A Form of Communication

Advertising as a form of communication intended to persuade its viewers, readers or listeners to take some action. It usually includes the name of a product or service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer, to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume that particular brand. Modern advertising developed with the rise of mass production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has different connotation related to the different people related to the field of advertising. To the CEO of a corporation, advertising is an essential marketing tool that helps create brand awareness, loyalty and stimulates demand. To an art director in an advertising agency it is a creative expression of an advertising concept. Advertising related issues most often are left to the discretion on the viewer. Some might perceive these issues as ethical while others may loathe the advertisements on liquor and alcohol. Although the Indian government has taken a moral stand of banning the advertisements of these substances, but the manufacturers of these products have resorted to something called as surrogate advertising.

Surrogate Advertising is done when the original product is not allowed to advertise itself on mass media. In India, alcohol brands are not allowed to give advertisements on television, so alcohol marketing firms use surrogate products like mineral water, soda, juice to hit consumers with the brand name. The brand name of the alcohol product is the same as the surrogate product. Kingfisher advertising packaged water, liquor manufacturers like Bacardi advertising compiled music CD's and Jagjit Industries advertising Aristocrat Premium apple juice are some of the prime examples of surrogate advertising in India. When people view these advertisements they associate themselves with these products. The extent to which Kingfisher is successful in this strategy is the topic which is being studied in this paper.

Objectives/Research Questions:

Our main objective is "to evaluate the impact of surrogate advertising by Kingfisher by measuring its imact on the relationships between Brand Awareness, Brand Attitude and Brand Image amongst consumers".

Literature Review & Hypothesis:

The review of literature shows that a number of studies have been conducted, especially in developed countries, on the ethical dimensions of surrogate advertising, (Zanot and Pincus, 1983; Hunt and Vitel, 1986). Few studies have been carried out to measure the effectiveness of surrogate advertising by products such as liquor and tobacco. But these studies were conducted in countries where the advertising of such products is not banned. Surrogate advertising is a fairly recent phenomenon emerging in countries where direct advertising of such products is banned completely.

We begin by examining the impact of surrogate advertising of alcohol brands (Parulekar, 2005) on their brand equity (as defined by Keller 1993). The Government of India banned advertising of alcoholic beverages and cigarettes vide Rule 7(2) of the Cable Television Networks Rules 1999. In response, marketers of alcohol brands resorted to advertising of non-alcoholic beverages, sports gear, bottled water and a host of other alcohol-unrelated products as extensions of their alcohol brands. This form of advertising is now referred to as "surrogate advertising".

Brand Awareness:

Brand awareness has been an important and often used construct for researchers assessing advertising and sponsorship effectiveness (e.g., Johar, Pham, & Wakefield, 2006; Keller, 1993, 2003, 2008; Lardinoit & Derbaix, 2001; Macdonald & Sharp, 2003; Sandler & Shani, 1993). Keller (1993, 2008) pointed out that brand awareness, or consumers' ability to recall and recognize a brand from memory, is an important factor in the consumer decision-making process. For example, it is important that consumers are able to retrieve the name of the brand when they think of a particular product category.

Brand Awareness consists of brand recall and brand recognition and brand recall can be further divided into aided recall and unaided recall (Zinkhan, Locander & Leigh 1986). Brand Recall is the extent to which a brand name is recalled as a member of a brand, product or service class, as distinct from brand recognition (Leigh & Menon, 1986). Brand Recognition reflects the ability of a consumer to see a particular brand as an established brand and not as a brand which they are seeing for the first time. Brand awareness measures the accessibility of the brand in memory. Brand awareness can be measured through brand recall or brand recognition. Brand recall reflects the ability of consumers to retrieve the brand from memory when given the product category, the needs fulfilled by the category, or some other type of probe as a cue. Brand recognition reflects the ability of consumers to confirm prior exposure to the brand (Miladian, Hossein, and K. Nagendra Badu., 2009). In addition, brand awareness is important as it alone can affect consumers' decisions about brands in a consideration set (Keller, 1993). This is especially true for low-involvement products (e.g., soap) as consumers are likely to minimize their decision-making efforts (Keller, 1993, 2008). Consumers attempt to save time and cognitive effort, by selecting a brand they know (Macdonald & Sharp, 2003) or with which they are familiar (Aaker, 1991).

