Advertising as differentiation strategy in retailing: building a scale based on ARM model

Abstract

The retail of appliances represents one of the major economic sectors in Brazil. This is an industry highly competitive and concentrated, and the top retailers normally use advertising as communication strategy and sales promotion, investing large amounts of capital in their campaigns. However, the identification of the executional elements that constitutes television advertising and its impact on the evaluation of quality of advertisements and on the image of the chain stores, as well as the impact on purchase intentions and word of mouth communication on consumer remains unknown. With the purpose to understand these relationships, this study had two phases. The first one was qualitative and the second phase was quantitative. In the qualitative phase, we did semiotic analyzes of the advertisements of the four major retail chains in Brazil, focus groups and in-depth interviews with consumers of appliance stores. In the quantitative phase of the research were conducted two surveys, totaling 1038 valid questionnaires. The results show that television advertisements exert significant influence on purchase decision and the perceived image of the retailers. To reach this conclusion, we constructed a scale to measure the construct image and used the ARM model as a basis for measuring the effectiveness of advertising. This revealed the relevance of the executional elements of the advertising - especially those related to aesthetic - as promoters of persuasion. This finding highlights the importance of research to demonstrate that advertisements can constitute a differentiator in the competitive strategies of firms in the market analyzed. , Keywords: Differentiation Strategy. Advertising. Effectiveness of Advertising. Retail