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Word-of-Mouth, Traditional and Covert Marketing: Comparative Studies

2015; Allied Academies; Volume: 19; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

1095-6298

Stefanie L. Boyer, Diane R. Edmondson, Brent L. Baker, Paul Solomon,

Digital Marketing and Social Media

INTRODUCTION Every day consumers are bombarded with advertising messages. Some estimates suggest that consumers are subjected to thousands of ads each day (Marsden, 2006; Martin and Smith, 2008; Pappas, 2000). With such a glut of sponsored messages permeating consumers' day-to-day lives, it makes intuitive sense that unless there is a reason for consumers to pay attention, they simply don't (Alba and Hutchinson, 1987). In other words, marketers are competing in an environment where the odds of getting their messages through to consumers are stacked against them. With such an abundance of advertising messages, how is a marketer to ensure his message is cutting through the clutter and being received? One solution embraced by an increasing number of marketing practitioners is the practice of covert marketing. Covert marketing is a sponsored marketing message that appears to have no sponsor. Walker (2004) gave the following example involving a group of friends gathered together on a summer weekend for a cookout. One of those friends spent much of the afternoon promoting his favorite kind of sausage. This friend was actually an agent of the company, surreptitiously promoting the sausage by not disclosing his company affiliation. Many of the guests tried the sausage based on their friend's recommendation. These guests, as well as those guests who heard their friend's sausage recommendations, were exposed to covert marketing. As illustrated above, covert marketing often masquerades as a word-of-mouth message, and is not otherwise revealed by the organization funding the campaign or the person propagating the word-of-mouth message. This strategy appears to offer marketers a solution to the problem of penetrating consumers' shields against an abundance of marketing and commercial noise. In today's society, the usage of covert marketing appears to be on the rise. BzzAgent, a Boston marketing firm who has touted itself as being the leading word-of-mouth marketing company, has approximately 400 million agents nationwide who voluntarily instigate conversations about goods and services. Prior clientele of BzzAgent include organizations such as L'oreal, Conagra Foods, Kraft Foods, Dunkin' Donuts, Hasbro, Disney, Dove, Clinique, Johnson & Johnson, Purina, PG Martin and Smith, 2008). Because of the increase in covert marketing and the limited empirical research that exists on the subject, the purpose of this manuscript is to bridge this gap by investigating when, where and why this type of marketing may (may not) be effective. In an effort to provide insight concerning the use of covert marketing strategies and consumers' reactions to these strategies, several research questions are proposed. First, does the use of covert marketing yield more positive brand and company evaluations and purchase intentions than traditional (overt) marketing strategies (i.e. those in which the promotion is clearly shown to have an organizational or company sponsor). …