Advertising to businesses: Does creativity matter?

IMM-07261; No of Pages 9 Industrial Marketing Management xxx (2015) xxx–xxx

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Industrial Marketing Management

Advertising to businesses: Does creativity matter? Daniel W. Baack a,⁎, Rick T. Wilson b, Maria M. van Dessel a, Charles H. Patti a a b

Department of Marketing, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver, 2101 S. University Boulevard, Denver, CO, USA Department of Marketing, McCoy College of Business, Texas State University, 601 University Drive, San Marcos, TX, USA

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 14 February 2014 Received in revised form 31 August 2015 Accepted 4 September 2015 Available online xxxx Keywords: Advertising Business advertising Creativity Investment promotion

a b s t r a c t Business-to-business advertising research has long been grounded in rationality with a focus on factual, functional, benefit-laden messages. However, in consumer advertising, psychological differentiators, such creativity, are frequently used to increase advertising effectiveness. With growing evidence that consumer marketing concepts apply to business buyers, this research investigates the effect advertising creativity has on the organizational buying process. Using an online survey, we present actual advertisements to managers in the B2B environment. Our results provide strong evidence that message creativity influences business managers' response toward advertising for site selection. Creative ads generated stronger shifts in attitudes toward the ad, attitudes toward the brand, and behavioral intentions. The results extend previous research on the role of creativity in advertising to a business-to-business context. The results also challenge conventional wisdom and dominant practices in advertising to businesses. © 2015 Published by Elsevier Inc.

Creativity has long been recognized as one of the most important concepts in the design and development of effective advertising (El-Murad & West, 2004; Hopkins, 1972; Klebba & Tierney, 1995; Ogilvy, 1963, 1995; Reeves, 1961; Sasser & Koslow, 2008). Creative ads have been linked to increased levels of awareness and comprehension as well as more favorable attitudes toward the ad and brand (Till & Baack, 2005; Yang & Smith, 2009). Yet, for all the academic interest in the topic, there appears to be a paucity of research on advertising creativity within a business-to-business (B2B) context. This gap in the literature can be largely traced to the potentially false distinction between “organizational buyers” and “individual consumers.” The traditional perspective of organizational buyer behavior as rational purchase decisions has walled off much B2B marketing research from the large body of consumer marketing research (Wilson, 2000). Viewing business buyers as objective, attribute-driven, and separate from consumers has limited the application and efficacy of past research on the topic (Brown, Zablah, Bellenger, & Johnston, 2011; Wilson, 2000). While acknowledging that business markets are certainly different (albeit by degree not genus, as noted by Wilson, 2000), by applying consumer marketing theory, B2B researchers face rich opportunities to advance the field. While the possibilities are myriad, this paper focuses on how message effects, namely creativity, may very well be important whether targeting business people or consumers. Creativity is considered an important determinant of advertising effectiveness, and wellplanned creative strategy and execution are central elements in the development of advertising. This project explores the relativity under ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (D.W. Baack), [email protected] (R.T. Wilson), [email protected] (M.M. van Dessel), [email protected] (C.H. Patti).

researched area of advertising creativity in the B2B sector, and by doing so offers evidence of the efficacy of creative advertising in a B2B context. 1. Literature review and hypothesis development To explore advertising creativity in the B2B sector, creativity must be identified as a relevant construct that likely influences business managers during their decision-making process. To do this, we first discuss the organizational buying center and how it, like the consumer market, is vulnerable to the influences of subjective marketing information. We next explicate how our chosen B2B context, international site selection, is an appropriate representation of a B2B market. We conclude our literature review by defining creativity and explaining how creativity acts as subjective information in decision-making processes. Finally, the literature review led us to the development of three hypotheses. 1.1. Marketing influences in the organizational buying center Over the past 40 years, a number of models have been developed to explain the organizational buying process (Robinson, Faris, & Wind, 1967; Sheth, 1973; Webster & Wind, 1972), and they remain an important theoretical foundation for current research (Lewin & Donthu, 2005; Owusa & Welch, 2007; Verville & Halingten, 2003). A common theme among the models is that each describes organizational buying as progressing through a number of stages with variables internal and external to the buying center affecting organizational buying behavior (Chandler & Johnston, 2012; Johnston & Lewin, 1996). While each model identifies a varying number of activities in the buying process, all outline the same general progression. Because of its succinctness,

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2015.10.001 0019-8501/© 2015 Published by Elsevier Inc.

Please cite this article as: Baack, D.W., et al., Advertising to businesses: Does creativity matter?, Industrial Marketing Management (2015), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2015.10.001

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D.W. Baack et al. / Industrial Marketing Management xxx (2015) xxx–xxx

