Online advertising disclaimers in unregulated markets: use of disclaimers by multinational and local companies in the Brazilian toy industry

ABSTRACT

Researchers have documented whether and how companies use advertising disclaimers in regulated markets. We complement the extant work by analysing a sample of 449 online toy advertisements targeting children in Brazil, a largely unregulated market. Results show that multinational corporations are more likely to include disclaimers in their online ads than local Brazilian companies. Further analyses reveal, however, that advertising disclaimers used by multinational subsidiaries have more distractors that reduce viewer comprehension. Our research contributes to the fields of advertising and institutional theory by being the first to document whether and how multinational subsidiaries use disclaimers in online ads targeting an unregulated market.

KEYWORDS:

• Disclaimers
• advertising
• institutional environment
• multinational corporations
• Latin America

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Stacey Malek for help in editing the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministério da Educação via Programa de Educação Tutorial.