Charles R. Taylor

Villanova University | Nova · School of Business

The purpose of this research is to examine how the COVID‐19 pandemic has impacted the luxury goods industry. The authors hypothesize that pandemic threats drive consumers toward luxury consumption to increase their perceptions of control. The article reports results of three experimental studies conducted in the United States. In Study 1, after par...

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many corporations have employed a new form of corporate social responsibility (CSR) advertising that incorporates COVID-19-related health behavior recommendations. This type of CSR advertising seeks to increase both business-oriented responses and health-oriented responses. As such, these ads are thought to...

Internet usage among consumers, which encompasses a wide variety of activities ranging from social media to e-commerce, has exploded in recent years. Increasingly, marketers are using the trail of personal data consumers leave behind to achieve more precise marketing tactics and may even sell this information to third parties. This has led to growi...

Prior research on creativity and the effectiveness of executional factors in advertising has focused on the impact of uniqueness and consistency in comparison to prior and competitive advertising. Relatively little is known about the specific impact of these variables and their relationship to each other, and few existing measures of consistency an...

This research examines the effect that leaving space between products has on consumers’ estimation of product size. We theorize and empirically confirm that when space is left between products (i.e., the display is interspaced), consumers are better able to distinguish the product from the environment, which results in more attention being devoted...

Purpose Despite increased emphasis on customer or market orientation over the past several decades, there is considerable evidence that many customer service practices have created a “Janus face” situation in which stated marketing philosophy often differs from practice. This paper aims to explore those issues in marketing practice. Design/methodo...

This study examines the effect of distraction after being exposed to information on low‐fit brand extension evaluation. We show that when consumers are distracted (vs. engaging in deliberate thinking) after encoding extension information they evaluate low‐fit brand extensions more favorably. Findings suggest that distraction can help establish conn...

Four studies examined the perceived persuasiveness of pro-and anti-health messages among Koreans and Americans. Results indicated that the perceived effectiveness of messages in the two countries depends on whether a healthy (e.g., anti-smoking) or an unhealthy (pro-smoking) behavior is advocated. In general, Americans believed that they were more...

Given various “green” communication protocols offered in the marketplace, this paper adds insight on how consumers process sustainability labeling information with scale ratings. Drawing from ambiguity theory and numerosity literature, we conduct two experiments to examine the impact of brand-based sustainability levels and the range of scale magni...

Research on portrayals of women and minorities in advertising has found that the overall representation of these groups has increased, some stereotypes persist.ls. This study examines portrayals of minorities and women in Super Bowl advertising. A content analysis of ten years of Super Bowl ads is conducted and a multinomial logit regression model...

Purpose An unconscious concern regarding one’s inevitable death, known as mortality salience, may affect consumers’ brand choices in the aftermath of disastrous events, such as earthquakes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of self-identification with global consumer culture (IDGCC) in global brand purchase intention in response to d...

Increasingly, high-end retailers in various parts of the world are marketing premium private label products. This study examines the degree to which advertising can lead premium private labels to be perceived as luxurious and the factors that enhance this perception. Using a theoretical framework based on cue utilization theory and categorization t...

The extant literature suggests that idealized imagery of female models in advertising has negative impacts on the body satisfaction of those exposed. Women can feel pressure to live up to “perfect” images depicted in advertising, sometimes resulting in negative consequences. As a result, the practice of digital retouching or “photoshopping” of ads...

A series of depth interviews with creative directors and staff in multiple agencies in Colombia indicated widespread awareness of what are perceived to be a dubious and unethical industry practices surrounding Creative Awards submissions. The agency personnel reported multiple problems, including some agencies winning top awards when the merit was...

The issue of digitally retouching models has begun to gain the attention of the public and regulators in multiple parts of the world, with some countries considering legislation or even passing restrictions, including requiring disclosures on retouched ads. This study adds insight into this debate by examining the impact of the addition of a disclo...

Gender stereotypes are general beliefs about sex-linked traits and roles, psychological characteristics, and behaviors, all of which contribute towards describing women and men. Gender role stereotyping in advertising has been a critical topic since the 1970s, and there is a long-lasting debate between advertisers and sociologists about the role an...

