Sponsorship Disclosures:
The Effects of Sponsorship Disclosure Timing on Consumers’ Brand Attitude
and Purchase Intention
Anneke Onkenhout
Master’s Thesis: Graduate School of Communication
Master’s Programme Communication Science, Persuasive Communication
Student ID: 10201912 Supervisor: Dr. Nynke van der Laan
29 June 2018 Word count: 7749
Table of Contents
Abstract ………..………..………..………..………..……….. 2
Introduction ………..………..………..………..………..………... 3
The Rise of YouTube and Influencers ………... 3
Sponsorship Disclosure ……….. 3 Timing of Disclosure ………. 5 Persuasion Knowledge ……….. 5 Resistance Strategies ………. 6 Theoretical Framework ………..………..………..……….... 7 Methods ………..………..………..………..………..……… 14 Participants ………..………..………..……… 14 Experimental Design ………..………..………... 15 Procedure ………..………..………..……….. 15 Stimulus Material ………..………..………..……….. 16 Measures ………..………..………..………..……….. 17 Brand Attitude ………..………..………..………..………….. 17 Purchase Intention ………..………..………..……….. 17 Persuasion Knowledge ………..………..………..………... 17 Resistance Strategies ………..………..………..………..… . 18 Control Variables ………. 19 Results ………..………..………..………..……… 19 Discussion ………..………..………..………..………..…………. 23
Limitations and Future Research ………... 25
Theoretical and Practical Implications ………. 26
Abstract
The rise of social networking sites such as YouTube has not gone unnoticed by Social Media Influencers (SMIs) and marketers. Therefore, both SMIs and marketers began to see
opportunities for advertising collaborations in the form of sponsored content, including disclosures. Expanding on earlier studies on the effects of present vs. absent sponsorship disclosures in the context of traditional media, this study focuses on the effects of timing of sponsorship disclosures on consumers’ brand attitude and purchase intention in the context of vlogs. An experimental design with two experimental conditions (early vs. late sponsorship disclosure timing) and one no sponsorship disclosure condition was used (N = 150).
Moreover, the level of consumers’ knowledge of persuasive intents and possible strategies they use to resist the message were included in this study as possible mediators of the effects of an early vs. late vs. no sponsorship disclosure on consumers’ brand attitude and purchase intention. No significant differences in brand attitude and purchase intention were found between the early and late disclosure conditions, as the early and late vs. no disclosure condition. In addition, no mediating effect of consumers’ persuasion knowledge and resistance strategies was found on the relation between the disclosure conditions and brand attitude and purchase intention. Therefore, all hypotheses of this study were rejected. The results of this study have important implications regarding the use of priming, persuasion knowledge and resistance strategies and provide recommendations for SMIs and advertisers on the use of sponsorship disclosures.
Keywords: vlogs, sponsored content, disclosures, timing, brand attitude, purchase intention, persuasion knowledge, resistance strategies
Introduction The Rise of YouTube and Influencers
Next to the popular social networking sites Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, the video-streaming website YouTube also became one of the fastest-growing Web 2.0 websites (Koh, 2014). With the growing popularity of YouTube, a new type of endorser began to see
opportunities in creating a channel for sharing their videos with a large audience to shape their attitudes: Social Media Influencers (SMIs) (Freberg, Graham, McGaughey & Freberg, 2011). You can find them in all types of categories, such as make-up, games and daily lifestyle videos (vlogs). Also marketers noticed new technologies such as YouTube, which has led to YouTube being an important advertising tool. Companies began to see
opportunities to collaborate with influencers to promote their brand or organization (Freberg et al., 2011). To reach the YouTubers’ optimal audience size, brand owners or advertisers often pay them to promote a certain product(s), which is called ‘sponsored content’ (Khamis, Ang & Welling, 2017).
One of the fastest-growing categories of advertising on YouTube is healthy food and lifestyle. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle has numerous benefits: it reduces risks of
cardiovascular diseases, obesity and diabetes and prevents high medical costs (Dima-Cozma, Gavrilutã, Mitrea & Cojocaru, 2014). One could argue that promoting healthy products on YouTube is an important development and can have a positive influence on the audience. Therefore, we focus on the category of healthy food.
Sponsorship Disclosure. When advertising for a certain product or brand, YouTubers can make use of a ‘sponsorship disclosure’, which explicitly informs the audience that
commercial content is integrated into content. This disclosure serves to guarantee fair communication and avoid persuasion without audience awareness (Cain, 2011; Woods,
2008). A lot of research already focused on the use of a sponsorship disclosure, but this was mainly in traditional media types such as television programs (Boerman and Van Reijmersdal, 2016; Boerman, Van Reijmersdal & Neijens, 2013) instead of new media types such as vlogs, and no study focused on healthy food. For example, Van Reijmersdal et al. (2016) focused on effects of disclosures in blogs and for random products (unhealthy casserole food mix and a headphone) and found negative effects of disclosures on consumers’ brand attitude and purchase intention. Brand attitude is ‘a consumers’ overall positive or negative evaluation of the brand’ (Martensen, Grønholdt, Bendtsen & Jensen, 2007) and purchase intention is ‘the plan in which a person intends to buy a particular product or service sometime in the near future’ (Morwitz, 2014).
