Through the maze of comparative advertising

A planning advertising grid tells you how to advertise certain products, it gives recommendations and tells you what you might want to consider. This is all based upon brand attitude and an advertising grid representing four different types of products. Comparative advertising is being recommended for one type of product. However, the practice shows that comparative advertising is being used for all kinds of products, and with success. This raises the question whether these advertising planning grids are complete. The theory also shows that comparative advertising as a concept is more extensive than suggested in this advertising planning grid. The assumption here is made whether these different types of comparative advertising could have a positive outcome for these different types of products. And thus the research question reads: to what extent is brand attitude, for different types of products, influenced by different types of comparative advertisements and does this calls for a change in the advertising planning grids? To answer this question, concepts as comparative advertising, the advertising planning grids, brand attitude and the hierarchy of effects models were all discussed and related to each other and this research in order to come up with different hypotheses. These were all based upon the different types of comparative advertisements and the different types of products distinguishable within the advertising planning grids. The three types of comparative advertisements are: a comparison made based on one dimension, a comparison made based on a unique feature absent with the competitive product, and a complete comparison made between the products by two brands. To find out whether these different types of comparative advertisements could have a positive effect on brand attitude for the different types of products an experiment was conducted among 140 participants. Each participant was asked to rate five items based on a brand. These items together ranked the brand attitude. The participant was asked to do this once again, but after seeing one of the twelve comparative advertisements belonging to that brand. This made it possible to find a possible shift of brand attitude after encountering a comparative advertisement. It turned out that three out of the six tested hypotheses had a significant positive result. Using a comparative advertisement which emphasizes on a unique feature of a product which is absent with the competitive product does have a positive outcome on brand attitude for two types of products: products which are low involved and informational, and products which are low involved and transformational. The last positive relationship found was for products which were high involved and informational. These product could benefit from comparative advertisements in which all the features of the own product and the product by the competitor are presented.