New Media Interactive Advertising vs . Traditional Advertising

rrrmrrxvivt This research explores the effectiveness of interactive advertising on a new medium platform. Like the presence in industry and the media themselves, the academic research stream is fairly new. Our research seeks to isolate the key feature of interactivity from confounding factors and to begin to tease apart those situations for which interactivity might be highly desirable from those situations for which traditional advertising vehicles may be sufficient or superior. We find that the traditional linear advertising format of conventional ads is actually better than interactive advertising for certain kinds of consumers and for certain kinds of ads. In particular, we find that a cognitive “matching” of the system properties (being predominately visual or verbal) and the consumer segment needs (preferring their information to be presented in a visual or verbal manner) appears to be critical. More research should be conducted before substantial expenditures are devoted to advertising on these interactive media. These new means of communicating with customers are indeed exciting, but they must be demonstrated to be effective on consumer engagement and persuasion. INTERACTIVE MARKETING SYSTEMS are enjoying explosive growth, giving firms a plethora of ways of contacting consumers (e.g., kiosks, Web pages, home computers). In these interactive systems, a customer controls the content of the interaction, requesting or giving information, at the attributelevel (e.g., a PC’s RAM and MHz) or in terms of benefits (e.g., a PC’s capability and speed). A customer can control the presentation order of the information, and unwanted options may be deleted. The consumer may request that the information sought be presented in comparative table format, in video, audio, pictorial format, or in standard text. Increasingly, customers can also order products using the interactive system. These new media are no fad, and while they are only in the infancy of their development, they are already changing the marketplace (cf. Hoffman and Novak, 1996). The hallmark of all of these new media is their irlteuactivity-the consumer and the manufacturer enter into dialogue in a way not previously possible. Interactive marketing, as defined in this paper, is: “the immediately iterative process by which customer needs and desires are uncovered, met, modified, and satisfied by the providing firm.” Interactivity iterates between the firm and the customer, eliciting information from both parties, and attempting to align interests and possibilities. The iterations occur over some duration, allowing the firm to build databases that provide subsequent purchase opportunities tailored to the consumer (Blattberg and Deighton, 1991). The consumer’s input allows subsequent information to be customized to pertinent interests and bars irrelevant communications, thereby enhancing both the consumer experience and the efficiency of the firm’s advertising and marketing dollar. As exciting as these new interactive media appear to be, little is actually known about their effect on consumers’ consideration of the advertised products. As Berthon, Pitt, and Watson (1996) state, “advertising and marketing practitioners, and academics are by now aware that more systematic research is required to reveal the true nature of commerce on the Web” or for interactive systems more generally. Our research is intended to address this need, and more specifically to focus on the effects of interactivity. We investigate interactive marketing in terms of its performance in persuading consumers to buy the advertised products. We wish to begin to understand whether interactive methods are truly superior to standard advertising formats as the excitement about the new media would suggest. Alternatively, perhaps there are some circumstances for which traditional advertising is more effective. Certainly it would not be desirable to channel the majority of one’s advertising resources toward interactive media until they are demonstrated to be superior persuasion vehicles. To this end we present an experimental study comparing consumer reactions to products advertised through an interactive medium with re-