Brand Image:

Brand image is variously defined as "the set of beliefs held about a particular brand" (Kotler, 1988, p. 197) or "a set of associations, usually organized in some meaningful way" (Aaker, 1992, pp. 109-10).The second school, variously termed the brand image school, (Joyce, 1967; Ogilvy, 1963), humanistic advertising (Lannon and Cooper, 1983) and right-hand side of brain approach (McDonald, 1992) has at its core a more symbolic, intuitive and emotional view of products and advertising in the scheme of consumer decision making. Brand Image is the overall perception of a product which the consumers have. It is basically the kind of association which they develop between the product attributes (existing as well the non-existing but desired) and the brand name. Brand Image is built through a period of time and advertisement plays a large role in this.

Brand Awareness and Brand Image:

Brand awareness is also a necessary step for creating an association with the image of a brand. Without awareness of a brand, no other form of communication effects (e.g., brand attitude, brand images, and brand experience) can occur (Aaker, 1991; Keller, 1993, 2003, 2008; Macdonald & Sharp, 2003). Keller (1993, 2003, 2008) explained that in addition to brand awareness, these effects comprise brand knowledge and they serve as the source of brand equity

.

Brand awareness and brand preference will affect the core brand image (Shwu-Ing Wu & Chen-Lien Lo. 2009) and is positively related to core-brand attitude (Kardes and Kalyanaram,1992; Alpert and Kamins, 1995).

Various theories on advertising and strategy have stated the positive brand awareness will lead to heightened brand image. This is a part of the well established Communication Strategy (Percy, Larry, Rossiter, John R., Elliott, Richard, Strategic Advertising Management, 2001). Four communication effects have been discussed in the work of Rossiter and Percy, and it will be from these effects that the following communication objectives were drawn: category need,brandawareness,brandimage builfing, andbrand purchase intention. Category need refers to the target audience's feeling that they would like a particular product or service in order to satisfy a specific need. It is important to remember here that category need is a perception, and therefore it can be established by the advertiser. By successfully establishing a belief in the target audience's mind that links the product category and a felt need, the advertiser can stimulate primary demand for the product category. Category need is the communication effect that causes primary demand. Brand awareness is the target audience's ability to identify a brand within a category in sufficient detail to purchase or use it. We have already seen that at the product category level consumers will not buy unless there is a perceived category need. At the brand level, consumers cannot buy unless they are first made aware of the brand. As a result, brand awareness must always be considered first, before any other communication effect.

Hence we propose the following hypothesis:

H1: Brand Awareness and Brand Image are positively related.

Surrogate Advertising and Brand Awareness, Brand Image:

The cue actually used by the consumer in place of another to evaluate alternatives may be called a "surrogate indicator" (Cohen, 1972). Brand awareness has been one of the most important ways of assessing the success of any marketing campaign. The available research literature on Brand awareness explores a variety of issues like factors affecting Brand Awareness of Virtual Advertising (Tsuji, Bennet & Leigh, 2009), study on Brand Awareness towards common Hair Shampoo brands (Kathuria & Jit, 2009). Therefore, the impact of marketing and advertising campaigns on Brand Awareness has already been studied by various researchers. Although cognitive awareness of Brands has been measured effectively to determine the strength of marketing and advertising campaigns, the effect of surrogate advertising on Brand Awareness has not been explored in developing countries. A research paper measuring this becomes all the more significant because a lot of industries like liquor and tobacco have resorted to advertising their products via this method in India. A few examples of such Brands could be Kingfisher, Bacardi etc. A research paper which attempts to explore this territory is Consumer Psychographics and Surrogate Advertising: An application of multiple discriminant analysis (Sharma & Chander, 2007), but this paper too falls short on measuring the impact of surrogate advertising on Brand Awareness levels. Keeping the deficiencies in the existing literature in mind we attempt to study the impact of surrogate advertising on Brand Awareness.

We went through literature to examine the effect of advertising on brand image. The function of advertising is to create the symbolism and imagery around the product which will result in a relationship between the brand and the consumer. The consumer is seen as active, knowledgeable, sophisticated and involved in the process of giving meaning to brands. Brand choice is based on emotional and intuitive feelings about brands, their images and meanings for consumers and how these brands satisfy consumer needs and seem to fit into the consumer's relationship with his/her world. Based on the literature, we have arrived at 2 main functions of advertising on brand image. The first function is largely informational in character in that performance specifications of the brand are presented. The second function is to imbue the brand with human-like rather than mechanistic performance-oriented values.

