Green marketing communication (GMC) enables brands to signal environmental responsibility, yet its effectiveness remains inconsistent across contexts. We conduct a meta-analysis of 156 studies comprising 146,961 participants to examine how GMC influences consumers’ evaluative and behavioral responses. Results show that while GMC has a positive overall effect, it is less effective for green brands than for conventional brands, with effectiveness varying across brand types and communication characteristics. For green brands, GMC is more effective for new brands, communication that is emotional, abstract, delivered via packaging, and supported by lower levels of evidence. For conventional brands, effectiveness is enhanced by rational messaging, advertising, stronger supporting evidence, and brand familiarity. Meta-analytic structural equation modelling shows that GMC operates through both message and product evaluation. Conceptually, we demonstrate that GMC effectiveness depends on the diagnostic value of environmental claims and whether they are interpreted as informative or persuasive, providing a generalizable explanation for mixed findings.

This study examines digital video advertising, focusing on the impact of single versus multiple models on social media responses and the role of group diversity (age, gender, ethnicity) in international ads. Using theories of information utility, message repetition, and cue-diagnosticity, it analyzes 234 YouTube and Instagram campaigns with 38,774 consumer comments via machine learning-based facial recognition. Results show that social media ads with multiple models outperform single-model ones in driving responses, consistent with theoretical predictions. However, group diversity within ads shows no significant effect. The study offers theoretical, managerial, and methodological insights, highlighting future research opportunities on diversity in advertising.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is transforming marketing communication by enabling unprecedented personalization and targeting, automated and autonomous creative production, continuous optimization, and conversational interactions. Whereas prior research has largely focused on firm-level benefits or consumer reactions, this paper argues that GenAI-enabled marketing communication operates within a broader stakeholder ecosystem. We develop a conceptual stakeholder effects model that integrates four stakeholder groups: (1) companies, (2) the marketing communication industry, (3) consumers, and (4) society; our model also distinguishes between intended and extended effects for each stakeholder group. The model highlights that GenAI-driven effects are interconnected through direct and indirect pathways, producing networks of beneficial and detrimental outcomes rather than isolated effects. By theorizing company, consumer, industry, and societal effects and responses as mediators, the model provides a more accurate way of assessing the effects of GenAI-enabled marketing communication. The model contributes to marketing communication theory by extending traditional effects models, providing a new stakeholder perspective of GenAI-enabled marketing communication and the network of effects caused by it as well as a template for future research.

Personalization in marketing communication may increase relevance, and thus lead to successful persuasion, but at the same time may trigger privacy concerns, thus leading to persuasion failure. These contradictory effects are described by the personalization paradox. Prior research has provided diverse results on personalization effects and what they depend on. It lacks a generalizable empirical pattern describing the paradox, leaving researchers with ambiguous theoretical implications and practitioners with little guidance on whether and when personalization is a useful marketing communication tool. To address these gaps, this meta-analysis integrates 1,536 effect sizes of personalization effects in marketing communication extracted from 290 studies found in 229 papers. The results reveal, first, that personalization leads to persuasion success and has negligible negative effects. Second, personalization effects depend on various moderators including the data type used: personalization is more persuasive when these data are closely tied to the consumer’s self-concept. Third, the level of personalization leads to a J-shaped pattern of persuasion, describing a modified model of the personalization paradox, with the most persuasive effects at the end of the personalization spectrum. These findings provide novel empirical generalizations of personalization effects and recommend marketers to use personalization and when personalized marketing communication is most effective.

Although research on ethnic diversity in advertising is extensive, its findings remain fragmented and often inconclusive. This limits practical guidance for marketers. Beyond marketing- and consumer-specific factors, differences between ethnic minority groups within a country and cross-national socioeconomic and cultural factors can play a role in shaping responses to ethnic diversity in advertising of consumers belonging to either ethnic majority or minority groups. This study develops and empirically tests a theoretical framework to examine the impact of ethnic diversity in advertising along with the factors that moderate this impact. The authors conduct a meta-analysis based on 1,276 effect sizes derived from 106 papers published between 1969 and 2024, encompassing 155 unique datasets from 21 countries. The findings reveal that ethnic diversity effects are small, but are moderated by country-level variables such as migration rates and rule of law, in addition to product, advertising, and consumer characteristics, and that some of these moderator effects work differently for ethnic minority compared with ethnic majority consumers. Furthermore, within the U.S. context, the sociopolitical power position of ethnic minorities enhances advertising effectiveness among majority consumers. These insights offer implications for both researchers and practitioners.