and widespread acceptance, Webster and Wind's (1972) model is used in our discussion to summarize the overall organizational buying process, This model contains the following steps: (1) identification of need; (2) establishment of specifications; (3) identification of alternatives; (4) evaluation of alternatives; and (5) selection of suppliers (see Fig. 1). Traditionally, organizational buying research has viewed buyers in this process as purely rational, objective, and non-emotional actors (Patti, Hartley, & Kennedy, 1991; Wilson, 2000), but this assumption increasingly faces skepticism. Over the past decade, research on marketing to businesses has focused more on consumer behavior effects, such as the sensitivity to brand information (Brown et al., 2011; Mudambi, 2002) and the use of emotional appeals (Lynch & de Chernatony, 2004; Swani, Brown, & Milne, 2014), providing evidence that advertising to businesses looks increasingly similar to advertising created for consumers. Consequently, information-processing influences, such as those produced by creative elements within an ad, represent a potentially key message component for advertising to businesses. Furthermore, business decisions are not always the outcome of a systematic decision-making process made by a group. Traditionally, organizational buying has viewed individuals involved in purchasing decisions as being influenced by group objectives, and that this process keeps individual behaviors in check (Gilliland & Johnston, 1997). However, several researchers have suggested that organizational buying has more in common with consumer buying than early research indicated (Sheth, 1973). For example, Wilson (2000) argues that consumers face many of the same social influences and collective objectives (e.g., family) that guide organizational buying decisions (e.g., buying center). So why would we expect individuals to behave differently in a professional context than we expect in a social context? The following quote summarizes the individual versus organization perspective well, albeit from a narrower advertising perspective: “committees don't view ads, people do” (Bellizzi, Minas, & Norvell, 1994). Accepting that organizational buyers are not always objective decision makers, a growing number of researchers have found that individuals in organizational buying centers are sensitive to subjective, marketing information (Brown et al., 2011; Brown, Zablah, Bellenger, & Donthu, 2012; Homburg, Klarmann, & Schmitt, 2010; Mudambi, 2002). These authors investigated the role of corporate and/or product branding in influencing organizational decision making and found that three situational factors can make buying center participants more sensitive to the effects of marketing. These factors are purchase importance, purchase complexity, and purchase uncertainty. Purchase importance is defined as the relative importance of the purchase to other types of purchases and its perceived impact on the overall organization (Stump & Heide, 1996). Purchase complexity is defined with respect to a highly

Fig. 1. Comparison of the organizational buying process to the international site selection process.

technical product or the involved nature of the actual purchase decision (Lewin & Bello, 1997). Purchase uncertainty refers to the availability of information to make the best decision and/or the ultimate outcome from the decision (Lewin & Donthu, 2005). Collectively, these three situational factors appear to contribute to the perceived risk associated with making an incorrect decision (McQuiston, 1989) When perceived risk is great, managers can become overwhelmed with the amount of information, some of which may be conflicting, needed to make an informed decision. As a result, research in this area found that managers often look to subjective factors, such as branding, to reduce risk perceptions and legitimize their buying decisions (Brown et al., 2012). In these circumstances, branding efforts can increase overall brand awareness, which is important in stage three of organization buying process (see Fig. 1), as it can reduce buyer information search costs (Homburg et al., 2010). It also serves as a cue for product quality in stage four of the organizational buying process, as it is widely believed that companies typically only spend money on branding, through advertising for example, if they expect to recoup the costs (Kirmani & Rao, 2000). Branded products help to increase manager receptivity to marketing communications (Low & Blois, 2002; Michell, King, & Reast, 2001). This in turn may make the manager open to the influence of psychological differentiators, such as emotional and image-based content, which are important components of marketing communications (Gilliland & Johnston, 1997). Some emotions, like trust, peace of mind, and security, can increase customer engagement, build customer relationships, and lead to competitive differentiation (Lynch & de Chernatony, 2004). Such content has increasingly been found in B2B marketing communications. For example, emotion-based headlines were found in as many as 40% of B2B advertisements (Cutler & Javalgi, 1994) and emotional appeals were found in 30% of tweets, which was actually 6% higher than the number of functional appeals (Swani et al., 2014). When used appropriately, emotional content can increase brand awareness and brand attitudes, which help brands enter managers' evoked and consideration sets, as was the instance with B2B product placements found in well-liked movies (Lord & Gupta, 2010). Thus there appears to be growing evidence, and even acceptance, that managers involved in the organizational buying process are susceptible to subjective information, such as branding (Leek & Christodoulides, 2011). Further, many of the psychological differentiators used in consumer advertising seem applicable for business advertising as well (Gilliland & Johnston, 1997; Lynch & de Chernatony, 2004). 1.2. Context: international site selection To provide a context for our investigation, our study focuses on the subjective marketing influences in one particular organizational buying context: international site selection. Site selection is a process by which businesses evaluate locations for foreign direct investment (FDI), and represents a large and important organizational buying process. FDI is worth more than US$1.45 trillion annually with nearly 14,000 international site selection decisions made around the world each year (The World Bank Group, 2012). Site selection involves two types of actors: the business or group of businesses seeking international expansion on the one end of the exchange, and the investment promotion agencies (IPAs) that provide information and market entry assistance during the selection process on the other end. IPAs can be either a public sector or private sector organization (Wells, 1999), which, in either case, qualifies it as the initiating “business” organization in the B2B dyad commonly used within the organizational buying literature (Wilson, 2000). As outlined in Fig. 1, the site selection process correlates extremely well with traditional views of organizational buying, and site selection has previously been explained using the organizational buying frameworks discussed earlier in this paper (c.f., Wells & Wint, 2000). Site

Please cite this article as: Baack, D.W., et al., Advertising to businesses: Does creativity matter?, Industrial Marketing Management (2015), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2015.10.001

