“Brand – pandemic fit and eWOM intentions: The role of ad appeals and future focus”
by Ayşegül Özsomer
Koç University
Place: MA-330
Abstract
Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020 brands have quickly adapted the content of their advertising to include pandemic related social and health messages. This paper explores the relationship of fit between the advertised brand and the pandemic as a potential influence on consumers’ eWOM intentions in an advanced and emerging market. Inspired by metacognitive fluency theory, we propose and find that pandemic adapted advertisements for brands that are high on brand-pandemic fit enhance consumers’ eWOM intentions in both markets. This relationship is stronger for experiential ad appeals and future focus in the ads. In terms of temporal focus, building on construal level theory, we find that the effect of fit on eWOM is increased by using future focused ads. Together, the results establish relationships between brand-pandemic fit of advertisements, ad liking, ad-appeals, future focus, and eWOM intentions. We conclude with a discussion of how brand advertising can facilitate societal well-being as high fit brands help individuals solve pandemic related challenges and generate more consumer engagement via eWOM intentions.
Bio
Ayşegül Özsomer is Professor of Marketing at Koç University, Istanbul, Türkiye. She specializes in global marketing, branding, emerging markets and the role of marketing in tough economic times. Prof. Özsomer has taught, consulted, and conducted research in the US before joining Koç University. She has published in top scholarly journals including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of International Marketing and Human Resource Management. She received several research awards including the 2011 Gerald Hills Best Paper Award for ten-year impact on entrepreneurship research, the 2013 Cavusgil Award for her paper investigating the interplay between global and local brands, and most recently the 2023 Cavusgil Award for her paper on marketing agility. Her research is well read and well cited with more than 5100 google scholar citations. Dr. Özsomer has held visiting scholar positions at the Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA, and Harvard University. Her co-authored book, The New Emerging Market Multinationals: Four Strategies for Disrupting Markets and the Competition (McGraw Hill) was selected the best strategy book by Business+Strategy. She is the incoming Editor in Chief of the Journal of International Marketing, an American Marketing Association Journal published by SAGE. https://www.ama.org/press-releases/aysegul-ozsomer-selected-as-next-journal-of-international-marketing-editor-in-chief/
