As the first author of the paper “Divergent Versus Relevant Ads: How Creative Ads Affect Purchase Intention for New Products”, JIANG Hui, assistant researcher of the Department of Marketing, was accepted and published in the Journal of Marketing Research, the top international journal in the marketing field. The paper “Divergent Versus Relevant Ads: How Creative Ads Affect Purchase Intention for New Products” has been accepted and published by Journal of Marketing Research, the top international journal in marketing.

Journal: Journal of Marketing Research

All authors: Hui Jiang (School of Economics and Management, Tongji University), Paul Messinger (School of Business, University of Alberta), Yifei Liu (School of Information Management and Artificial Intelligence, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics), Qibin Lu (School of Information Management and Artificial Intelligence, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics), Shui-Qing Yang (School of Information Management and Artificial Intelligence, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics), Gang Li (Shandong Province, Qilu University of Technology) Computing Centre)

Keywords: advertising creativity, product novelty, self-reference, purchase intention, new product, narrative processing, analytical processing

Introduction to the main content of the paper

In recent years, new products such as smartphones, smart wristbands and new energy vehicles have emerged in an endless stream and continue to fill people’s lives. Although high-profile companies such as Apple, Huawei and Xiaomi have strongly promoted the use of creative advertising to promote new products, little is known about how creative advertising actually influences new product consumption decisions. This study finds that divergent ads are more effective for promoting incrementally new products, while relevant ads are more effective for promoting really new products. The reason is that both relevant (vs. divergent) creative ads and incrementally (vs. disruptive) new products lead to higher levels of self-relevant memories and experience retrieval, which link consumers to established cognitive networks of associations (i.e. self-referencing). Research has shown that self-reference exists in both narrative and analytical modes of information processing, and that there is competition for cognitive resources between these two modes of information processing. Because individuals have limited cognitive resources, the narrative and analytical modes of information processing tend to be inversely proportional to each other, resulting in an inverted U-shaped relationship for the self-reference effect. In other words, the combination of divergent (relevant) creative advertising and incrementally (disruptive) new products can make consumers’ self-reference at a medium level, i.e. the highest point of the inverted U-shaped curve of self-reference effect, and at this time consumers have the strongest willingness to buy new products.

This research deepens the application and understanding of creative advertising in the field of new product promotion, proposes and proves the dual-resource matching model of self-reference as the intrinsic mechanism of creative advertising influencing the purchase intention of new products, expands the self-reference effect, puts forward the “Goldilocks zone” (i.e., the inverted U curve) of self-reference effect, and systematically puts forward the self-reference relationship of creative advertising between the self-reference effect and the inverted U curve. It also systematically proposes a theoretical framework for creative advertising in the field of new product promotion. At the same time, this research confirms the role of nostalgic advertising and social media with strong relationship in the promotion of disruptive new products, and provides countermeasures and suggestions for the promotion of new product enterprises and the creative design of advertisers.

Research Experience Sharing

In today’s competitive market, the successful promotion of new products can greatly promote the sustainable development of enterprises, enhance their competitive advantages, open up new markets, and improve the quality and efficiency of economic development. Through multiple field experiments, laboratory experiments, shopping mall interception experiments and online experiments, the research team has spent more than 5 years exploring and deepening their understanding of the research problem, which not only confirms the value of creative advertising for new product acceptance, but also confirms the self-referential dual-resource matching model, expands the self-referential theory and its application areas, and provides a theoretical basis for creative advertising design and new product promotion strategy formulation.

Faculty Profile

JIANG Hui is a research assistant at Tongji SEM, a Ph.D. in management at Harbin Institute of Technology, a post-doctoral fellow in marketing at Zhejiang University, and a visiting scholar at the University of Alberta Business School. Dr. JIANG Hui has published more than 10 papers in Journal of Marketing Research, Telematics and Informatics, Computers in Human Behaviour, Systems Engineering and other high-level academic journals at home and abroad. He has led projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Social Science Foundation of China, the Humanities and Social Sciences Programme of the Ministry of Education, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, the Industry-University Co-operation Collaborative Education Programme of the Ministry of Education, and the High-end Foreign Expert Introduction Programme of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Research interests: consumer behaviour, new product adoption, green consumption, e-governance, etc.