The effects of direct and indirect product experiences have been examined in several studies. This study expanded a previous experience study on the effects of mobile direct experience that clarified the relationships between direct experience and perceived interactivity, attitude toward smartphone applications and purchase intention. The current s...

The portrayal of racial and ethnic minority groups in advertising is an important issue that has implications for both business and society. Both expectancy theory and cultivation theory suggest negative impacts of repeated exposure to stereotypes in the media or advertising. At a societal level, integrated CSR communications should portray minorit...

In the current economic climate, select countries, previously stable, are finding themselves in economic crisis. When going through these crises, countries risk an even worse situation if foreign consumers develop negative perceptions of their country that lead to reduced interest in purchasing their goods. This study examines the impact of country...

In spite of considerable prior research on luxury branding, no widely accepted definition of "luxury brand" exists. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature in order to: a) summarize the state of knowledge on luxury brand marketing; and b) provide a new and usable definition of a luxury brand. A literature review was conducted with a f...

While outdoor advertising is currently the fastest-growing traditional advertising medium, the value of billboards to the public has long been debated. Drawing on a conceptual framework developed by Farris and Albion (1980), contrasting two schools of thought about advertising's economic and societal role, this study reports a meta-analysis of more...

Resonant advertisements—which employ a twist or deviation to create multiple meanings—commonly are used by marketing practitioners. Despite the prevalence of such advertisements, little academic research has investigated their ability to persuade consumers. The current study tested whether resonant advertisements are more persuasive than nonresonan...

This paper’s aim is to provide a comprehensive review of the literature on fashion advertising. Toward this end, the paper describes major theoretical perspectives that have been used in fashion advertising research; discusses major findings that the cumulative body of research has produced in key sub-areas of fashion advertising research; and prov...

This paper focuses on the concept of Leveraged Marketing Communications (LMC) and provides the first comprehensive definition of the concept. LMC are defined here as brand building strategies that pair a brand with another object for the purpose of enabling the brand to benefit from the associations the target audience has with the object. We devel...

This article discusses the concepts of omission and commission as marketplace trauma within the theoretical framework of cultural trauma theory. The authors identify the meanings and processes of the people, activities, and outcomes likely when marketplace omission and/or commission occur, as well as the factors that elevate these events from colle...

Prior research on the impact of marketing activities such as Super Bowl advertising on firm value has produced mixed results. Drawing on the marketing productivity chain, this study introduces hitherto neglected customer-based brand equity effects as indicator for investors’ expectations about future customer equity effects (i.e., expected future c...

Existing research on personalization has found that consumers generally prefer personalized products over standardized ones. This study argued that consumer preference for personalized products is dependent on purchasing context and reversibility of choice. Results of an experiment conducted in this study found that consumers preferred personalized...

Recent years have seen some US municipalities implementing restrictions on lighted on-premise signs, often based on environmental arguments. At the same time, sign companies and sign users argue that restrictions are harmful to businesses. To date there has not been any research on the degree to which restrictions on illuminated signs are harmful t...

Advertising within videogames has grown in importance over the last few years. This research investigates the impact of character presence in advergames on brand attitude and game performance, and how such effects depend on national culture. A total of 130 students participated in an experiment conducted in the US and Korea. Results show that when...

Sustainable marketing, as noted by numerous academics and practitioners, refers to a form of marketing that makes a net positive contribution to society in terms of environmental, social and economic developments. Firms’ interest in sustainability as an aspect of business performance other than financial goals has steadily increased. Various factor...

A major development in global marketing research is the evolution of global consumer culture theory and the notion that global consumer culture positioning (GCCP) strategies can be effective across markets. This study compares the content of a large sample of U.S. versus Japanese television advertising and looks at several executional variables (ti...

In his editorial, Charles R Taylor outlines some 'best practices' for researchers considering submitting a cross-national paper. He suggests the biggest obstacles to be overcome and provides recommendation for authors when conceptualising studies.

While there has been a clear increase in the number of international advertising research studies in recent years, it has been widely observed that there have at times been issues with the research methodologies used in these studies. This chapter provides guidelines for conducting international advertising research, and explores issues facing cros...

In this editorial for IJA, volume 33 issue 1, Charles R. Taylor examines the issue of corporate social responsibility in the light of gay and lesbian rights debates around the 2014 Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia. Many LGBT groups have criticised the responses of corporations who sponsor the Olympics Games and the conventional wisdom to avoid...