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selection and traditional views of organizational buying both include well-informed buyers and infrequent, large, discrete, and important purchases by businesses (Wilson, 2000). In this case, the foreign location is the product, and its characteristics, which make it more or less attractive as a place for investment, are its product features. Similar to more recent organizational buying research (Brown et al., 2011; Mudambi, 2002), the site selection process is also vulnerable to marketing and branding influences due in great part to the multifaceted nation-state product (i.e., purchase complexity), significant financial consequences (i.e., purchase importance), and asymmetrical information (i.e., purchase uncertainty) (Lewin & Bello, 1997). While highly iterative, the site selection process is generally described as a sequence of decisions rather than one single decision, which is consistent with overall descriptions of the organizational buying process (Johnston & Lewin, 1996). Site selection typically progresses through five stages (MIGA, 2006). In the first stage, business goals, such as the need to reduce manufacturing costs or tap into growing foreign markets, create a need for international expansion. In stage two, the project is defined in terms of location characteristics or criteria that will be used to compare and evaluate potential location options. In stage three, a long list of eight to 20 locations are identified that match the criteria from stage two. In stage four, the long list is parsed down to no more than five locations for in-depth assessment. Finally in stage five, a location is selected for investment. Market and site visits to a few select locations from stage four aid in site selection (MIGA, 2006). 1.2.1. FDI advertising During the site selection process, significant information asymmetries exist that often prevent foreign direct investment from occurring, especially in emerging markets (Charlton & Davis, 2007). Many firms find it difficult to locate accurate and timely information on potential markets and look to IPAs to reduce these information barriers. IPAs facilitate information flow through various marketing activities, including advertising, investment seminars, trade missions, website management, and investment counseling. Through these marketing activities, IPAs tend to highlight characteristics of countries that many businesses evaluate in their search for the ideal location in which to invest or build a local presence (Wilson & Baack, 2012). These location advantages can be broadly grouped into four categories: 1) resources, 2) markets, 3) efficiency, and 4) strategic assets (Dunning, 1998). Resource advantages are concerned with locations having the necessary infrastructure to transport goods as well as an abundance of physical resources such as natural resources. Market advantages focus on the size and growth of the country's domestic market, availability and price of skilled labor, proximity to regional markets such as the European Union, and the quality of the country's infrastructure and governmental institutions. Efficiency advantages are borne out of economies of scale and in situations where the government removes obstacles to economic activity. Finally, strategic asset advantages stem from the availability of foreign assets that the business deems important to sustaining and advancing their international competitiveness. FDI advertising is one of the marketing activities used by IPAs to convey their location advantages to potential investing firms, and it is widely used among countries seeking foreign investment (Wells & Wint, 2000). A recent content analysis of four general business magazines in the U.S. revealed no fewer than 546 advertisements over a 55-month period (Wilson & Baack, 2012). This study found a combination of single-page brand-oriented advertising as well as multiple-page advertorials, which mimic editorial content. FDI advertising is typically used to influence which countries appear on a firm's list of countries to evaluate for international expansion, or stage three of the site selection process as outlined in Fig. 1 (Charlton & Davis, 2007; Morisset & Andrews-Johnson, 2004; Wells & Wint, 2000). It is also found to influence managerial perceptions of the advertising country and ultimately influence their decision-making process, or stage four of the site

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selection process (Morisset, 2003; Papadopoulos & Heslop, 2002; Wells & Wint, 2000; Wilson, Baack, & Baack, 2014). Collectively, site selection research suggests that site selection managers are open to persuasion by FDI advertising and other IPA marketing activities and testify to the value of research that helps inform this under-investigated area of organizational buying. 1.3. Defining creativity and decision-making processes The power of creativity to tap deep psychological and unconscious thought-processes is indisputable (Smith, Chen, & Yang, 2008; Smith, MacKenzie, Yang, Buchholz, & Darley, 2007; Smith & Yang, 2004; Till & Baack, 2005). Creativity in advertising is generally defined in terms of novelty and refers to an execution that is different, unusual, or divergent (Ang & Low, 2000; Smith & Yang, 2004). Novel advertisements, due to their attention-getting qualities, are consequently effective in promoting deeper levels of message processing than non-creative ads (Maclnnis & Jaworski, 1989). In addition to being novel, much research also indicates that advertisements must be relevant (Ang, Lee, & Leong, 2007; Ang & Low, 2000; Smith et al., 2008; Smith et al., 2007; Smith & Yang, 2004). Ang and Low (2000) define relevance in terms of the ad's creative element being meaningfully tied to the product. In other words, the novel element should be relevant to the message so that it has discernible meaning. We do note that the inclusion of relevance is an item of debate within the literature. See Lehnert, Till, and Ospina (2014) for recent discussion of this issue. In its ability to influence message persuasion, creativity has multiple roles. It can act as a mechanism to encourage deeper message processing and it can generate an emotional response. The latter is associated with subjective marketing information, but we first address creativity's role in message processing. As a mechanism for message processing, creativity draws attention to the ad and promotes greater elaboration of message arguments, which can lead to more favorable attitudes and higher levels of purchase intentions. Indeed, Yang and Smith (2009) found that creative ads increased several processing variables. These authors found that ads deemed ‘highly creative’ trigger increased open-mindedness, curiosity, and positive affect producing higher levels of viewing intentions and brand purchase intentions. Smith et al. (2007) demonstrated that creativity had a positive impact on ad processing and response variables. Using eye-tracking technology, Pieters, Warlop, and Wedel (2002) found that ads deemed original in design, surprising, and unique correlated strongly with increased attention to the ad resulting in improved memory for the brand. Finally, the benefits of creativity have also been found to persist over time, with the cognitive advantages increasing the longer the delay between advertising exposure and measurement of outcomes (Till & Baack, 2005). The consistent finding, across decades of research on the topic, is that creative advertising messages are in general more effective as it encourages deeper message processing. As a mechanism to generate an emotional response, creativity operates more like an execution element. Rather than promote deeper message processing through increased attention as previously described, creativity generates positive affect that is then transferred onto ad and brand evaluations. This leads to more brand cognitions, favorable brand attitudes, and stronger intentions to purchase (Smith et al., 2008). For example, Smith et al. (2008) found that when creative ads were viewed as more entertaining, positive affect was transferred onto the ad and brand and resulted in greater purchase intentions for the brand. Likewise, Yang and Smith (2009) found that creative ads reduced individuals' resistance to persuasion by generating positive affect that carried through to brand attitudes and purchase intentions. Their findings were quite robust in that the positive affect transfer occurred in both low and high involvement situations. In these affect transfer circumstances, creative ads are viewed as more entertaining, interesting, or enjoyable. These emotional responses are subjective marketing factors that influence ad responses and