Brand image is the perception which the consumer holds of the product and its attributes (Cohen, 1972). Essentially perception is built through environmental cues and it is here that surrogate indicators through advertisements can play a very important role. The consumer often lacks complete information about the products and to fill this gap surrogate indicators play a crucial role. For eg: price can be seen as factor determining quality. The customer is dependent on these even more when he/she has not used the product before and in such cases perception of the product plays an even more important role. Similarly there are various indicators which effect the perception which the consumer builds. Some of these are colour (Kingfisher Beer uses red colour for its bottles and the same can be found on the drinking water bottles as well), symbols and endorsements which are shown in the advertisements. When the consumer cannot make use of proper evaluative criteria to compare and select brands, it is these cues which then guide him to make his perception.

We were able to site numerous research papers on the ethical aspect of surrogate advertising for alcohol and tobacco in India but hardly any on the relation between surrogate advertising and the corresponding brand awareness and brand image. This is used as a strategy to advertise products like liquor or tobacco—the advertisement of which otherwise, is banned in our country (Sharma & Chander, 2007). It relates to advertising by duplicating the brand image of one product extensively to promote another product of the same brand. When consumers look at these advertisements, they associate these with banned products. Hence, such products are indirectly advertised, and therefore, influence their behaviour. There is no doubt that the hidden call for alcohol consumption behind the surrogate advertisements is not escaping the eyes of viewers of the world's fourth highest liquor consuming country. Their paper discusses the psychographics of the target audience since they are the final evaluators of advertising. The implications thus, are left for the advertisers to modify and redesign their advertising strategies in accordance to the consumer psychographics, so that they can find a way out which is more ethical and positive for the society or their target market rather than resorting to surrogate advertising.

A significant negative impact on the brand awareness level and brand association set was found for 4 out of the 6 alcohol brands evaluated (Parulekar, 2005). The common factor for these 4 brands was that they were non-beverage extensions. The author concludes that the extent of dilution of brand equity is a function of prior brand exposure, the surrogate category chosen and articulation of advertising for the surrogate product.

This suggests that surrogate advertising has two effects on the mind of the consumer. First, it dilutes the recall of the actual product and focuses the consumer's attention on the surrogate product (for eg. Consumers' attention might get diverted to Kingfisher Mineral Water which is the surrogate product from Kingfisher Beer, which is the actual product the UB Group is trying to advertise). Secondly, as stated above, this may lead to ethical implications where certain consumers think it is unethical for companies to adopt this strategy and lead to weakening the relationship between brand awareness and brand image. This leads to our second hypothesis:

H2: Post exposure to Surrogate Advertising, the relationship between Brand Awareness and Brand Image would get weakened.

Model:

The objective of the research is to study the effect of Surrogate Advertising done by Kingfisher on the relationships between Brand Attitude, Brand Image and Brand Awareness of Kingfisher. The above model has been proposed for the same. The independent variable (IV) is Brand Awareness, which will be used to gauge its effect on the dependent variables (DV) Brand Image and Brand Attitude.The moderating variable is surrogate advertising.

Brand Attitude:

Brand attitudes are defined as consumers' overall evaluations of a brand (Wilkie, 1986). Brand attitudes are important because they often form the basis for consumer behaviour (e.g., brand choice). A widely accepted approach to capture brand attitude is based on a multi-attribute formulation in which brand attitudes are a function of the associated attributes and benefits that are salient for the brand. Fishbein and Ajzen (1975; Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980) proposed what has been probably the most influential multi-attribute model to marketing (Bettman, 1986). This expectancy-value model views attitudes as a multiplicative function of (1) the salient beliefs a consumer has about the product or service (i.e., the extent to which consumers think the brand has certain attributes or benefits) and (2) the evaluative judgment of those beliefs (i.e., how good or bad it is that the brand has those attributes or benefits).