In his editorial, Charles R. Taylor introduces a special section of this editorial on customised communications. He addresses the need for research into both the impact of relevant messages and concerns about privacy, in order to understand where to draw the line in terms of how much a marketer can and should know about consumers.

In his editorial, Charles R. Taylor discusses the implications of the recent report 'Advertising Pays: how Advertising Fuels the UK Economy' by Deloitte LLP and highlights several areas in need of sustained research. The general idea that economic effects of advertising are too seldom discussed and acknowledged would seem to hold true. Taylor also...

This study examines the effects of mobile direct experience on perceived interactivity, attitude toward smartphone applications, and purchase intention. Specifically, the study explains mobile direct experience and examines the relationships between direct experience and perceived interactivity, attitude toward smartphone applications, and purchase...

Asian-Americans are a growth market. Their affluence, high education, and work ethic position them as a “model minority.” However complimentary that term may seem, it nonetheless represents a stereotype whose prevalence must be documented to examine the intersection of minority status and gender in mass media portrayals. The authors report a conten...

The authors report the findings of an experiment comparing the effectiveness of television commercials with varied levels of information content (high vs. low) in the United States and the Republic of Korea. Cultural differences were used as a basis for the hypotheses. Consistent with expectations based on those cultural differences, the U.S. subje...

Advertising in online games has grown considerably in recent years and is expected to see continued expansion (Cauberghe and DePelsmacker 2010). However, the literature suggests that banner advertisements in games are sometimes ineffective, often being seen as annoying and potentially triggering avoidance behavior. Because of the possibility of avo...

This chapter explores a different kind of convergence—the convergence among consumer segments in the global marketplace. Growing convergence among consumer segments has increasingly enabled firms to formulate standardized marketing strategies for their brands. This has led to the great standardization versus specialization debate. For over 50 years...

Purpose The primary aim of this article is to identify theoretical foundations that can be used in research on social media in the context of international advertising research. An additional objective is to identify future research directions for theory building in this research area. Design/methodology/approach The article draws on the extant li...

While prior research has suggested that brand personality traits can be communicated to consumers via advertising, the question of whether consumers can infer traits that go beyond directly observable traits has not been addressed. Prior research has established that self-generated inferences going beyond direct advertising claims are of significan...

In his introduction to IJA Volume 32, Issue 1, Charles R. Taylor summarises the eight topics that are currently considered 'hot' in advertising research. These include how to get people to be attentive to digital ads, enhancing attentiveness to television commercials in the digital video recorder era, new approaches in social media and the interact...

Many leading marketing textbooks discuss how the “marketing era” evolved in the 1950s and beyond when companies began to emphasise a customer focus and the marketing concept. While the idea that there was ever a “production era”, where consumers merely accepted what companies could produce, has been largely debunked by Ronald Fullerton (see Fullert...

Although on-premise signs have received scant attention in the academic literature, they serve important functions as marketing and promotional devices. This article provides a conceptual framework that outlines the marketing functions of on-premise signs. It provides support for the framework by surveying small and medium-sized business owners. Th...

In this article, the authors introduce the notion of a "sound disclosure" and define it from the perspective of academic, business, and legal/policy (expert) constituencies. The authors define sound disclosure as the direct linkage of a policy standard to a dedicated, rigorous consumer testing methodology that measures explicitly stated communicati...

Compelling research suggests that smokeless tobacco (SLT) products are safer than cigarettes, but awareness of this potential harm reduction alternative among consumers is low. Therefore, two between-subjects experimental studies explore the potential for allowing the marketing of SLT as a “reduced-risk” alternative to cigarette smoking. Specifical...

This study examines how structural aspects of online brand communities can contribute to the brand building capacity of the community using network theory. Predictions about the degree to which various structural factors are associated with emotional attachment to the community and other outcome measures are made. Results show that several structur...

Purpose – Marketers are under increasing pressure to demonstrate the financial return associated with marketing expenditures. Concurrently, more attempts at measuring return on investment from marketing as well as achieving other long-term goals such as building brand equity and increasing shareholder value have been made. As a result of this empha...