What's Advertising Content Worth? Evidence from a Consumer Credit Marketing Field Experiment

Marianne Bertrand, Sendhil Mullainathan (), Dean Karlan (), Eldar Shafir and Jonathan Zinman
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Marianne Bertrand: University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Eldar Shafir: Princeton University, Innovations for Poverty Action, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Jonathan Zinman: Dartmouth College and Innovations for Poverty Action

Working Papers from Economic Growth Center, Yale University

Abstract: Firms spend billions of dollars each year advertising consumer products in order to influence demand. Much of these outlays are on the creative design of advertising content. Creative content often uses nuances of presentation and framing that have large effects on consumer decision making in laboratory studies. But there is little field evidence on the effect of advertising content as it compares in magnitude to the effect of price. We analyze a direct mail field experiment in South Africa implemented by a consumer lender that randomized creative content and loan price simultaneously. We find that content has significant effects on demand. There is also some evidence that the magnitude of content sensitivity is large relative to price sensitivity. However, it was difficult to predict which particular types of content would significantly impact demand. This fits with a central premise of psychology— context matters— and highlights the importance of testing the robustness of laboratory findings in the field.

Keywords: economics of advertising; economics & psychology; behavioral; economics; cues; microfinance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 M31 M37 C93 D12 D14 D21 D81 D91 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)

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Working Paper: What's Advertising Content Worth? Evidence from a Consumer Credit Marketing Field Experiment (2009)
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