A presentation by
Christina Giakoumaki, PhD
School of Liberal Arts and Sciences

When: Monday, October 9, 15:00–15:50

Where: Deree Faculty Lounge

Organized by: Faculty Research Seminars 2017-18 Series

Bio

Christina Giakoumaki graduated from the Department of Business Administration, University of Piraeus, completed her postgraduate studies at the Department of Marketing and Communication with New Technologies (MSc) at the Athens University of Economics and Business. In 2013 she received her Ph.D. with the completion of her thesis entitled “The Role of Consumer Advertising in B2B Products” at the School of Business Administration, Athens University of Economics and Business, where she subsequently did her Post-Doctoral research on the subject of “The Moderating Role of Involvement in Co-Branded Relationships”. She is currently teaching advertising courses at the American College of Greece, department of Communication, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, as well as Quantitative research and Digital and Social Analytics courses at the School of Graduate & Professional Education, Deree. Her academic and research interests lay in the areas of contemporary industrial and consumer communication practices with a specific focus on marketing communications, digital & social media and web analytics in communication, ingredient branding and cultural branding, as well as advertising effects on relations between suppliers and industrial customers and consumers.

Abstract

INVOLVEMENT AS A MODERATOR IN ADVERTISING CO-BRANDED RELATIONSHIPS
Christina A. Giakoumaki, Deree — The American College of Greece
KEYWORDS: co-branding, involvement, advertising, experiment

This study aims to investigate the benefits of an advertising message focusing on a co-branding relationship, with the variation of consumer involvement, by employing a 2 x 2 experimental design, whereby two groups, after determining their level of involvement with the smartphone product category, subsequently evaluate the composite co-branded product offering (the treatment group after exposure to an ad communicating the co-branded relationship), in terms of attitude towards the brand (Ab). Using regression analysis, we determine the main and moderating effects of involvement on the co-branded product.

The present study considers the outcome of consumers’ exposure to an advertising message on the co-branding relationship of a composite product, which is evaluated through the assessment of attitude toward the composite brand (Ab), through the formulation of the following hypotheses:

H1. Consumer advertising of a co-branding relationship will positively affect the attitude toward the composite co-branded product.

H2. The higher the involvement, the greater the effect of an advertising message communicating a co-branding relationship, on the attitude toward the co-branded product.

H3. Consumer involvement will positively affect the attitude toward the composite (co-branded) product.

A two-group between-subjects experimental design was chosen to test the aforementioned hypotheses, in which exposure to the advertising message (communicating the co-branding relationship) is the manipulated factor (independent variable). Pretesting helped identify the Huawei P9 Smartphone with a Leica dual lens camera as a consumer product that (a) is a composite/co-branded product, so that it can be subject of co-branded advertising, and, (b) has a sufficiently high variability of involvement levels among consumers.