Please cite this article as: Baack, D.W., et al., Advertising to businesses: Does creativity matter?, Industrial Marketing Management (2015), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2015.10.001

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ultimately the decision-making process (Smith & Yang, 2004). Creativity here operates much like other subjective marketing information, such as branding, company reputations, and business relationships (Brown et al., 2011). Decisions are not made on objective information like price and product functionality, but rather on emotional responses driven by affect.

1.4. Hypotheses As a mechanism to generate an emotional response, we expect creativity within our international site selection context to produce more favorable ad and country evaluations and generate interest in the advertised country. We expect this to happen through the transfer of positive affect onto the ad and brand. These emotional, or subjective, responses to the ad influence the managerial decision-making process that is involved in the site selection process. To this end, we present three hypotheses that predict that creative ads will generate more favorable attitudes toward the ad, more favorable attitudes toward the brand (country), and ultimately greater brand (country) interest and preference. Creative messages are more effective messages. Within the context of FDI advertising, overall attitude toward the ad is a key outcome for marketers. Almost 20 years of research finds that creative advertising, in general, leads to more favorable attitudes. Kover, Goldberg, and James (1995) arguably first investigated this question, finding creative ads were more liked. Stone, Besser, and Lewis (2000) also found this likeability effect, while Ang and Low (2000); Heiser, Sierra, and Torres (2008) and Smith et al. (2007) all found that creative ads resulted in a more favorable attitudes toward the ad. The core claim in all of these articles is that the divergent, relevant message at the core of a creative advertisement is more pleasurable. Audiences like processing the advertisement, the uniqueness is often seen as humorous or entertaining, and the underlying “aha” moment is enjoyable (Till & Baack, 2005). Therefore, a creative message leads to more favorable attitudes towards the advertisement. Based on the assumption that business buyers are not entirely rational, objective, and non-emotional actors, we proposed the following hypothesis: H1. Creative ads will elicit more favorable attitudes toward the ad than non-creative ads. Creative advertising leads to an increased depth of processing of the message itself (Smith et al., 2007). By being novel stimuli, viewers often want to solve the puzzle. Sometimes referred to as reformulation (Haberland & Dacin, 1992), the result is that creative advertisements lead to more focus on ad content (Yang & Smith, 2009). The message must be processed to obtain closure that comes solely from understanding. Moreover, creative advertisements, by being better attended (e.g., Smith et al., 2007), better remembered (e.g., Till & Baack, 2005), and seen more favorably (e.g., Smith & Yang, 2004), result in more message processing (e.g., Smith et al., 2007). These findings have important implications in a site selection context. The decision-makers for site selections tend to evaluate locations for foreign investment based upon the countries perceived advantages in resources, markets, efficiency, and strategic assets (Dunning, 1998). These location advantages represent a country's (product) features from which attitudes are derived. Consequently, we expect that creative advertisements will be more successful in changing attitudes than non-creative ads, leading to hypothesis number two: H2. Creative ads will elicit stronger changes in attitudes than noncreative ads for message arguments pertaining to: (a) resources; (b) markets; (c) efficiency; and (d) strategic assets. Creative advertising messages have also been repeatedly linked to changes in behavior. Starting again with Kover et al. (1995), much of the behavioral focus is on declared purchase intent. In general, research

finds that creative advertisements increase the likelihood to purchase (Ang & Low, 2000; Smith et al., 2007). This consistent finding can be linked to the underlying increased favorability towards the ad and towards the brand, due to the creative message and resulting increased attention and processing of the message (Till & Baack, 2005; White, Shen, & Smith, 2002). Increased attention, processing, and the resulting increased favorability then translate into a behavioral preference for the advertised product. In a site selection context, the key behaviors are to seek additional information, contact the country's investment promotion agency, and recommend that the country be placed on the firm's list of possible investment locations (Kotler, Haider, & Rein, 1993; Wells & Wint, 2000). Therefore, the last hypothesis is: H3. Creative ads will elicit stronger changes in behavior than noncreative ads, defined as: (a) information-seeking; (b) contacting the investment promotion agency; and (c) recommending the country for investment.

