{"id":41954,"date":"2016-11-09T09:50:44","date_gmt":"2016-11-09T13:50:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=41954"},"modified":"2016-11-16T11:48:33","modified_gmt":"2016-11-16T15:48:33","slug":"we-get-what-we-deserve-or-do-we-researchers-study-the-impact-of-deserving-ads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2016\/11\/we-get-what-we-deserve-or-do-we-researchers-study-the-impact-of-deserving-ads\/","title":{"rendered":"We get what we deserve \u2014 or do we? Researchers study the impact of \u2018deserving\u2019 ads"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a photo on Carolyn Hafer\u2019s computer of a muscular hand raising a beer bottle to a bearded face. The caption reads, \u201cFor a hard earned thirst.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a popular beer ad in Australia,\u201d explains the Brock University Psychology professor. \u201cThe ad shows guys enjoying a beer after working really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hafer researches how and why people need to believe in a \u2018just world,\u2019 or a world in which people get what they deserve \u2014 either rewards or punishments. So campaigns like Victoria Bitter\u2019s beer in Australia, L\u2019Oreal\u2019s \u2018I\u2019m Worth It\u2019 and McDonald\u2019s \u2018You deserve a break today\u2019 caught her eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually started noticing that there were a lot of ads that mentioned the word \u2018deservingness\u2019. That was intriguing to me because I usually look at deservingness in a totally different context than consumer behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n

To explore whether or not people respond to deservingness-based advertising, Hafer teamed up with Antonia Mantonakis, associate professor in the Goodman School of Business, Health Sciences professor Tony Bogaert and MBA student Regan Fitzgerald, who helped conduct the work while she was still an undergraduate student.<\/p>\n

Their study, The Effectiveness of Deservingness-Based Advertising Messages: The Role of Product Knowledge and Belief in a Just World<\/a><\/em>, <\/b>was published last month in the Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers carried out two experiments. In the first, they showed 204 participants three different ads for a fictional wine called Escarpment Vineyards. One ad stressed the wine\u2019s positive health benefits, another touted the wine\u2019s \u201cvelvety texture and bountiful aroma\u201d while the third enticed consumers to buy the product because \u201cyou deserve the best wine and we\u2019ve made it for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe measured how much they liked the product, how likely they were to buy the product and how much effort they would put into going out and buying this product,\u201d says Hafer.<\/p>\n

In the second experiment, the researchers repeated a similar exercise with a bottled water product, but gave participants the option of buying a water sample at the end of the session. This was designed to measure participants\u2019 actual purchasing behaviour.<\/p>\n

During both experiments, participants also filled out \u201cBelief in a Just World\u201d scales that measured their perceptions of how fair they think the world is.<\/p>\n

The researchers found that the deservingness-based ads overall were at least as effective as the other two types of ads, which contained utilitarian (useful) or hedonic (appealing to the senses) messaging.<\/p>\n

Participants who scored highly on the \u201cjust world\u201d scale \u2014 those who believe people get what they deserve in life \u2014 responded the best to the deservingness-based ads.<\/p>\n

But deservingness-based ads were least effective among those who were most familiar with the product, the researchers found.<\/p>\n

Hafer says these ads are less effective on people who have a lot of knowledge about the product, like wine connoisseurs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich makes total sense, because a wine connoisseur doesn\u2019t care about being told whether they deserve it or not. They care about the aroma, the bouquet, all these intrinsic features.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although people may vary in the degree to which they think the world is a just place, the belief in a just world is fairly universal, says Hafer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s probably an underlying motive in everyone to some extent to want to see the world as a place where people get what they deserve, or else it would be hard to make it through your day.\u201d<\/p>\n

People who are religious tend to score higher on scales that measure \u201cjust world\u201d beliefs, she says.<\/p>\n

Those who believe they deserve good things because of their accomplishments, character, behaviours such as hard work or any other attributes tend to have high self-esteem, with narcissists in the extreme, she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a photo on Carolyn Hafer\u2019s computer of a muscular hand raising a beer bottle to a bearded face. The caption reads, \u201cFor a hard earned thirst.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":41955,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,3319,1,4,5,38],"tags":[4018,4634,894,29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41954"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42105,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41954\/revisions\/42105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}