A Model of Public Response to Marketplace Advocacy

Abstract

The proposed model of public response to marketplace advocacy accounted for approximately 80% of variance in attitude toward a campaign promoting the coal industry. Marketplace advocacy is used by corporate interests to generate support for risk-related products, and the findings indicate trust in the message sponsor and perceptions of industry accountability are key to lay audiences' negotiation of these messages. Perceptions of trust and accountability led to favorable persuasion coping outcomes for the sponsor—identification with positive message themes and favorable evaluation of the information in the message—which in turn led to positive attitudes toward the campaign.

Response to Marketplace Advocacy Messages by Sponsor and Topic within the Energy Industry: Should Corporations or Industry Trade Groups Do the Talking?

“…Like perceptions of industry accountability, advertiser trust has also been found to include two salient dimensions: perceptions of the intent of the campaign, and perceptions of the advertiser's transparency regarding identity and planned actions. Both qualitative and quantitative research indicated these two dimensions of advertiser trust were predictive of responses to a coal industrysponsored marketplace advocacy campaign (Miller & Sinclair, 2009a, 2009b; meanwhile, trust has similarly been found to predict attitudes toward a campaign for genetically-modified crops (Sinclair & Irani, 2005). Haley (1996) also found that perceptions of an organization's intent-which he identified as an aspect of organizational credibility-were key to audience interpretation of health-related advocacy messages.…”

“…While extant research has empirically supported the significance of these perceptions in public response to marketplace advocacy messages, these studies focused on campaigns by industry trade groups, namely the West Virginia Coal Association (Miller & Sinclair, 2009a, 2009b and the Council for Biotechnology (Sinclair & Irani, 2005). However, marketplace advocacy campaigns are commonplace among both corporations and industry trade groups.…”

“…Extant research has developed and tested a model of public response to marketplace advocacy; however, this research focused exclusively on campaigns by industry associations. This study directly answers a call for further investigation into how model constructs function when the sponsor is a single corporation and when campaigns are aimed at national, lay audiences (Miller & Sinclair, 2009b). Further, this study explores how the topic of the advocacy message-to promote an industry sector or a specific industry issue (both common marketplace advocacy objectives)-may influence audience response.…”

“…Although both corporateand industry-sponsored campaigns are intended to build and maintain support for the product (or industry) category, the role of message sponsor requires further exploration. In fact, structural equation modeling examining response to the "Friends of Coal" campaign found that perceptions of advertiser trust were an even stronger predictor of audience members' positive negotiation of the campaign than perceptions of industry accountability (Miller & Sinclair, 2009b).…”

“…industry) accountability and (2) perceptions of the sponsor's (i.e. advertiser) trustworthiness (Miller & Sinclair, 2009a, 2009bSinclair & Irani, 2005). Perceptions of industry accountability are classified as both the salient agent and topic knowledge, because in the context of marketplace advocacy (unlike corporate stealth front-group campaigns), the activities of the persuasive agent (in this case, the ad sponsor) are also the focal topic of the message.…”