“Dit artikel is gesponsord”

Abstract

Abstract “This post is sponsored”. The interplay between sponsorship disclosure position, its wording, and brand prominence in blogs Research has repeatedly shown that disclosures in sponsored content activate people’s persuasion knowledge and consequently impact brand recall and brand attitude. However, prior research did not show clear effects of the wording and positioning of disclosures. Remarkably little research has been conducted to examine the interaction of both disclosure characteristics systematically. Furthermore, while brand prominence could well cause variations in the effects of disclosures, little attention has been paid to the role of brand prominence in sponsored content. The current study therefore aimed to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms behind the effects of sponsorship disclosure position, its wording, and brand prominence in blogs on readers’ processing. An online experiment using a 2 (disclosure wording: explicit / implicit) by 2 (disclosure position: beginning / end) by 2 (brand prominence: high / low) between subjects design (n = 274) revealed an implicit disclosure at the beginning of the blog enhances conceptual persuasion knowledge more compared to positioning at the end of a blog, while the opposite was found for explicit disclosures. These interaction effects of sponsorship disclosure wording and position indirectly enhance brand recall without being evaluated negatively by readers, but only if the content’s brand prominence was low. The implications of these findings for research on sponsorship disclosure are discussed.