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Keywords Advertising, Effectiveness, Surveys, New Zealand
Abstract Despite their increasing use by advertisers, little research has examined the effectiveness of infomercials. This study explores the influence of infomercial advertisement design elements, such as the use of customer testimonials or expert comments, and consumer characteristics, such as level of prior interest in the advertised product, upon perceptions of advertising effectiveness. With the assistance of the New Zealand division of an international infomercial marketer, we conducted a survey of consumers who had bought products in response to viewing an infomercial. Based on 878 respondents, our findings indicate that infomercial advertising is more effective when employing expert comments, testimonials, product demonstrations, the use of target market models, celebrity endorsers, product comparisons, and bonus offers. Age also impacted how consumers view infomercials, as did the type of product purchased.
Introduction
Long regarded as a form of advertising targeting the gullible and naive (Chapman and Beltramini, 2000), infomercials have recently experienced a surge in popularity. Not only are infomercials increasingly popular (Edwards, 2001) but they are also attracting well known brands such as Apple, Nissan, Mercedes, Microsoft, Land Rover and Cadillac to advertise in this format (Edwards, 2001; Guilford, 1999; Wellner, 2000). Yet despite this increase, little research has examined infomercials. While recent research has examined the infomercial clearance process at television stations (Wicks and Abernethy, 2001) and the perceptions of the advertising profession towards infomercials (Chapman and Beltramini, 2000), there is a lack of research examining infomercial effectiveness. The exception is Singh et al. (2000) who used an experiment of student subjects to compare different advertising formats.
The purpose of this study is to examine what influences perceptions of infomercial advertising effectiveness among a sample of actual infomercial buyers. To this end, we examine infomercial elements (e.g. the use of product demonstrations), and consumer characteristics (e.g. levels of prior interest in the product purchased through an infomercial) across six product types (e.g. fitness machines and skin care cosmetics). The results offer insights for marketers and advertising strategists as to what influences consumers to regard an infomercial as effective. In other words, what features of an infomercial or a consumer determine whether an infomercial is viewed as interesting, entertaining, helpful and worth watching. Next, relevant literature is reviewed....