2. Method To assess whether or not creativity influences managerial attitudes and behavioral intent, corporate site selection managers involved in the identification and selection of countries for foreign direct investment were surveyed. Each respondent was presented with a randomly-selected FDI advertisement and asked several questions related to attitudes, behavioral intent, and creativity. 2.1. Sample The sample of site selection managers is derived from the email distribution lists of two corporate site selection magazines – Site Selection and Area Development Magazine. An email was sent to the combined distribution list of 18,059 subscribers requesting their participation in a survey about the site selection process. The invitation specifically asked for individuals who were involved in any capacity in the site selection process for their company. Because investment promotion managers are the creators of FDI advertising, these managers were discouraged from participating. A total of 474 subscribers indicated their willingness to participate. To ensure the validity of our sample, the survey again qualified respondents and reduced the sample to 305 respondents. A total of 166 of these respondents completed the survey for a completion rate of 54.4%. To encourage participation in the study, a reminder email was sent one week after the initial request to take the survey. Additionally, a modest financial incentive was used to increase the response rate (Church, 1993; Edwards et al., 2002). A $100 American Express gift card was awarded to one randomly-drawn respondent at the end of the sampling time frame. To test for the potential of a non-response bias, the pool of respondents were split into early and late responders (Armstrong & Overton, 1977). Independent sample t-tests for the dependent and independent variables showed no difference between the two groups with respect to creativity, attitude toward the ad, the four location advantages, and the three behavioral responses. Chi-square and independent sample t-tests performed on respondent characteristics of firm type, firm size, job title, and firm headquarters also showed no difference between early and late responders. Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics for the sample. 2.2. Advertisement selection The Investment Generation Toolkit, which is a joint venture publication between the World Bank, International Finance Corporation, and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, suggests that print is the most widely used media vehicle for advertising campaigns for

Please cite this article as: Baack, D.W., et al., Advertising to businesses: Does creativity matter?, Industrial Marketing Management (2015), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2015.10.001

D.W. Baack et al. / Industrial Marketing Management xxx (2015) xxx–xxx Table 1 Descriptive statistics of survey respondents. No.

Percentage

102 45 23

(60.0%) (26.5%) (13.5%)

Firm Size 1–49 employees 50–99 employees 100–499 employees 500–999 employees 1000+ employees

63 17 20 12 57

(37.1%) (10.0%) (11.8%) (7.1%) (33.5%)

Job Title Chairman, President, Partner/Owner VP, Treasurer, Corporate Officer Real Estate/Facilities/Development Mgr Other Manager Consultant Other

75 25 42 7 12 9

(44.1%) (14.7%) (24.7%) (4.1%) (7.1%) (5.3%)

148 21

(87.1%) (12.9%)

Firm Type Corporation Consultancy Other

Firm Headquarters United States Other

investment promotion. For this, and the reasons above, print advertising was deemed an appropriate media context for this study. Advertisements were selected from the four most widely read business magazines in the U.S. in terms of readership as reported by the Marketer's Guide to Media. These publications were Business Week, Forbes, Fortune and The Economist. All single and half-page, non-advertorial advertisements relating to foreign investment promotion were collected over a 12-month period from August 2007 through July 2008. Ads were identified as investment-seeking if they promoted a country as a place for building, establishing, or purchasing a business, and if the primary message of the ad was designed to provide information to foreign investors about the country or create an attractive image of the country as a place for foreign investment (method taken from Wells & Wint, 2000). Multiple page ads were not included in the sample to help control for factors such as the size of the advertiser's budget (Spears, 2003), to increases the likelihood of our respondents processing the entire ad, and to exclude advertorials, which represent an entirely different type of advertising strategy (Wilson & Baack, 2012). Limiting a sample to only a set of the overall advertisements in a medium is typical practice (Kassarjian, 1977). Forty-five unduplicated FDI advertisements were identified. The sample comprised a total of 15 countries of varying size and income classification: Belgium (4 executions), Canada (5), China (2), Colombia (1), Egypt (2), France (2), Georgia (3), Ireland (3), Macedonia (2), Portugal (2), Qatar (3), Scotland (4), South Korea (2), Spain (4), and Turkey (6).

2.3. Survey design The survey was created using Qualtrics online survey software and was divided into three sections. Prior to the start of the survey, respondents were qualified to participate in the survey if they indicated being involved in the investment and real estate selection process. The first section randomly presented the respondent with two of the 45 FDI advertisements. A common set of questions was presented before, during and after each ad. Prior to and after each ad, respondents were asked for their level of agreement with four attitudinal statements representing Dunning's (1998) location advantage factors. Also prior to and after each ad, respondents were asked about their behavioral interests in the advertised country. Finally, during each ad presentation, the respondent was encouraged to process the ad by answering several