The meta-analysis of 21 empirical studies done by Boerman and Van Reijmersdal (2016) found inconsistent effects of disclosures on brand attitude and purchase intention; this inconsistency can be explained by the use of different disclosure- and receiver characteristics. Boerman and Van Reijmersdal (2016) mentioned the importance of future research that focuses on the effects of disclosures in online sponsored content such as vlogs. It is expected that effects of disclosures are different for traditional media than for new media such as YouTube, which can be explained by consumers’ self-control and pacing: when sponsored content is integrated in a television program, it is harder for consumers to avoid this because they are already watching and want to continue watching. As for vlogs, consumers can make internal decisions on whether and how much attention they pay to the sponsored content in the video as soon as they are informed about it.
To recap, the current literature on the presence of disclosures shows inconsistent results for brand attitude and purchase intention. Because the goal of using sponsored content is mainly to increase consumers’ brand attitude and purchase intention (Washburn & Plank, 2002), we include those variables in the present study. Also, studies that did focus on
sponsorship disclosures mainly focused on random, unhealthy products such as Red Bull (Choi, Bang, Woidynski, Lee & Koo, 2015) instead of healthy products. In addition, we expect different effects of sponsored content in vlogs than for traditional media. Also, no study focused on vlogs, despite their rising popularity. Therefore, in the recent study, we only focus on disclosures in vlogs on healthy food.
Timing of Disclosure
The moment of disclosing sponsored content in a video can be decided by the YouTuber itself and can be for example early, in the middle, late in the vlog, or in the description box (Smith, 2015). To date, only two studies examined the effects of disclosure timing and found
contradicting results. Boerman, Van Reijmersdal and Neijens (2014) found that an early disclosure resulted in lower brand attitude than a late disclosure, while Campbell, Mohr and Verlegh (2013) found that a late disclosure resulted in lower brand attitude than an early disclosure. However, the different outcomes could be explained by the different types of disclosures that were used (specific disclosure vs. less specific). In the present study, more research is needed to solve the contradictions on sponsorship disclosure timing by only focusing on one type of disclosure (a specific) and only in the context of vlogs.
Persuasion Knowledge
Persuasion Knowledge is defined as ‘the personal knowledge about the tactics, intentions and strategies used in persuasive attempts. This knowledge helps them to identify how, when and why marketers try to influence them’ (Friestad & Wright, 1994). When exposed to a video with a sponsorship disclosure, consumers can modify their responses with their persuasion knowledge. Therefore, it is necessary to conceptualize this knowledge to see when and whether this mitigates the video’s impact (Campbell et al., 2013). As for the role of
persuasion knowledge in the effects of early vs. late disclosures on brand attitude and
purchase intention, there are contrasting views. An early compared to a late disclosure results in a higher persuasion knowledge (Campbell and Kirmani, 2000) and therefore lower brand attitude (Boerman et al., 2014). In contrast, Campbell et al. (2013) found that a late compared to an early disclosure resulted in a higher persuasion knowledge of consumers and therefore lower brand attitude. Because of the contradicting findings of the role of persuasion
knowledge and disclosure timing, more research is needed to fill the gap in the scientific literature to find more consistent results of the mediating effect of persuasion knowledge.
Resistance Strategies
When people are aware of a persuasive message, they can resist it when it is not in line with their own attitudes and beliefs. Resistance is ‘a reaction against change’ (Knowles & Linn, 2004). When the message has the purpose of persuading them, people can have ‘resistance towards persuasion’: the ability to withstand a persuasive attack (McGuire, 1964). Resistance strategies can be cognitive (what happens in the consumers’ mind) or affective (how the consumer feels at the moment of exposure to a message). One cognitive strategy is counter arguing, whereby a person identifies arguments opposed to the side advocated and directly countering those claims. An affective resistance strategy is negative affect, whereby people can get angry and irritated and therefore resist the message (Knowles & Linn, 2004). In the recent study, we expect different outcomes of early vs. late disclosures on the type of
resistance strategy used. Based on the theory of resistance strategies, when being exposed to a disclosure early in a vlog, people can show cognitive resistance by directly trying to counter argue the message because of the early warning in the message. And when being exposed to a disclosure late in a vlog, people can show affective resistance such as anger and irritation and therefore try to persuade the message. Therefore, it is important in the recent study to research
the mediating effect of resistance strategies to research the different effects for early vs. late disclosures.
Therefore, the following research question is conducted:
RQ: How does timing of a sponsorship disclosure in vlogs influence consumers’ brand attitude and purchase intention, and what is the mediating effect of persuasion knowledge and resistance strategies?
This study can have several implications. Regulations of using sponsored content in vlogs in the Netherlands are still vague. Therefore, The Social Code ("Totstandkoming Social Code: YouTube", n.d.) is developed and includes guidelines by YouTubers, for YouTubers (but no official rules) on how to use sponsored content. With the results of this study, policy makers and SMIS can decide which timing has the largest effects on consumers’ brand attitude and purchase intention and which mechanisms play a different role when processing disclosures. Because we focus on the category of healthy food, the positive or negative effects of a disclosure for healthy food will determine whether it is a good idea to use disclosures.
Theoretical Framework Sponsorship Disclosures
Disclosures can have many forms and objectives, but their main goal is to inform the audience (Cain, 2011; Woods, 2008). To inform the audience in the right way, disclosures should work in twofold: the audience (consumers) first must notice the disclosure and thereafter understand the message they received (Boerman, Van Reijmersdal & Neijens, 2015). When the disclosure is not noticed or understood, the benefits of it can be lost
applied to the receipt of information that a subsequent communication is meant to change the attitude of the recipient’ (Nugent, 2013).
