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Why Do Service Providers Employ Their Face-Shots in Marketing Communications?
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- Authors
- Issue Date
- 2008-06
- Citation
- Seoul Journal of Business, Vol.14 No.1, pp. 105-121
- Keywords
- signaling ; advertising ; advertising Content design ; yellow pages
- Abstract
- From billboards to newspapers, from TV to Yellow Pages, business
owners of retail establishments and services frequently include their
face-shots in their advertising to the public. Clearly, their face-shot
takes up space which, in turn, costs money. Thus, an important
question to ask is: are advertisers who include their face-shots receiving
a benefit that justifies their cost? Accordingly, in this research, we
develop the notion that the utilization of the service providers face is
able to credibly signal product quality via a bonding mechanism. In
particular, we examine if the signaling ability of the face-shot is higher
for credence goods, services that typically exhibit higher demand for
quality signals. In addition, we also investigate the ability of the face-shot to serve as a logo for the service. Analyzing a dataset containing
3299 yellow pages advertisements culled from seven city-pairs, we find
support for the bonding hypothesis but not for the logo hypotheses.
Implications for the design of marketing communications are also
discussed.
- ISSN
- 1226-9816
- Language
- English
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