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questions relating to the ad's execution (i.e., attitude toward the ad, ad creativity, and the most prominent feature emphasized in the ad). The second section of the survey presented the respondent with a control ad for tourism in India. A tourism ad was thought to be an appropriate measure of method bias as an ad of this type fits broadly as a location advertisement for a country but is clearly not investmentorientated and therefore not in fitting with the attitudinal and behavioral questions. If a method bias was present, the tourism ad should produce a positive shift in attitudes and behavioral intentions for the tourism ad suggesting that a simple exposure to an ad under any condition would shift attitudes and behavioral intentions. The structure of this section was identical to that of the second with the exception that all respondents viewed the same control advertisement. In sum, each respondent saw two FDI ads and one control ad. The final section of the survey asked a number of demographic questions. 2.4. Operationalization of variables 2.4.1. Independent variable Our independent variable is the perceived level of creativity for each ad as reported by our respondents. The intent was not to assess the absolute level of creativity (e.g., award-winning ads versus non-awardwinning), but rather the degree in creativity as perceived by our target audience (Dahlén, Rosengren, & Törn, 2008; West, Kover, & Caruana, 2008). We also did not have the goal of separating creativity into potential factors or parts, instead wanting a simple measure of overall creativity. Following West et al. (2008); Baack, Wilson, and Till (2008); and Wilson, Baack, and Till (2015), an established, single-item scale was used to measure creativity. Ample evidence exists to support the legitimate use of single-item measures to operationalize a focal construct (Fisher, Matthews, & Gibbons, 2015; Fuchs & Diamantopoulos, 2009; Gardner, Cummings, Dunham, & Pierce, 1998), while also capturing other important advantages. Not only did the scale help simplify the process of evaluating creativity, it reduced respondent burden and thereby increased the likelihood of participation. Single-item measures are also short, easy to administer, are less time consuming and not monotonous to complete, thus reducing response biases (Fisher et al., 2015; Fuchs & Diamantopoulos, 2009; Gardner et al., 1998). In summary, the single-item scale to measure creativity has been used successfully in several academic studies and it contributes to higher levels of response. After presenting a brief definition of creativity,1 each respondent scored the ad for its degree of creativity on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 representing a highly creative ad (Baack et al., 2008; Till & Baack, 2005). Creativity scores ranged from 0 to 95 with a mean score of 56.6. We then took a mean split of the creativity scores for all ads and created two categories (low and high creativity). 2.4.2. Dependent variables Similar to MacKenzie and Lutz (1989), attitude toward the ad was measured using a four-item measure on seven-point bipolar semantic differential scales (i.e., bad/good, unfavorable/favorable, unpleasant/ pleasant, and not likeable/likeable). This composite measure produced a Cronbach's alpha of .953. Changes in attitudes toward the location advantages were measured by asking respondents for their level of agreement with four attitudinal statements about the advertising country being appealing due to: 1) its abundance of natural and knowledge-based resources (resources); 2) its local market, location, labor, infrastructure, investment promotion, and/or economic policies (market); 3) it being an easy place to 1 In the survey, respondents were presented with the following question for creativity: “How creative is the ad? A creative ad is one that is unique, unusual or attention-grabbing in some way. An ad can be creative through its use of visuals or words. Please rate how creative the ad is on a scale of 0 to 100 with 100 being a highly creative ad.”

Please cite this article as: Baack, D.W., et al., Advertising to businesses: Does creativity matter?, Industrial Marketing Management (2015), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2015.10.001

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do business (efficiency); and 4) it helping their firm achieve strategic goals (strategic assets). These statements correspond to Dunning's four location factors. Changes in behaviors were measured by asking respondents about their behavioral interest in the sponsoring country as a place for foreign investment. This type of outcome variable has been identified as a relevant result for investment promotion advertising (Kotler et al., 1993; Wells & Wint, 2000). Specifically, they were asked three questions: 1) likelihood of seeking additional information; 2) likelihood of contacting the sponsoring country's foreign investment promotion agency; and 3) likelihood in recommending to their firm the sponsoring country as a place for foreign investment. Both the attitudinal and behavioral intent items were assessed using a seven-point Likert scale and were asked of the respondent both prior to and after the presentation of the ad. To measure the effect of ad exposure, we subtracted each of the before measure from its corresponding after measure creating four attitudinal and three behavioral intent variables. 2.5. Method bias To test for a method bias, we ran paired sample t-tests for the entire sample for the four attitudinal variables for the Indian tourism control advertisement. If a method bias were present, respondents would be expected to rate each of the four location- advantage factors more favorably after viewing the control advertisement. A comparison of the before-and-after ratings for each location factor variable was insignificant suggesting that a method bias was not present in our survey design (resource: before 4.77, after 4.57, p = 0.18; market: before 4.60, after 4.37, p = 0.01; efficiency: before 3.88, after 3.90, p = 0.74; and strategic asset: before 4.14, after 4.11, p = 0.73). In the case of the market advantages, it was not present because there was not a positive shift in attitudes. 3. Results To assess the effect creativity has on managerial attitudes and behaviors, we ran a series of ANOVAs. The results are reported in Table 2. H1 predicted that creative ads would promote more favorable attitudes toward the ad, and the results support this hypothesis (low creativity 3.74, high creativity 5.54, p b 0.00). H2a-d predicted that creative ads would elicit stronger changes in attitudes for the four location advantage factors. Indeed, the changes in attitudes were greater for creative ads as compared to non-creative ads for resource advantages (creative .34, non-creative −.05, p b 0.05), market advantages (creative .54, non-creative ads .12, p b .05), efficiency advantages (creative .70, non-creative .05, p b .01), and strategic assets (creative .55, noncreative .08, p b .05). Thus H2a-d are supported. Finally, H3a-c predicted that creative ads would elicit stronger changes in behavior than noncreative ads. As expected, changes in behavior were greater for creative

Table 2 Anova results for creativity's effect on attitudes and behavior. Creativity Low (n = 74)

