What our Name Stands for: Retail Store Owners and their Employees in Store Flyer Advertising

Abstract

Retail store flyers are an important medium for influencing customers’ perceptions of store image, and ultimately their purchasing behaviour. This study investigates to what degree the depiction on store flyers of store owners and their employees, physically attractive models, or no one at all, affects these attributes. The researchers interviewed 300 respondents and distributed 90,000 store flyers, and found that corporate credibility is important when using store flyers in advertising. Corporate credibility has a greater effect on advertising evaluations when the depictions are of store owners and their employees, rather than of physically attractive models, or when they contain no endorsements at all. This conclusion is especially important for retailers who are owner-managers, because such an approach enables them to set themselves apart from larger retail chains that are unable to use their company managers because anonymous figures usually occupy their management positions. However, the findings do not support the same influence on purchasing behaviour.