Attributes are those descriptive features that characterize a product or service-what a consumer thinks the product or service is or has and what is involved with its purchase or consumption. Product-related attributes are defined as the ingredients necessary for performing the product or service function sought by consumers. Hence, they relate to a product's physical composition or a service's requirements. Product-related attributes vary by product or service category. Non-product-related attributes are defined as external aspects of the product or service that relate to its purchase or consumption. The four main types of non-product-related attributes are:

1. Price information.
2. Packaging or product appearance information.
3. User imagery (i.e., what type of person uses the product or service).
4. Usage imagery (i.e., where and in what types of situations the product or service is used).

Benefits are the personal value consumers attach to the product or service attributes-that is, what consumers think the product or service can do for them. Benefits can be further distinguished into three categories according to the underlying motivations to which they relate (Park, Jaworski, and Maclnnis 1986):

1. functional benefits.
2. experiential benefits.
3. symbolic benefits.

Brand Image and Brand Attitude:

Whatever be the brandattitudestrategy, it must be associated with and preceded by first building the right brand image. As a type of brand association, brand image should have a direct effect on brand attitude (Faircloth, Capella, Alford, 2001), which, it has been noted, includes the consumer's perceptions of all associations (e.g., Aaker 1991; Keller 1993). There is a positive direct influence of brand attitude on brand image. Thus, brand attitude has a direct effect on brand image which has been established by the above research paper. This research considered that brand attitude is a type of brand association, and therefore, should also indirectly influence brand equity through the brand image construct.

Wilkie (1986) and Keller (1993) indicated that a consumer's attitude towards a core-brand referred to the consumer's overall evaluation of that core-brand, and forms the basis for consumer behavior towards that brand. There are numerous studies indicating that the accumulation of brand image and use experience is key determinant of attitude towards core-brand attitude (Carpenter and Nakamoto, 1989; Kardes and Kalynaram, 1992; Alpert and Kamins, 1995; Martinez and Chernatony, 2004; Ghen and Liu, 2004). This indicates that core-brand attitude can be influenced by core-brand image and use experience of core-brand that are as follows.

Hence, we propose our third hypothesis:

H3: Brand Image and Brand Attitude are directly, positively related.

Advertising and Brand Image, Brand Attitude:

Brand Extension is a strategy used by most companies to leverage an existing brand name for other products (Serrao & Botelho, 2008). Kingfishers packaged drinking water is an example of brand extension. The effect of brand extension on brand image of the original product has been studied by in the above mentioned paper. Brand Image is essentially the set of perceptions which a potential consumer hold of the product attributes. Stronger is this set of perceptions, stronger is the brand image. Now brand extension can have both effects on the brand image of the initial product. It might go on to dilute it in case the extended brand is not able to meet the expectations or it can also reinforce it. In our case where advertisements of liquor are banned, surrogate advertisements can be the sole medium of building more information about the product and hence can strengthen the brand image.

This leads to our last hypothesis:

H4: Post exposure to Surrogate advertising, the relationship between Brand Image and Brand Attitude will be strengthened.

Gap in Literature:

The Literature Review has helped us in understanding the various factors that are to be considered in analyzing the effectiveness of surrogate advertising, i.e. the literature aided us in defining the variables of our study. While the various research papers provided above have studied extensively about the impact of surrogate advertising in countries where these advertisements are not banned i.e. mostly developed countries, little work has been done to in this field in developing countries like India where liquor and tobacco are major industries and surrogate advertising is banned. Thus this research will help in understanding the effectiveness of surrogate advertising on the Indian consumers. Although Jamshedpur is being taken as a representative sample for this study which has its distinct demographics and lifestyle, our objective is to get statistically significant results which could be extrapolated to states in India and developing countries across the world with similar characteristics.

Operationalizing and Measuring variables for study:

Brand Awareness:

Researchers have assessed brand awareness through the use of recall and recognition scales, which test the ability of consumers to remember advertising from memory. In the paper Dimensional Relationships Aided recall and recognition (Zinkhan, Locander & Leigh 1986) it was determined that cued recall is less demanding for the consumer because they are provided cues to access the appropriate memory trace.

Recognition is much easier than the previous two methods in that target items are presented along with one or more distractor items to the respondents (Leigh & Menon, 1986).Therefore, recognition is solely dependent upon one's ability to discriminate the correct items from the distracters. According to this literature, in an advertising recognition test, there are two possible responses (i.e., "yes"or "no") to two types of advertising stimulus (i.e., real or distractor), which create four possible outcomes. First, a "hit" is recorded when an individual responds,"yes" to real advertising. If, however, one fails to recognize the real ad, the response is called a "miss." Another incorrect judgment by a respondent is "false alarm" in which the subject answers "yes" to a bogus advertising stimulus. Finally, a "correct rejection" occurs when the subject says "no" to a distractor.

