. Andrew T. Stephen
  2. Ruth N. Bolton
  3. Ko de Ruyter
  4. Hans Risselada

Citations in the corpus