Consumer empowerment in interactive advertising and eWOM consequences: The PITRE model

ABSTRACT

Modern users demand control over their advertising experience and a sense of empowerment throughout the communication process. In response, some platforms have introduced online features that increase users’ control by facilitating ad interaction and electronic word of mouth (eWOM), such as YouTube’s skippable advertising. Using this prototypical example, the current study develops and proposes a novel, sequential framework that accounts for product involvement, intrusiveness, time watching the ad, recall, and eWOM (PITRE) to describe tactics to increase advertising effectiveness through consumer empowerment. Consumers’ involvement with advertised products reduces their perceptions of intrusiveness and enhances their positive ad and brand eWOM intentions. Ad intrusiveness instead increases ad-skipping behaviour and hinders ad and brand dissemination. Greater time watching the ad increases brand recall and eWOM intentions, though users do not need to recall the brand to share related ads. These findings offer suggestions for professionals seeking to establish effective online advertising strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Consumer empowerment
• skippable advertising
• ad effectiveness
• eWOM
• YouTube

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful for the financial support received from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (ECO2016-76768-R) and the European Social Fund and the Government of Aragon (S46).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [ECO2016-76768-R]; European Social Fund and the Government of Aragon [S20_17R]

Notes on contributors

Daniel Belanche

Daniel Belanche holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration and is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). His research interests include e-commerce and e-government user oriented management, social identities, advertising, emotions, and decision processes. His studies have been presented at scientific conferences and published in journals such as Journal of Marketing Communications, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Information & Management, Computers & Education, Journal of Service Management, or Psychology & Marketing.

Carlos Flavián

Carlos Flavián holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration and is Full Professor of Marketing at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). His research lines are focused in consumer behavior, social networks and user perceptions. He has published articles in several academic journals specialized in marketing and information systems: Journal of Interactive Marketing, Internet Research, Information & Management, Computers in Human Behavior, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Marketing Communications, etc. Currently, he is the Editor-in-Chief of the Spanish Journal of Marketing. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7118-9013

Alfredo Pérez-Rueda

Alfredo Pérez-Rueda holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration and is Associate Professor of Marketing in the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). After years of professional dedication to consumer services and neurotechnology development, he is integrating innovative market approaches with traditional marketing research methods. His current research interests include neuroscience applications to marketing, consumer psychology, online advertising, and more specifically emotions and users’ reactions to technology based stimuli. His studies have been presented in scientific conferences and published in journals such as Journal of Interactive Marketing, Telematics and Informatics, Spanish Journal of Marketing and Government Information Quarterly. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0211-5568