Further analyses of recognition tests mainly use the hit rate (H) and the falsealarm rate (FA) for adjustments and corrections (Leigh & Menon, 1986). A hit rate is calculated by the ratio of targets correctly chosen (Tc) to the total number of target stimuli available (T), whereas the false-alarm rate is the ratio of incorrectly chosen items (Dc) to the total number of distractor items included in the test (D) (Leigh & Menon, 1986). For instance, a hit rate of 1.0 denotes that the respondent correctly selected all target stimuli in the test set. However, a hit rate of 1.0 would not be a brilliant score unless his or her false-alarm rate is also low. Scores of both 1.0 on both hit rates and false-alarm rates imply that the subject answered yes to all items. When one has a same score on both hit rate and false-alarm rate (i.e., H = 0.3, FA = 0.3), it implies that the responses occurred by chance. Therefore, a researcher seeks high hit rates and low false-alarm rates from respondents.

Recognition tests are criticized for their failure to account for respondents' errors. Shapiro (Shapiro, 1994) argued that recognition studies that use only the correct number of responses would be unable to completely understand the human recognition process. He noted that research that merely counts the number of correct responses may incorrectly conclude that recognition memory is substantial, when, in reality, it was changes in judgment about memory. He put forward the argument that a simple measure of hit rate (H) minus false-alarm rate (FA) would suffice. In our study, this formula will be referred to as "corrected hit rate" or HC.

     HC = H—FA

According to Keller (Keller, 1993) Brand Awareness refers to customers' ability to recall and recognize the brand under different conditions and link to the brand name, logo, jingles and so on to certain associations in memory. It helps the customers to understand to which product or service category the particular brand belongs to and what products and services are sold under the brand name. It also ensures that customers know which of their needs are satisfied by the brand through its products. For the purpose of our research we have that Brand Recall and Brand Recognition lead to Brand Awareness.

Brand Recall:

The extent to which a brand is recalled as a member of a product class and is distinct from brand recognition. Brand recall is to an extent measured by the degree of unaided recall. For eg, a person can be asked to recall the names of cigarettes or beer brands he may know. Researchers have found that brand recall is the sum of unaided and aided recall.The extent to which a brand is remembered when pointed is called aided recall. An example of such a question is "What is "Kingfisher" famous for brand. For brand exposure companies look for high degree of unaided recall with respect to their competitors. The top of the mind recalled brand is the first to be evaluated in consumers mind for purchase. For the purposes of our research Brand Recall is being measured through the Likert Scale.

Measures:

• Please name all the brands of beer you can think off.
• Please name all the brands of beer you can think of that you would bring to a youth party.

We realize that it is not only important to measure the depth of recall (the percentage of people who know about the brand) but also the width of recall (the cues that lead to brand recall), which in our case is the kind of surrogate advertising which helps the consumers recall the brand. Typical cues would be:

• Subcategories.
• Consumption occasions / goal ( beer you would like to take for a beach-party ).
• Places (available in super-markets, bars etc.).
• People ( drink alone, in a group ).

Brand Recognition:

Brand Recognition reflects the ability of a consumer to see a particular brand as an established brand and not as a brand which they are seeing for the first time. In a recognition task consumers see stimulus ( e.g. mineral water bottle of Kingfisher ) and must say whether they have seen it before.

Here it is important to make the task as realistic as possible by allowing only a short amount of time to answer the recognition question and by using realistic stimuli and context. The experimental group and control group are exposed to different stimuli (e.g. competitor's brand). In the next step people see the "old stimuli" again with "new ones" and are asked to decide if the stimulus is old or new.

To correct for people's tendency to guess ( to say that they recognize when in fact they are uncertain ) one can compute a score called d-Prime score (HR-FA),

Where,

HR : Percentage of respondent who correctly identify the target stimulus:

FA : Percentage of respondents who incorrect identify a "new stimulus" which has not been shown before.

The following questions could be asked:

• Here is a list of (brand/ads/logos), do you remember seeing these today, yesterday, last month etc.
• Complete the following: K_NG_ISH_R, B_C_RD_ etc.

