C(GA):ing Through The Channel

Abstract: Brands increasingly involve their consumers as creators of marketing activities. A popular approach has been to invite consumers to create advertising content via ad contests - where the outcome has been referred to as consumer-generated advertising. Research on consumer-generated advertising has given mixed indications of the effectiveness of such advertising and how non-participating consumers receive and react to it. This thesis aims to investigate whether the right media vehicle and context in which a consumer-generated ad is published could improve the perception and reception of the ad, and consequently its effectiveness. A survey-based experiment was conducted with a total of 309 respondents that tested the effects of four different combinations of media settings, with agency-generated advertising as a reference. Contrary to what was expected, the results indicate that the choice of media vehicle and context does not have a significant impact on the effectiveness and reception of consumer-generated advertising among other consumers. The finding is discrepant to the results generated for agency-generated advertising, which followed a consistent pattern throughout the different media channels. The revealed pattern for such advertising was further analysed, which provided some insights into why the same effects did not occur for consumer-generated advertising. By showing that the effectiveness of consumer-generated advertising cannot be improved by publishing it in a certain media, the findings in this study corroborates previous research that has indicated a negative impact on effectiveness if the disclosed ad creator is a consumer.