ads as compared to non-creative ads for information-seeking (creative .58, non-creative .24, p b 05), contacting the investment agency (creative .65, non-creative .18, p b .01), and recommending the country for investment (creative .61, non-creative .11, p b 0.1). 4. Discussion and conclusion Our results provide strong evidence that creative messaging influences business managers' response towards advertising. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first research to explore creativity in organizational buying and, more specifically, in the investment promotion context. Consequently, this research adds measurably to the growing body of research suggesting that B2B organizations are susceptible to subjective marketing information during the buying process (e.g., Brown et al., 2011; Mudambi, 2002; Wilson, 2000). It also adds to the body of research on creativity, which has largely focused on consumer markets (e.g., Sasser & Koslow, 2008). In comparing this study's results in a B2B context to previous consumer focused work, similar outcomes emerge. That is, creative ads produced stronger attitudes toward the ad than did non-creative ads (e.g., Smith et al., 2007; Yang & Smith, 2009). Creative ads tend to attract more attention and are more interesting (Smith et al., 2008), which ultimately shape attitudes toward the ad. Having well-liked ads can lead to greater brand awareness, more favorable attitudes toward the brand, and stronger behavioral intentions (Burke & Edell, 1989; Smith et al., 2008). Such outcomes become important predictors of which brands are likely included in the consideration set of managers in stage three of the organizational buying process as outlined in Fig. 1 (Homburg et al., 2010). B2B advertisements, therefore, need to be more than informative; they also need to be liked. Similarly, creative ads generated stronger attitudinal shifts for key attributes of the advertising country. These country attributes are likened to attributes of more traditional business products and services. Receiving more favorable attitudes toward country attributes shape attitudes toward the brand – in this case, the advertised country. Respondents appeared to be more influenced by mention of the resources, market attractiveness, efficiency, and strategic assets held by countries when the ads were seen as more creative. Whether or not the advertising countries actually possess such characteristics, using creative advertising had a significant impact on their evaluations. These effects were found after only one exposure. These evaluations are important contributors to how managers evaluate alternatives as outlined in stage four of the organizational buying process. Considering the effect creativity had on attitudes, it is not surprising that creativity also had a significant impact on the behavioral intentions of our respondents. Creative ads generated higher levels of interest in seeking additional information about the advertised country, more willingness to contact the country's investment promotion agency, and an increased likelihood to recommend that the country be placed on the firm's shortened list of locations to evaluate for international expansion. These behaviors are often the most desirable outcomes for investment promotion (Kotler et al., 1993; Wells & Wint, 2000), and the shift in our study occurred after exposure to only one ad.

High (n = 92)

Significance

3.74

5.54

p b 0.00

5.1. Management implications

Change in Attitudes toward Location Advantages H2a: Resources −.05 H2b: Markets .12 H2c: Efficiency .05 H2d: Strategic Assets .08

.34 .54 .70 .55

p b 0.05 p b 0.05 p b 0.01 p b 0.05

Change in Behavior H3a: Information-seeking H3b: Contacting the investment agency H3c: Recommending for investment

.58 .65 .61

p b 0.05 p b 0.01 p b 0.01

From a managerial perspective, the results demonstrate the importance of creativity in B2B advertising contexts, and the benefits from such a strategy can be extended to both the sender of the message as well as the receiver. As the sender of the message, creativity can help businesses create strong, unified campaigns based firmly on strategy. It can also produce strong advertising effects. In fact, we find that creative messages influence buyer attitudes and behavioral intent, which are two very important advertising outcomes.

Attitudes toward the Ad H1: AAd

.24 .18 .11

5. Implications for management and theory

Please cite this article as: Baack, D.W., et al., Advertising to businesses: Does creativity matter?, Industrial Marketing Management (2015), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2015.10.001

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Developing and effectively using creative advertising messaging requires a long-term commitment to advertising so that new associations take hold in the minds of business managers. This requires significant investment in both time and money. Investment comes not only from consistent and prolonged use of brand-building activities, but it also comes from working with advertising agencies and/or consultancies to develop novel and relevant campaign themes. Using creative advertising also requires marketing managers to seriously consider their firm's tolerance for risk. To be highly creative, advertising must be original and designed to break through marketplace clutter, which often represents a drastic departure from a firm's existing message strategy and communication style (Sasser, Koslow, & Kilgour, 2013). This can be daunting and risky for well-established brands. It may require hiring more skilled marketing staff, or moving on to a new advertising agency, to develop and manage the new messaging strategy. It may also be perceived as risky for some firms who believe that any change in advertising strategy puts their brand equity and years of investment in it at risk. However, the use of creative advertising can lead to extraordinary results and be well worth the effort and expense. In consumer markets, creative advertising campaigns are known to attract attention, generate interest, and foster brand awareness (Smith et al., 2008), all of which are important during the identification of alternatives and product evaluation. Creative advertising can also benefit the receiver of the message. Creativity can increase engagement with the message. Consider the investment promotion perspective, where much of the discussion among practitioners claims that advertising should be functional or relevant to site selection managers (Charlton & Davis, 2007). That is, it should provide useful information to assist in the decision-making process – items that are critical to activities in stage three and four of the site selection process in Fig. 1. To this end, many IPAs provide information in their advertisements, such as current statistics on the size and vibrancy of markets, availability of government incentives, and announcements of the liberalization of investment policies. Yet, the results of this research indicate that creativity is just as important. Advertisements that present country attributes in interesting and novel ways are stronger influences on managers' attitudes and behavioral intentions. Therefore, investment agency marketing managers should consider presenting country attributes and investment policies, which can often be overly factual and procedural in nature, with emotional and brand-based advertising appeals. Such appeals increase engagement and message processing and may also help to build strong country brand identities (Anholt, 2003; Papadopoulos & Heslop, 2002)—that is, country identities rooted in resource, market, efficiency, and strategic asset advantages (i.e., relevance) but presented in an unusual or divergent manner (i.e., novel). Indeed, some countries have utilized sophisticated advertising and branding campaigns with multiple executions across a variety of media (Wilson & Baack, 2012). More investment promotion managers should consider using creativity in their advertising campaigns to aid in meeting organizational objectives. In sum, the results of this study challenge conventional wisdom and dominant practices in B2B advertising research, and show that creative ads can be effective in influencing attitudes and motivating a buyer's intent to act. These findings support similar recent research pushing established assumptions regarding B2B advertising, and, as such, we urge practitioners to rethink effective strategies in terms of the nature of communication with business audiences (Lynch & de Chernatony, 2004; Sweeney & Webb, 2007; Wind, 2006). Perhaps even more so than in consumer markets, the role of advertising is changing in business purchasing processes. Industry has started to recognize that, regardless of the buying structure of an organization, people are involved in the decision process and this makes the human element equally important in the B2B world (Bendzko & Palmquist, 2010). Thus, our results direct attention to the message component of the communication model and signal the need for the use of greater creativity in communication strategies within business markets. Marketers who