Research on the effects of sponsorship disclosures in the context of traditional media advertising is done by Boerman and Van Reijmersdal (2016) in the form of a meta-analysis of 21 empirical studies, but studies that focused on advertising in new media types is scarce. Other studies mainly focused on the presence vs. absence of disclosures (Boerman et al., 2012) and on different types of disclosures (Dekker & Van Reijmersdal, 2013; Hwang & Jeong, 2016). For example, Allyn and Festinger (1961) found that presence of a disclosure resulted in less persuasion than absence. A forewarning of persuasive intent, such as a disclosure, can activate consumers’ persuasion knowledge (Friestad & Wright, 1994), which means that the disclosure increases awareness of persuasive intent. Therefore, this can motivate consumers to correct for the persuasive influence and can lead to less persuasion. Also, a disclosure can lead to increased resistance of consumers, because they do not want to be manipulated (Fransen & Fennis, 2014) and because it can be stated that they accept messages that come from commercial sources less than messages from non-commercial sources, such as friends (Darke & Ritchie, 2007). In the current study on the effects of early vs. late sponsorship disclosures, we expect that brand attitude and purchase intention also will be influenced via the mechanisms of persuasion knowledge and resistance strategies.
The Role of Sponsorship Disclosure Timing
For the effects of disclosure timing, priming theory can play an important role. The theory originated from Iyengar, Peters and Kinder (1982), where they studied the consequences of watching television news programs. The concept of priming is already studied in many contexts and domains, such as psychology and marketing. According to Roskos-Ewoldsen, Roskos-Ewoldsen and Carpentier (2009), priming refers to ‘the effect of some preceding
stimulus or event on how we react, broadly defined, to some subsequent stimulus’. When exposed to a certain message such as a judgment or choice, people do not always thoughtfully process it, make a list of advantages and disadvantages and outweigh them to make an
informed decision (Krosnick & Kinder, 1990). In other words, in general people solve problems with information that automatically comes to mind. In sponsored content, a sponsorship disclosure can work as a prime for a specific brand because consumers start to pay more visual attention to it and therefore increases their brand memory.
Higgins, Bargh and Lombardi (1985) showed that priming has two important characteristics. First, the effects of priming are dependent on their intensity and recency. Intensity refers to ‘either the frequency (how many times the prime is exposed) or the duration (the length) of the prime’ (Higgins et al., 1985). The recency of the prime is how many time there is between the prime and the target. Second, it is stated that ‘priming effects will fade over time’ (Roskos-Ewoldsen et al., 2009), but when this will happen depends on the context in which the prime is used. If a disclosure is shown at the beginning or prior to the sponsored content, it could function as a prime. Therefore, it is easy to access and fresh in the consumers’ mind. Then, it enhances the attention of consumers and this could lead to
recognition of the persuasive intent. But according to Roskos-Ewoldsen et al. (2009), the impact of the prime depends on the recency: if there is a lot of time between the prime and the target, the prime could fade and along with that the persuasive effects. Therefore, a prime at the end or concurrent with the sponsored content is more well-remembered by the consumer and leads to more persuasion. However, if a message is directly preceding the sponsored content and the product is immediately shown, priming effects could still be important. In addition, the study of Boerman et al. (2014) in the context of video found strong support that an early disclosure has larger effects on consumers’ recognition of advertising than a late disclosure and leads to less persuasion.
On the other hand, delay mechanisms also play a role in disclosure timing. Freedman and Sears (1965) and Hass and Grady (1975) researched the impact of forewarning messages in non-commercial contexts and proposed that the longer the delay between the disclosure and the persuasive message, the more time consumers had to process the message and therefore resulted in less persuasion. However, their study did not find support for delay mechanisms. Therefore, a knowledge gap exists in which timing is most effective in persuading consumers.
When the priming of the disclosure is early, the consumer can quickly recognize the content as advertising, enhances critical processing and recognition of the message (Boerman et al., 2014) and therefore results in lower brand attitude and purchase intention. Although previous research showed contradicting results on the effects of sponsorship disclosures on brand attitude and purchase intention, to date, no research has studied the effects for only early vs. late sponsorship disclosures and in the context of vlogs. Therefore, it is important to study early vs. late disclosures in the present study to see whether the effects are different for vlogs than for the more traditional media types. To date, it is not clear which disclosure timing is most effective. However, based on priming theory, the study of Boerman et al. (2014) and because studies on delay mechanisms found no support (Freedman & Sears, 1965; Hass & Grady; 1975), we expect that an early disclosure results in lower brand attitude and purchase intention than a late disclosure. Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed: H1a: The use of a sponsorship disclosure early in a vlog will result in lower brand attitude than a sponsorship disclosure late in a vlog.
H1b: The use of a sponsorship disclosure early in a vlog will result in lower purchase intention than a sponsorship disclosure late in a vlog.
The Mediating Role of Persuasion Knowledge
persuasion and use this knowledge to ‘cope’ with persuasion episodes’ (Friestad & Wright, 1994). By using this knowledge, consumers can make the decision to either let the message persuade them, or to resist the persuasive attempt. When this knowledge is activated, this first leads to the ‘change of meaning’ principle: ‘when a person begins conceiving of an agent’s action as a persuasive tactic’. Hereafter, ‘detachment’ will occur: consumers may distantiate themselves from the content they are exposed to.
