Consumer Expectations of the Information Content in Advertising

Eight basic types of advertising were identified, based on the tasks they were expected to perform. These were: corporate; brand image; political; retail; public service; advocacy; direct response, and comparative advertising. Student subjects exposed to the different categories of advertisements provided a total of 4,485 statements about the kind of information they would expect to find in each type. Trained coders then classified these statements into several dimensions of information expectations associated with each of the eight different types of advertisements. Overall, three identifiable information expectation themes emerged: (1) expected information about products and services; (2) expected information about organizations or companies, and 3) expected puffery/hype. Puffery was expected to be found in all types of advertisements examined apart from comparative advertising. However, consumers appeared to perceive puffery as advertising information to be ignored.