When Companies Don't Make the Ad: A Multimethod Inquiry Into the Differential Effectiveness of Consumer-Generated Advertising

Abstract

This four-part multimethod investigation into the under researched yet increasingly prevalent phenomenon of consumer-generated advertising (CGA) establishes a performance advantage over traditional advertising and suggests a rationale for this differential. CGAs benefit from heightened consumer engagement and increased trustworthiness. CGAs also garner perceived quality advantages that are linked to consumers lowering their expectations and using different evaluation criteria to judge the ad. The ad creator—a personalized, identifiable, and relatable entity in the case of CGAs—plays a central role in anchoring and shaping ad reactions. The impact of the “consumer-made” characteristic—the fact that CGAs are made not by companies but by independent people—is powerful and stands strong in the face of commercial motives, and presents paradigmatic implications for advertising practice and research.