TY - JOUR
T1 - When white space is more than "burning money"
T2 - Economic signaling meets visual commercial rhetoric
AU - Pracejus, John W.
AU - O'Guinn, Thomas C.
AU - Olsen, Grant
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank the Social Science and Humanities Resource Council of Canada (standard research grant # 410-2010-1535 ) for supporting this research.
PY - 2013/9
Y1 - 2013/9
N2 - Previous work has demonstrated that the use of white space in advertising communicates specific meanings to consumers and that this meaning derives from particular historical moments in the art and visual rhetoric of 20th-century North America. The use of "empty space" in ads, however, can also be conceptualized as a signal of burning money, which could influence consumer perceptions about the size and power of a company through completely different mechanisms. Somewhat surprisingly, nearly all empirical demonstrations of burning money in a consumer advertising context also manipulated white space, leaving the mechanism of action unclear. The results of the three studies discussed here indicate that white space is different from other ways of burning money, and its meanings are sufficiently different across cultures, thus providing stronger support for the rhetorical explanation than the economic signaling one. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for previous research that found that consumers infer quality from the economic signals of burning money.
AB - Previous work has demonstrated that the use of white space in advertising communicates specific meanings to consumers and that this meaning derives from particular historical moments in the art and visual rhetoric of 20th-century North America. The use of "empty space" in ads, however, can also be conceptualized as a signal of burning money, which could influence consumer perceptions about the size and power of a company through completely different mechanisms. Somewhat surprisingly, nearly all empirical demonstrations of burning money in a consumer advertising context also manipulated white space, leaving the mechanism of action unclear. The results of the three studies discussed here indicate that white space is different from other ways of burning money, and its meanings are sufficiently different across cultures, thus providing stronger support for the rhetorical explanation than the economic signaling one. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for previous research that found that consumers infer quality from the economic signals of burning money.
KW - Branding
KW - Burning money
KW - Design
KW - Persuasion knowledge
KW - Social history
KW - Visual persuasion
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ijresmar.2012.11.004
DO - 10.1016/j.ijresmar.2012.11.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84879886342
SN - 0167-8116
VL - 30
SP - 211
EP - 218
JO - International Journal of Research in Marketing
JF - International Journal of Research in Marketing
IS - 3
ER -