Persuasion knowledge is divided in two dimensions: conceptual persuasion knowledge and attitudinal persuasion knowledge (Friestad & Wright, 1999). Conceptual persuasion knowledge is ‘the cognitive dimension that embraces the recognition of advertising, its source and audience, and the understanding of the advertising’s persuasive intent, selling intent and tactics’ (Rozendaal, Lapierre, Van Reijmersdal & Buijzen, 2011). When the level of this knowledge is high enough, consumers view the message as persuasive and may develop active defenses to cope with the persuasive intent and to have control over the outcome; therefore, the persuasive intent may lose its effects (d’Astous & Chartier, 2000; Nebenzahl & Jaffe, 1998). Attitudinal persuasion knowledge is consumers’ critical feelings towards the content, and can be about honesty, trustworthiness and credibility (Boerman, Van Reijmersdal & Neijens, 2012).
Earlier studies on the effects of persuasion knowledge on brand attitude showed contradicting results. On the one hand, several studies showed that persuasion knowledge negatively affects brand attitude (Campbell et al., 2013; Boerman et al., 2012; 2015), while other studies did not find significant effects on brand attitude via this concept (Dekker & Van Reijmersdal, 2013; Van Reijmersdal, 2015). Also, both positive and negative effects on purchase intention were found (Tessitore & Geuens, 2013; Vanwesenbeeck, Ponnet & Walrave, 2017).
The ultimate goal of consumers’ persuasion knowledge is to hold valid attitudes and cope with persuasion. It is stated that by showing the disclosure at the beginning of the message, a priming effect may occur. Therefore, consumers are more quickly aware of the commercial intent than when the disclosure is shown at the end of the message; this leads to activation of conceptual and attitudinal persuasion knowledge and results in lower brand attitude and purchase intention. To examine whether these disclosures replicate the same findings for an early vs. late timing and in the context of vlogs, the following hypotheses for mediation are proposed:
H2a: A disclosure early in a vlog results in higher conceptual persuasion knowledge than a disclosure late in a vlog, and therefore 1) brand attitude and 2) purchase intention will be lower after the vlog with early disclosure.
H2b: A disclosure early in a vlog results in higher attitudinal persuasion knowledge than a disclosure late in a vlog, and therefore 1) brand attitude and 2) purchase intention will be lower after the vlog with early disclosure.
The Mediating Role of Resistance Strategies
Resistance (cognitive or affective) plays an important role in persuasion. The cognitive response approach (Petty, Ostrom & Brock, 1981) states that ‘people mainly respond to persuasive messages with cognitions’, which can be either positive or negative. When people feel they are being influenced, they will try to resist persuasive attempts (Sagarin, Cialdini, Rice & Serna, 2002; Wei, Fischer & Main, 2008).
According to Zuwerink and Cameron (2003), ‘if people try to resist a persuasive message, they more often respond with negative emotions’, whereby they found
counterarguing as one effective strategy to resist persuasion. Counterarguing as a result of the use of forewarnings (Petty & Cacioppo, 1977; Wood & Quinn, 2003) is a strategy used very
often by consumers because of the perceived persuasive intent of a message. As for brand attitude, research showed that counterarguing due to a disclosure leads to a more negative brand attitude (Petty et al., 1981; Zuwerink & Cameron, 2003). Research has shown that disclosing content (vs. not disclosing content) negatively influences purchase intention and it is assumed that this is caused by resistance (Milne, Rohm & Bahl, 2009). However, these studies did not focus on disclosure timing. Because to date, no study focused on the possible different outcomes of an early vs. late sponsorship disclosure timing on cognitive resistance, we focus on this in the present study. We expect that cognitive resistance evokes more quickly in an early sponsorship disclosure because of the early warning in the message and therefore effects are lower than for a late sponsorship disclosure. In addition, Boerman et al. (2012) showed that a disclosure can lead to critical feelings such as skepticism and disliking and therefore enhances affective responses of consumers towards the sponsored content, such as anger and irritation. This mechanism may also explain the negative effects on brand attitude and purchase intention. We state that consumers’ affective responses are higher when the sponsorship disclosure is shown late in the vlog than early in the vlog, because consumers can feel annoyed and feel they are being tricked into the persuasive message. Therefore, the following hypotheses for mediation are proposed:
H3a: A disclosure early in a vlog results in higher cognitive resistance than a disclosure late in a vlog, and therefore 1) brand attitude and 2) purchase intention will be lower after the vlog with early disclosure.
H3b: A disclosure late in a vlog results in higher affective resistance than a disclosure early in a vlog, and therefore 1) brand attitude and 2) purchase intention will be lower after the vlog with late disclosure.
Figure 1, Conceptual Model.
Methods Participants
Participants for the online experiment were recruited over a two-week period via the social networking sites Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, via mouth-to-mouth and via e-mail. Because the target group of millennials is already highly active on those social
networking sites, there was a preference for spreading the survey via these channels to recruit participants.
Participants were included when they did have the Dutch nationality and were
between 18 and 38 years old. The initial amount of participants was N = 185. 29 Participants were excluded because they did not complete the survey, 2 because they did not give their informed consent, 3 because they did not have the Dutch nationality and 1 because the participant did not met the age criteria. Therefore, the remaining and final sample size of the experiment was N = 150.
