Testing for a synergistic effect between online publicity and advertising in an integrated marketing communications context

Abstract

This dissertation examined the relationship among four exposure conditions in marketing communications (pure advertising, advertising priming, publicity priming, and pure publicity) that include either advertising or publicity or both. Also, the indirect relationship between brand communication exposure condition and purchase intent was modeled via path analysis. 634 students participated in an online experiment. Repeated measures MANCOVA analysis results indicate that the two synergistic conditions, which included an ad-article or article-ad combination, were more effective in terms of brand communications impact than the pure advertising condition. The pure publicity condition was found to be more effective than any of the other three. Hence, brand communications managers are encouraged to include publicity in their strategic communication campaigns. .