Brand versus generic advertising: A conceptual framework with an application to cheese

Economic research measures the existence of advertising effects, but provides little insight into the mechanisms responsible for the observed responses. Drawing chiefly from constructs gleaned from the psychology and marketing literatures, an “inference-based” conceptual model is posited that elucidates the differing roles of generic and brand advertising in a consumer-choice setting. The model's key hypotheses, recursivity and complementarity, are tested with consumer awareness data on cheese advertising.