The participants differed between 18 and 38 years old (M = 25.8, SD = 4.31) (59.3% female, N = 89 ; 40.7% male, N = 61) Regarding education level, the majority of the
a higher professional education, 4.7% finished high school at VWO level, 4% finished high school at HAVO level, 2.7% graduated from the MBO, 0.7% graduated from the
LBO/VMBO, 0.7% had a different education and 0.7% was a doctorate/PHD.
Experimental Design
To test the hypotheses of this study, a design including one factor (sponsorship disclosure timing) with two levels (early vs. late) was used in the experiment. Next to the two experimental conditions, a control condition was included (disclosure absent). The
independent variable in this study was sponsorship disclosure timing, the dependent variables were brand attitude and purchase intention, and the mediators were persuasion knowledge (conceptual and attitudinal) and resistance strategies (cognitive vs. affective).
Procedure
At the beginning of the questionnaire, participants were given a cover story to disguise the real purpose of the study, including a privacy and anonymity guarantee and they had to fill in their informed consent. The cover story was that participants were asked to participate in the study to watch a YouTube video and what they thought about that. After they gave their informed consent, participants were asked several demographic questions and were debriefed they were going to watch a video. Hereafter, participants were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions (early vs. late vs. absent). After watching the video, questions were asked about participants’ brand attitude, purchase intention, persuasion knowledge and resistance strategies. Hereafter, control questions were asked about familiarity with the vlogger
displayed in the stimulus (Diana Leeflang), how often they watch her vlogs, what score they gave Diana, how often they watch vlogs in general, their opinion on level of healthiness of HelloFresh meal boxes and their own use of HelloFresh meal boxes and meal boxes in
general. At the end of the questionnaire, participants were debriefed about the real purpose of the study and thanked for participating in the study.
Stimulus Material
The stimulus material in this study was a part of a vlog of Diana Leeflang (D is for Dazzle). She is a popular vlogger in The Netherlands with more than 272.000 subscribers. A popular vlogger was chosen because of her high reach and she more often makes videos with sponsored content. In her vlog, she talked about her new HelloFresh meal box that was delivered at her house, the menu with recipes of that week, and what recipe she was going to cook. The product HelloFresh is chosen for this study because it is marketed as a healthy product, and because it is very popular in The Netherlands: nearly 1,5 million households make use of this healthy service (NU.nl, 2018).
The video duration was 2,5 minutes. The conditions differed in that the early condition included a sponsorship disclosure prior to the vlog, the late condition included a sponsorship after the vlog, and the absent condition did not have any sponsorship disclosure. The
sponsorship disclosure included the text ‘This video is sponsored by HelloFresh’ (Deze video is gesponsord door HelloFresh) (white text, black background) and was shown four seconds. This text is chosen because it clearly underlines a collaboration between two parties and cannot be ambiguous in any way. Also, sentences like ‘sponsored by’ are recommended by the FTC (2018).
In this study, a manipulation check is needed to find out if the participants have perceived that the experimental factor has been manipulated. First, a question about the presence of the sponsorship disclosure was asked: ‘Did you see the text ‘This video is
sponsored by HelloFresh’?’ (Yes / No / I don’t know). Second, a question about the timing of the sponsorship disclosure was asked: ‘If so, when did you see this text?’ (Before the vlog
started / After the vlog ended / I don’t know). The question about timing was only displayed if participants answered yes on the previous question.
Measures
Brand Attitude. Brand attitude measured participants’ attitude towards the product HelloFresh in response to the vlog and was measured by asking the question: “Based on the video, I think the meal boxes of HelloFresh are…”, followed by a 7-point semantic
differential scale with six statements: bad/good, unpleasant/pleasant, unfavorable/favorable, negative/positive, dislike/like, and poor quality/high quality (Boerman et al., 2012; Bruner, 2009; Campbell, 1995). The six statements measuring brand attitude indicated a high internal consistency ( = .93, M = 5.09, SD = 1.12).
Purchase Intention. Purchase intention measured to what extent participants felt the intention to buy the product HelloFresh, in response to the vlog. It was measured with four items: “I would like to try the product HelloFresh”, “I intend to buy the product HelloFresh”, “I want to buy the product HelloFresh” and “I intend to look for the product HelloFresh in a store (online)”, all ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The scale for measuring purchase intention was derived from Spears & Singh (2004), in which the authors developed a scale for measuring attitude toward the brand and purchase intentions. A
reliability check of the items measuring purchase intention indicated a high internal consistency ( = .90, M = 3.30, SD = 1.35).
Persuasion Knowledge. To measure persuasion knowledge, the extent to which
participants know about the tactics used in persuasive attempts, items on both conceptual and attitudinal persuasion knowledge were asked. For conceptual persuasion knowledge,
participants were asked one single question, namely if they thought the video about HelloFresh was an advertisement. Participants answered this question on a 7-point Likert
scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Only one question is chosen to measure conceptual persuasion knowledge, because this is enough to measure a singular construct (Rossiter, 2011) (M = 5.65, SD = 1.30).