Brand Image:

Brand Image is the overall perception of a product which the consumers have. It is basically the kind of association which they develop between the product attributes (existing as well the non-existing but desired) and the brand name. Brand Image is built through a period of time and advertisement plays a large role in this. Whenever an advertisement is made, a company makes certain claims about the attributes of the product. This forms part of the expectations which potential customers generate and a positive relation between these expectations and the actual product helps build a strong brand image.

Measuring Brand Image:

Brand Image can be measured on 2 aspects, General Brand Image(GBI) which is associated with the brand in consideration and its symbolic aspects and Product Brand Image(PBI) which specifically relate to the physical attributes ,functional, emotional and self-expression benefits of the product (Martinez; Chernatony, 2004). Since we are considering brand image through surrogate advertisements it makes more sense to consider the GBI since physical attributes cannot be gauged through this form of advertisements.

We propose to use Likert 7 points scale varying from ”• completely agree ”• to completely disagree for measuring the GBI on the following items (Martinez; Chernatony, 2004):

1. This brand provides a good value for money.
2. There is a reason to buy the brand instead of others.
3. The brand has personality.
4. The brand is interesting.
5. I have a clear impression of the type of people who consume the brand.
6. This brand is different from competing brands.

Brand Attitude:

Brand attitude can be viewed as the understanding a person has in terms of how they evaluate a particular brand and its ability to satisfy what the consumer is looking for in the product. There are four important characteristics about brand attitude that we need to understand. First of all, brand attitude depends upon what the potential buyer wants now from the product, which is the motivation that drives someone's behaviour. Second, brand attitude is made up of what someone knows about a brand (cognitions or beliefs) and what they feel about the brand (affect or feelings). Thirdly, someone's knowledge is usually made up of a number of different beliefs about a brand. And finally, brand attitude is a relative concept.

Scale:

Again a 7 point likert scale was used from 1 to 7 where 1=very and 7=not at all (Kathleen J. Kelly, Michael D. Slater, and David Karan,2002).

1. Extent to which the brand is appealing.
2. Extent to which the brand is cool.
3. Extent to which the brand is In -Style.
4. Extent to which the brand is likeable.

Method:

Participants (n = 110) were people aged between 24 to 40 years across India. People were administered a questionnaire to assess brand awareness. Since brand awareness consists of brand recall and brand recognition, both these aspects were measured using this questionnaire. Brand recall consists of unaided and aided brand recall. Unaided brand recall was measured by showing the respondents a set of 30 advertising images of various beer brands. Then they were asked the question as to which brands do they recall on the prompt. Images of surrogate ads of kingfisher were mixed with a few distracters of beer ads images like Fosters. Every time the respondent mentioned a kingfisher ad which was there in the images we recorded it as a hit (H). However every time he recalled an advertisement which was not there we recorded as a false alarm (FA). When the respondent mentioned an ad which was in the images but it was not Kingfisher's we gave it zero weight age. Combining the hits and the false alarms of the respondent, the corrected hit rate (HC) was calculated as HC = H-FA for each respondent. The similar procedure was repeated for all the 110 respondents. To measure aided recall the respondents were prompted with a 10 options of images to choose from in which there were a few distracters as well which were not there in the original set of images. To measure the hits every time the respondent marked the option which was there in the original set of images we recorded it as a hit and every time the respondent marked an ad which was not there in the original set of images, it was recorded as a false alarm. However every time the respondent marked an option which was there in the images we gave it zero weight age. To measure brand recognition we blurred the images of certain surrogate ads of Kingfisher along with a few distracters and asked the respondent if he could recognise the ads. Every correct recognition of a kingfisher ad was recorded as a hit while every incorrect recognition was recorded as a false alarm. However, every correct recognition of a distracter was given no weight age. A few of the images shown to the respondents are as follows:

The questions for the brand attitude and brand image scales have already been mentioned above. They were administered twice, one before and once after the respondent was exposed to the external stimuli (surrogate ad). The sum of each scale was taken and a linear regression was run to find the significant values and check for hypothesis.

Research Design Respondents:

110 respondents aged between 24 to 40 years across India.

Data collection:

For the purposes of administering the questionnaire we had short one to one interactions with the respondents. Further online questionnaires were floated to target students and working professionals.