Although research on ethnic diversity in advertising is extensive, its findings remain fragmented and often inconclusive. This limits practical guidance for marketers. Beyond marketing- and consumer-specific factors, differences between ethnic minority groups within a country and cross-national socioeconomic and cultural factors can play a role in shaping responses to ethnic diversity advertising of consumers belonging to either ethnic majority or minority groups. This study develops and empirically tests a theoretical framework to examine the impact of ethnic diversity in advertising along with the factors that moderate this impact. We conduct a meta-analysis based on 1,276 effect sizes derived from 106 studies published between 1969 and 2024, encompassing 155 unique datasets from 21 countries. The findings reveal that ethnic diversity effects are small, but are moderated by country-level variables such as migration rates and rule of law, in addition to product, advertising, and consumer characteristics and that some of these moderator effects work differently for ethnic minority compared to majority consumers. Furthermore, within the U.S. context, the sociopolitical power position of ethnic minorities enhances advertising effectiveness among majority consumers. These insights offer implications for both researchers and practitioners.

Product differentiation is essential to attract consumers. Besides functional brand characteristics, symbolic traits like brand personality are a value-adding differentiation tool for marketers. While extant research has examined the relationships between brand personality and its antecedents, an extended and contemporary review is lacking. Building on the seminal meta-analysis by Eisend and Stokburger-Sauer (2013a) and consumer-brand relationship theory, this study employs meta-analytical techniques to synthesize past findings on the antecedents of brand personality. A significant increase in relevant studies and the opportunity to test potential moderators demand an improved meta-analysis. The updated meta-analysis covers 95 papers spanning 28 years (1997–2024) and a total of 1441 effect sizes. The findings yield new empirical generalizations, comparisons across brand-personality dimensions, and insights into changes over time. The results of a moderator analysis indicate that consumer personality is a stronger antecedent in collectivist (vs. individualistic) cultures and for high-self-signaling products (i.e., products that permit consumers to build and express their self-image through brand choices). Branding effects are stronger for experience (vs. search) products and in collectivist (vs. individualistic) cultures. In addition, product design is a stronger antecedent for students and high-self-signaling products. The findings provide managers with insights for building brand personality and suggest important directions for further research.

Although research indicates that corporate social responsibility (CSR) can yield positive consumer responses, the challenge remains for companies, especially multinational ones, to effectively tailor CSR activities across different countries to achieve favorable outcomes. To address this, we classify CSR activities based on stakeholder theory into core and extended CSR types. We then introduce a meta-analytic framework that incorporates five country factors to examine how they affect the differential effects of these CSR types. Using a dataset comprising 940 effect sizes from 202 papers across 43 countries on six continents, we find that core CSR generally elicits more positive consumer responses than extended CSR, and that this effect is moderated by country factors. The positive differential effect of core over extended CSR is greater in societies that prioritize secular-rational values over traditional values, and survival values over self-expression values. Additionally, this positive differential effect increases with greater internet penetration but decreases with higher national economic growth rates and tertiary school enrollment. These findings advance the understanding of cross-country differences in CSR effects and types, offering valuable insights for international marketing managers. (c) 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.

Despite the prevalence of diversity of endorsers in interactive advertising, most previous research has concentrated on diversity in traditional advertising formats. This paper, therefore, explores the phenomenon of diversity within interactive advertising, analyzing its unique characteristics, prevalence, and impact. It reviews the limited existing research on diversity in interactive advertising and discusses the distinctive features of this advertising type-such as user participation, personalization, Big Data, multimodality, technology, and shared control-and how each contributes to the prevalence, representation, and effects of diversity. User participation allows consumers to influence how diversity is (re-)presented. Personalization and targeting enable tailored diversity content, which enhances relevance but carries the risk of discrimination. Big Data provides more nuanced insights into diversity portrayals and can connect it to consumer engagement. Multimodality, through the use of visuals, enhances engagement but may also reinforce stereotypes. Technological advancements facilitate more diverse portrayals. Shared control emphasizes authenticity in diversity, although backlash can occur if content is perceived as insincere. The paper suggests research propositions for each feature that provide ideas and directions for future research on diversity in interactive advertising, followed by several managerial takeaways.

Despite high popularity of humor, its prevalence in advertising varies significantly across countries and previous research has not explained why. We empirically test a new theoretical explanation: an evolutionary perspective linking humor to mate-seeking behavior. Evolutionarily, humor enhances attractiveness and increases chances of finding a romantic partner, making it extensively used by mate-seekers (i.e. those searching for romantic relationships). We find that humor is more commonly employed in advertising in countries where relationships are more negotiable and easily dissolved (e.g. with a higher proportion of potential mate-seekers in a population). Our findings are grounded in a meta-analysis of content analyses, spanning 15 countries over 90 years. We corroborated these meta-analytic results with an experiment showing that activation of mate-seeking behavior increases humor use in advertising. Together, these findings provide robust evidence for a novel explanation for humor use in cross-national advertising.