To measure attitudinal persuasion knowledge, the extent to which participants
experienced critical feelings toward the sponsored content in the vlog, the following question was asked: “I think the item about HelloFresh in the video was…”, followed by a 7-point semantic differential scale with five statements: not honest/honest, not
trustworthy/trustworthy, not convincing/convincing, biased/not biased and not
credible/credible. The scale for measuring attitudinal persuasion knowledge is derived from Ohanian (1990), where he constructed and validated a scale for measuring celebrity
endorsers’ trustworthiness (here used to measure attitudinal persuasion knowledge), perceived expertise and attractiveness. A reliability check showed a high internal consistency ( = .83, M = 4.12, SD = 1.08).
Resistance Strategies. For resistance strategies, one cognitive and one affective resistance strategy in response to the vlog was measured. The cognitive resistance strategy ‘counterarguing’ measured the extent to which participants used certain reasons, statements or facts in opposition to the argument given, in response to the vlog. It was measured using four items, namely “While watching, I contested the information in the video”, “While watching, I refuted the information in the video”, “While watching, I doubted the information in the video” and “While watching, I countered the information in the video”. Participants agreed to this statement on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) (Zuwerink & Cameron, 2003; Fransen, Ter Hoeven & Verlegh, 2013). A reliability check of this scale indicated a high internal consistency ( = .88, M = 3.27, SD = 1.22).
The affective strategy ‘negative affect’, the extent to which participants felt negative emotions in response to the vlog, was measured. Participants answered this question by
agreeing on the following statements on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree): “While watching the video, I felt angry”, “While watching the video, I felt enraged”, “While watching the video, I felt irritated” and “While watching the video, I felt annoyed”. The scale used was derived from Zuwerink and Cameron (2003) and had good reliability ( = .89, M = 2.66, SD = 1.46).
Control Variables. Several control variables were included in the questionnaire to sustain the internal validity. Familiarity with Diana was measured (Yes / No / I don’t know), how often they watch her vlogs, ranging on a scale from Never to Every day, what score they give Diana on a scale of 1 to 10, how often they watch vlogs in general (Never to Every day), their opinion on level of healthiness of HelloFresh meal boxes (Very unhealthy to Very healthy), how often they use HelloFresh meal boxes (Never to Every day) and how often they use meal boxes in general (Never to Every day).
Results Randomization Check
A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that there were no significant differences in age between the three conditions (early vs. late vs. control/absent), F(2, 147) = .309, p = .735, ηp2 = .00. Furthermore, a chi-square test of independence showed that there were no significant differences in gender 2 (2) = 1.713, p = .425, education level 2 (2) = 3.698, p = .157, and frequency of watching vlogs in general 2 (2) = .379, p = .827 between the three conditions (early vs. late vs. control/absent). This indicates successful randomization.
Manipulation Check
To assess if the manipulation of sponsorship disclosure worked, two manipulation checks were performed: one for the presence and another for timing. For the manipulation of
presence, participants answered the question ‘Heb je de tekst ‘deze video is gesponsord door HelloFresh’ voorbij zien komen?’ (ja/nee). The analysis showed that there were significant differences between the three conditions (early vs. late vs. control/absent), 2 (2) = 68.429, p < 0.001. In the early condition, 64% of the participants said they have seen the disclosure; in the late condition, 86% said they have seen the disclosure and in the control condition, 6% said they have seen the disclosure, meaning that manipulation presence has been successful.
A second manipulation check for timing was performed to check if the participants in the early and late condition also saw the disclosure at the right moment. The manipulation check showed that there was a significant difference between the early and late condition, 2 (1) = 71.036, p < 0.001. In the early condition, 97% of the participants said the disclosure was early; as for the late condition, 100% of the participants said the disclosure was late, meaning that manipulation for timing also has been successful.
Main Analysis
H1a. To test H1a that an early disclosure results in lower brand attitude than a late disclosure, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted. The analysis showed that sponsorship disclosure timing had no significant effect on brand attitude, F(1, 98) = .380, p = .606, ηp2 = .00. An early disclosure did not lead to a significantly lower brand attitude (M = 5.09, SD = 0.79), compared to a late disclosure (M = 4.97, SD = 1.49). Therefore, H1a was rejected.
H1b. To test H1b that an early disclosure results in lower purchase intention than a late disclosure, another ANOVA was conducted. The analysis showed that sponsorship disclosure timing had no significant effect on purchase intention, F(1, 98) = .289, p = .592, ηp2 = .00. An early disclosure did not lead to a significantly lower purchase intention (M =
3.19, SD = 1.24), compared to a late disclosure (M = 3.34, SD = 1.53). Therefore, H1b was also rejected.
Mediation of Persuasion Knowledge
To test H2a and H2b, serial mediation analyses were conducted using PROCESS model 4 (Hayes, 2013).
H2a1. To test H2a1, which states that an early disclosure results in higher conceptual persuasion knowledge than a late disclosure and therefore brand attitude will be lower after the vlog with early disclosure, no significant mediation effect was found, b = -.12, t = -.52, p = .606, CI [-.60, .35]. Thus, H2a1 was rejected.
H2a2. This hypothesis stated that an early disclosure results in higher conceptual persuasion knowledge than a late disclosure and therefore purchase intention will be lower after the vlog with early disclosure. Results showed there was no significant mediating effect of conceptual persuasion knowledge, b = .15, t = .54, p = .529, CI [-.40, .70], meaning that H2a2 was rejected.
