Title: Measuring the impact of creative viral advertising content on hierarchy-of-effects: an application of structural equation modelling

Authors: Balpreet Kaur; Rishi Raj Sharma

Addresses: Department of Commerce and Business Management, DAV University, Jalandhar, India ' Department of Business Management, Guru Nanak Dev University Regional Campus, Gurdaspur, 143521, Punjab, India

Abstract: The study measured the impact of creative viral advertising content on consumers' response process. Based on the traditional hierarchy-of-effects model, a conceptual model was framed by considering new developments in advertising practices. The attempt here was made to identify the impact of creative viral advertising content on four stages: drawing the attention of the consumer, generation of interest in advertisement or brand advertised therein, product purchase intentions, and intentions to disseminate positive word-of-mouth (WOM) about advertised product/brand. SEM technique was applied to know whether the impact of creative viral advertising content is mediated through each succeeding hierarchy-of-effect stage. The results indicated that though the hierarchy-of-effects model is applicable, creativity, an independent variable, also has the strength to directly impact consumers' intents to purchase and diffuse positive WOM for the products/brands advertised. Hence, the study leaves implications for practitioners to redesign their advertising content to enhance the ad's attention-catching capacity, which will impact the consumers' intentions to share advertisement online.

Keywords: viral marketing; viral advertising; ad creativity; structural equation modelling; SEM; hierarchy-of-effects; word-of-mouth; WOM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIMA.2022.126718

International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, 2022 Vol.17 No.3/4, pp.353 - 369

Accepted: 19 Aug 2021
Published online: 03 Nov 2022 *

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