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Introduction
Consumers are exposed to innumerable brand communication messages every day through television, radio, and print media. Overwhelmed by the information overload, consumers often create psychological defense mechanisms to avoid most of these messages (Rumbo, 2002). With growing skepticism toward advertising (Obermiller et al. , 2005), consumers are accustomed in ways that make them actively avoid and consciously perceive only 1-2 percent of the messages (Pringle, 2004). Also consumers are spending more time on the internet and social media (Hennig-Thurau et al. , 2010), thus becoming less accessible to advertisers via traditional media.
The unique characteristics of social media have posed significant challenges to traditional marketing communications frameworks (Valos et al. , 2016). Social media is motivating companies to create brand pages to interact with customers, acquire targeted customers, enhance customer relationships/engagement, create brand awareness, and promote products (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis, 2014). Consequently, companies are engaging in covert advertising (CA) to circumvent consumer skepticism, a protective mechanism that consumers use to guard themselves against advertising (Brown and Krishna, 2004). CA are anchored on the premise that people are generally skeptical of any business-provided sources of information, so even random endorsements by strangers on the street might provide consumers with more persuasive sales messages (Rotfeld, 2008).
CA occurs in both traditional (e.g. print, TV, movies) as well as new media (e.g. digital social media). Examples of CA in traditional media include advertorials (marketing messages disguised to appear as independently produced media content) and product placement (companies subtly promote their products through appearances in film or television programs). While there exists adequate research on aspects related to CA in traditional media (e.g. Darke and Ritchie, 2007; Petty and Andrews, 2008), thus far research on anonymity in combination with the use of brand-related content in an online or social media context has only been done in an indirect way (e.g. Weiss et al. , 2008). Therefore, this study investigates if the persuasion knowledge model (Friestad and Wright, 1994) is applicable to CA in the context of social media (YouTube). Specifically, the study examines if triggering knowledge about covert marketing changes the way consumers respond to an unfamiliar brand. Consumer response to brand is measured through communicator credibility, ad credibility, attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand,...