H2b1. To analyze the hypothesis that an early disclosure results in higher attitudinal persuasion knowledge than a late disclosure and therefore brand attitude will be lower after the vlog with early disclosure, the same mediation analysis was performed. Results showed no significant mediating effect, b = -.12, t = -.52, p = .606, CI [-.60, .35], rejecting H2b1.
H2b2. This hypothesis expected the same as H2b1, but then for purchase intention. Results of the mediation analysis showed there was no significant mediating effect, b = .15, t = .54, p = .592, CI [-.40, .70]. Thus, H2b2 was also rejected.
Mediation of Resistance Strategies
As for H3a and H3b, the same mediation analyses were conducted using PROCESS model 4 (Hayes, 2013).
H3a1. With respect to H3a1, the mediation analysis showed there was no significant mediating effect of cognitive resistance with respect to brand attitude, b = -.12, t = -.52, p = .606, CI [-.60, .35]. This means that the hypothesis is rejected that a disclosure early in a vlog results in higher cognitive resistance than a disclosure late in a vlog and therefore brand attitude will be lower after the vlog with early disclosure.
H3a2. The analysis showed there was no significant mediating effect, b = .15, t = .54, p = .592, CI [-.40, .70]. Therefore, H3a2 was also rejected that a disclosure early in a vlog results in higher cognitive resistance than a disclosure late in a vlog and therefore purchase intention will be lower after the vlog with early disclosure.
H3b1. To test H3b1 that a disclosure late in a vlog results in higher affective
resistance than a disclosure early in a vlog and therefore brand attitude will be lower after the vlog with late disclosure, no significant mediating effect was found, b = 0.12, t = -.52, p = .606, CI [-.60, .35], rejecting H3b1.
H3b2. Results showed there was no significant mediating effect on purchase intention, b = .15, t = .54, p = .592, CI [-.40, .70], meaning the hypothesis was rejected that a disclosure late in a vlog results in higher affective resistance than a disclosure early in a vlog and
therefore purchase intention will be lower after the vlog with late disclosure.
Additional Testing
For additional testing, all tests performed for the contrast of early vs. late disclosures were repeated for the contrast of disclosure present vs. absent.
An ANOVA showed that a sponsorship disclosure (present vs. absent) had no significant effect no brand attitude, F(1, 98) = .972, p = .326, ηp2 = 0.01. A sponsorship disclosure did not lead to a significantly lower brand attitude (M = 5.03, SD = 1.19), compared to the control condition (M = 5.22, SD = .98).
An ANOVA showed no significant effect on purchase intention, F(1, 98) = .219, p = .640, ηp2 = .00. A sponsorship disclosure did not lead to a significantly lower purchase intention (M = 3.26, SD = 1.39), compared to the control condition (M = 3.37, SD = 1.29).
A mediation analysis showed no significant mediating effect of conceptual persuasion knowledge on 1) brand attitude b = .17, t = .87, p = .388, CI [-.22, .55] and 2) purchase intention b = .08, t = .33, p = .739, CI [-.39, .54].
The mediation analysis showed no significant mediating effect of attitudinal persuasion knowledge on 1) brand attitude b = .04, t = .23, p = .820, CI [-.30, .37] and 2) purchase intention b = -.04, t = -.20, p = .838, CI [-.47, .38].
No significant mediating effect of cognitive resistance was found for 1) brand attitude b = .17, t = .87, p = .384, CI [-.21, .54] and 2) purchase intention b = .17, t = .87, p = .384, CI [-.21, .54].
The mediation analysis for the final two hypotheses found no significant mediating effect of affective resistance on 1) brand attitude b = .11, t = .64, p = .525, CI [-.22, .45] and 2) purchase intention b = .03, t = .15, p = .880, CI [-.40, .47].
Discussion
The aim of this study was to answer the research question: How does timing of a sponsorship disclosure in vlogs influence consumers’ brand attitude and purchase intention, and what is the mediating effect of persuasion knowledge and resistance strategies? No significant effects were found for both the main effect and the mediating effect of persuasion knowledge and
resistance strategies on brand attitude and purchase intention. Additionally, no significant effects were found for the contrast of early vs. late and absent vs. present. Therefore, it could be concluded that all hypotheses of this study could be rejected.
In this study, we did not find that an early disclosure results in lower brand attitude than a late disclosure. The study of Boerman et al. (2014) did find support for this: an early disclosure resulted in lower brand attitude than a late disclosure. In addition, our hypothesis H1a is contrary to the study of Campbell et al. (2013), where they found that a late disclosure resulted in lower brand attitude than an early disclosure. They explain this by stating that a late disclosure is more likely to result in inferences of persuasive influence than an early disclosure, because correction for influence on judgments where detection of bias is difficult, such as for brand attitude, only appears when a disclosure is shown after the content. As for an early disclosure, consumers can get distracted when watching the content and forget to resist the persuasion. Therefore, this could explain why we did not find support for our hypothesis.
A possible explanation for not finding support that an early disclosure results in lower purchase intention than a late disclosure could be explained by the high disclosure recall in the present study. The study of Tessitore and Geuens (2013) found support that a disclosure resulted in lower purchase intention. However, this only happened when participants did not recall seeing the disclosure. Of their participants, only 16% did see the logo disclosure, whereas in the present study, a significant amount of participants in all experimental groups did recall the disclosure. In addition, Tessitore and Geuens (2013) only measured the effects of presence vs. absence of a disclosure and did not focus on timing.