Control of extraneous variables:

Since most part of the research was done through an online survey, there was little scope to control the effect of extraneous variables. Ideally, the study should have been conducted in a controlled environment wherein each respondent was exposed to the external stimuli in the same setting and environment, but due to resource constrains this could not be done.

Results and Analysis:

We intend to study the relation between brand awareness and brand image; and brand image and brand attitude and the effect of surrogate advertising on these relationships, before and after the application of external stimuli.

Brand AwarenessA Brand Image:

Brand Image A Brand Attitude:

Now we ran regression for both the equations (before and after the participants saw the surrogate advertisement advertisement video) and the significance was observed. Next the standardized Beta coefficient was compared before and the video to establish the effect of the video.

Relationship:

Beta (Standardized):

The level of significance is greater 95% for Eqn. 1 in both the cases (pre and post exposure to stimuli), with a positive standardized beta which means that there exists a positive relationship between brand awareness and brand image. Hence our hypothesis (hypothesis 1) has been proved. Brand awareness and brand image are positively related.

In the case of Eqn. 1, the value of the standardized coefficient, Beta, has decreased post exposure to external stimuli, which means that the relationship between brand awareness and brand image actually weakened after the respondent is exposed to the external stimuli. Hence our hypothesis (hypothesis 2) has been proved. Post exposure to Surrogate Advertising, the relationship between Brand Awareness and Brand Image would get weakened.

The level of significance is greater 95% for Eqn. 2 in both the cases (pre and post exposure to stimuli), with a positive standardized beta which means that there exists a positive relationship between brand image and brand attitude. Hence our hypothesis (hypothesis 3) has been proved. Brand image and brand attitude are positively related.

In the case of Eqn. 2, the value of the standardized coefficient, Beta, has increases post exposure to external stimuli, which means that the relationship between brand awareness and brand image actually weakened after the respondent is exposed to the external stimuli. Hence our hypothesis (hypothesis 4) has been proved. Post exposure to Surrogate Advertising, the relationship between Brand Image and Brand Awareness would get strengthened.

The reasons for a slightly lower alpha coefficient could be:

• The scale proposed for measuring brand image comprised of General Brand Image and Product Brand Image scales. However as Product Brand Image Scale consisted of specific product attributes which cannot be gauged through surrogate advertisements we took only the General Brand Image items for measuring the brand image. This could be one of the reasons for lower value Cronbach's alpha coefficient for brand image.
• Adaptation of the scales to Indian context.
• Low control on extraneous variables.

Likely implications:

Our research could be of benefit to various liquor and tobacco companies in India to help in marketing and advertising and also to the various regulatory bodies.

• Ethical Implications- Surrogate advertisements are a debatable topic especially considering the fact that direct advertisements of liquor and tobacco is banned in India. If it is established that these form of advertisements actually increase the brand image and thereby resulting in increased sales then the whole purpose of banning the direct advertisements is defeated.
• Commercial Implications- However if the government still wishes to allow surrogate advertisements then even other companies can find this model useful.

Limitations:

The study is mostly conducted in Jamshedpur which is not a very big city. Beer consumption itself is low compared to metropolitan cities and choices of people may be influenced more by local brands than by established ones due to cheaper prices. Therefore even if surrogate advertisements are actually helpful in building a better brand image and awareness it might not get reflected in a city like Jamshedpur. For measuring brand awareness a large number of sample images need to be shown to the respondents under controlled conditions. Since the respondents responded to the questionnaire independently and not in a group extraneous variable like noise, light etc. could not be controlled for the lack of time and resources in carrying out the research. Scope for future research

Evidently, there is a lot of scope in the field of surrogate advertising and its direct impact on brand image, brand attitude and brand awareness relationships.

Future research can be expanded to larger cities and more quantifiable parameters like total sales volume can be used to determine the effectiveness of surrogate advertisements. Also, if brand awareness is measured overcoming the limitations mentioned above possible mediation of brand image leading to increased brand image through increased brand awareness on exposure to surrogate advertisements can be established.

Effect of Surrogate Advertising on the Relationship between Brand Awareness, Brand Image & Brand Attitude.

Did you like this example?

Cite this page

APA MLA Harvard Chicago ASA IEEE AMA

A form of communication. (2017, Jun 26). Retrieved December 3, 2024 , from
https://studydriver.com/a-form-of-communication/

Copy