Comparative advertisements have been appearing for quite some time now, and it is quite likely that consumers may have formed opinions about these ads in general. The opinions that the audiences develop would over a period of time, with reinforcements, crystallize into attitudes and further lead to stereotyping of such ads. This article attempts to link comparative advertisements with brand equity.
With the decline of socialism, countries are vying with each other to liberalize, reform and open up their economies. Competition is heating up on the domestic and global front. With most products reaching the maturity or saturation stage of the product life cycle, the fight for the market share is getting more severe. Companies are leaving no stone unturned to outwit their competitors. On the advertising front new entrants are resorting to Comparative Advertising (CA) to make superiority claims and, thereby, increase their market share. Consumers have been exposed to so many comparative advertisements that one wonders whether they might have developed a certain skepticism about such kind of ads. Therefore, it is important for advertisers, academicians, researchers and advertising agencies as well, to be concerned about the attitudes consumers have developed about comparative advertisements.
It is well-known that CA has been on the increase in recent times, in all countries. A study by Jackson, Brown and Harmon (1979) of 9,500 full-page ads in four popular consumer magazines has showed that CA grew from 6.3% in 1960 to 7.8%, 8.9% and 9.8%, respectively in 1965, 1970 and 1975. A follow-up study in the same four magazines for 1980, (by Harmon, Razzouk and Stern, 1983) showed that over 32% of the full-page ads were comparative in nature. Other studies in recent years have pointed out that CA forms about 20 to 30% of all ads being run. |