A possible explanation for not finding any significant mediating effect of conceptual persuasion knowledge on brand attitude and purchase intention in this study could be that only recognizing the content as being advertising is not enough to alter the persuasion
(Boerman et al., 2012); therefore, also critical feelings (attitudinal persuasion knowledge) towards the sponsored content are needed. In addition, Boerman et al. (2012) showed that a 6-seconds disclosure increased those critical feelings and therefore led to a lower brand attitude. However, their sponsored content was an episode of the television program MTV Was Here. The item was shown in-between two other items that did not contain sponsored content. In our study, we only used one item containing sponsored content and in the form of a vlog.
A reason for not finding any significant mediating effect of resistance strategies on brand attitude and purchase intention could be that the first half of the video was about HelloFresh itself, and the second half of the video about the preparation of the recipe. Therefore, it could be that the emphasis on the brand itself was a little bit lost because consumers could have focused too much on the ingredients of the recipe and their personal preference for the recipe. In addition, HelloFresh was considered a low involvement product, because 86.7% of the participants said they never use the meal boxes (N = 130). For a high involvement product like a car, people care more about it than for low involvement products and therefore come up more early with counterarguments when it is not in line with their own attitudes. For example, in Van Reijmersdal et al. (2016), they made use of a high involvement product (headphone) and found that both counterarguing and negative affect resulted in lower brand attitude and purchase intention. However, they only focused on presence vs. absence of a disclosure and on an unhealthy (casserole food mix) vs. a healthy product (headphone), instead of on the effects of timing.
Limitations and Future Research
The target group of millennials is already highly active on websites such as YouTube; therefore, the choice for an online experiment that also included watching a video was a logical consequence. We may never know if participants really watched the entire vlog of 2,5
minutes, but we tried to stimulate this as much as possible by ensuring that they could not immediately click through. Therefore, this was a strength of the present study because it benefited the ecological validity.
A limitation of the present study is that several previous studies indeed found differences for the effects of presence vs. absence disclosures and timing, but in the present study, no significant effects were found. A possible explanation could be that the sample size (N = 150) was slightly lower than those of other studies (N = 200, N = 209) (Boerman et al., 2013; 2014). Future research could aim for a bigger sample size to hopefully get more useful and significant results.
This study did not look at type of sponsorship disclosure, but only at the timing. Hwang and Jeong (2016) showed that including an ‘honest opinion’ sponsorship disclosure positively affected consumers’ source credibility and attitudes. However, only focusing on the timing also strengthens the present study because of the existing knowledge gap. And when comparing presence vs. absence for disclosures, the differences between those groups were too big in terms of consumers’ persuasion knowledge (Van Reijmersdal et al., 2016).
Therefore, a recommendation for future research would be to replicate the present study and add an ‘honest opinion’ sponsorship disclosure as an additional variable to see if this would affect the outcomes for early vs. late sponsorship disclosures.
Theoretical and Practical Implications
This study is the first to investigate early vs. late sponsorship disclosures in the context of vlogs. Previous studies focused on either the presence vs. absence of disclosures (Van Reijmersdal et al., 2016) or timing, but then in contexts other than vlogs (Boerman et al., 2014; Campbell et al., 2013). In addition, the popularity of influencer marketing is a
literature is somewhat outdated. Despite no significant results, the present study can serve as a starting point for more research on influencer marketing to update the scientific literature.
As for priming in contrast to delay mechanisms, an early disclosure should have led to less favorable attitudes and intentions of consumers, but the present study did not find support for this. This could implicate that the concept of priming did not play a role at all in this study for the context of vlogs. Also, we did not take process indicators of priming into account, such as persuasion knowledge.
It could be that our population of millennials already had a high level of persuasion knowledge and the disclosure did not increase this; this was also reflected by the relatively high level of persuasion knowledge in the control group. Therefore, millenials’ level of persuasion knowledge in the future could be of such as high level that they assume in every single video sponsored content will be available. Using this theory for the present study could lead to neutral opinions towards disclosures, as they find in the study of Boerman et al. (2013). When the disclosure is shown too close to the brand, the level of persuasion knowledge could be relatively high. However, if persuasion knowledge is only measured early or late in a vlog, the level of it can decrease or even fade. Therefore, a suggestion would be to measure persuasion knowledge at multiple moments in the vlog, instead of only early or late.
Also, several practical implications can be made. The Federal Trade Commission already released a guideline for sponsored content in 1980. Back then, the guideline did not include that endorsers and advertisers could be liable for not disclosing their content, while the revised guide obliged them to be transparent about collaborations. Therefore, consumers could be ‘tricked’ in the past without being aware of sponsorships. This study shed light on the possible decreasing effects of disclosures on consumers’ brand attitude and purchase intention. While YouTube (Koh, 2014) and SMIs (Freberg et al., 2011) continues to grow, it
may be that consumers’ knowledge and awareness of sponsored content also increases and are better informed than in the past. In addition, advertisers should start reconsider collaborating with SMIs now the influence on consumers is decreasing.
According to our results, the timing of a sponsorship disclosure does not have significant effects of consumers, meaning that it does not matter that much whether the disclosure is shown early or late in a vlog. As stated in the introduction of this study, the YouTuber can decide for itself when to disclose the sponsored content (Smith, 2015); therefore, this study showed that influencers can still continue to benefit from their freedom of choice.
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