Comparative advertising strategy for market leaders

Businesses have been relying increasingly on comparative advertising as a marketing communication device. However, there is a controversy as to whether market leaders should use such advertising copy strategy.

A four-factor factorial design (2x2x2x3) was developed. The first factor corresponded to the market environment context and comprised two levels -- competition and retaliation. The second factor also had two levels -- comparative and noncomparative advertising copy types. The third factor included two types of claim statements — product attribute and market standing. The final factor comprised three levels of leader's market dominance — weak, moder ate, and strong.

The conceptual framework of this study was based on the S-O-R paradigm, and five moderating variables were used: message-response involvement, expertise, attitude toward the ad, advertiser disparagement, and loyalty/commitment to the leader's brand.

Finally, three sets of dependent variables were used in the assessment of the appropriateness, fairness, and effectiveness of comparative advertising for market leaders.

The results indicate that for the ad-related covariate-adjusted dependent variables, agreement with comparative advertising was more favorable when used in a v retaliative market environment context. However, the noncomparative advertising copy type was evaluated as better than the comparative one in either market environment context. Finally, the comparative product attribute advertisement was perceived by subjects as more informative and more valuable.

The advertiser-related covariate-adjusted dependent variables (perception of the advertiser's fairness and attitude toward the advertiser) showed, as expected, no leader's market dominance main effect. Contrary to expectation, the interaction effects between the advertising copy type factor and the leader's market dominance factor were not significant for either measure.

The brand-related dependent variables indicated that the comparative product attribute advertisement was the best approach for achieving brand differentiation in the marketplace. The results on the covariate-adjusted attitude toward the brand measure were inconclusive. Finally, the results on the covariate-adjusted conative measure showed the product attribute claim statement to be better than the market standing claim statement for developing positive behavioral intentions toward the brand.