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continue to resist these type of indirect forms of persuasion, do so at their peril (Goldfarb, 2007; Jensen & Jepsen, 2007; Kotler & Pfoertsch, 2006; Lynch & de Chernatony, 2004; Michell et al., 2001; Wind, 2006). The power to change attitudes and influence purchase intentions through advertising creativity, particularly during the early stages of the buying process, is a powerful tool that holds considerable promise for business marketers. 5.2. Implications for theory In this study, we discovered that creative messaging increased the effectiveness of advertising to businesses. This extends previous research on the role of creativity to a B2B context (e.g., Smith et al., 2007). Consistent with the findings of Smith et al. (2007), this study finds that increases in creativity generate higher levels of advertising effectiveness. Creative messages resulted in more favorable attitudes and increased the likelihood of a series of behaviors involved in investment behavior. While it is logical to assume that higher levels of creativity will generate more positive results in any context, this assumption has not been proven previously in the B2B literature. In this way, this study builds on the extensive literature on advertising creativity by challenging previous assumptions about business message tactics. At the same time, this research opens new areas of research that can provide a deeper understanding of how advertising creativity works in the business environment. For example, further research on advertising creativity could be extended to other business contexts, e.g., equipment, services, supplies, etc., as well as to other forms of information sources (personal and impersonal). A further extension to this study is to consider how advertising creativity may contribute to customer “engagement”. As suggested by Phillips and McQuarrie (2010), rather than simply creating a positive brand evaluation, advertising can be used to foster a more intense brand experience by way of modes of engagement, such as narrative transportation and immersion in ad imagery. Ad imagery is also an important component of creative elements used in FDI advertising. Thus, future research that explores an alternative role of advertising—business ads that generate immersion and a more intense experience with the brand—offers very uncharacteristic, yet potentially break-through approaches for business advertising strategy. This work should distinguish between, and investigate separately and together, the sender of the advertisements and the receiver as creativity may benefit each actor differently. The integrated marketing communication (IMC) literature (Cornelissen & Lock, 2000; Duncan, 2002; Farrelly, Luxton, & Brace-Govan, 2001; Schultz & Patti, 2009) has repeatedly called for message strategy – and to a lesser extent, message tactics – to be consistent across all information sources. The concepts, methods, and findings in this research set up challenges to this notion. For example, will higher levels of creativity generate more effective personal communication? What is the relationship between the creativity used in print and that used in social media? Are there limits to the effectiveness of creativity? Does the effect of creativity reach a point of diminishing returns? How do creative messages then guide consumers into engagement and experiences with the brand? These, and other, research questions should encourage other studies in this area of growing importance to the business environment. References Ang, S. H., & Low, S. Y. M. (2000). Exploring the dimensions of ad creativity. Psychology and Marketing, 17(10), 835–854. Ang, S. H., Lee, Y. H., & Leong, S. M. (2007). The ad creativity cube: conceptualization and initial validation. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 35(2), 220–232. Anholt, S. (2003). Brand new justice: The upside of global branding. Oxford, U.K: Butterworth-Heinemann. Armstrong, J. S., & Overton, T. S. (1977). Estimating nonresponse bias in mail surveys. Journal of Marketing Research, 14(3), 396–402. Baack, D., Wilson, R., & Till, B. (2008). Creativity and memory effects. Journal of Advertising, 37(4), 85–94.

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D.W. Baack et al. / Industrial Marketing Management xxx (2015) xxx–xxx White, A., Shen, F., & Smith, B. L. (2002). Judging advertising creativity using the creative product semantic scale. Journal of Creative Behavior, 36(4), 241–253. Wilson, D. F. (2000). Why divide consumer and organizational buyer behaviour. European Journal of Marketing, 34(7), 780–796. Wilson, R. T., & Baack, D. W. (2012). Attracting foreign direct investment: applying dunning's location advantage framework to FDI advertising. Journal of International Marketing, 20(2), 95–115. Wilson, R. T., Baack, D. W., & Till, B. D. (2015). Creativity, attention, and the memory for brands: an outdoor advertising study. International Journal of Advertising, 34(2), 232–261. Wilson, R. T., Baack, D. W., & Baack, D. (2014). Foreign direct investment promotion: using advertising to change attitudes and behaviors. Marketing Management Journal, 24(2), 108–123. Wind, Y. (2006). Blurring the lines: is there a need to rethink industrial marketing? Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 21(7), 474–481. Yang, X., & Smith, R. E. (2009). Beyond attention effects: modeling the persuasive and emotional effects of advertising. Marketing Science, 28(5), 935–949. Daniel W. Baack. Professor Baack has more than 25 peer-review journal publications, including work in the Journal of International Business Studies, the Journal of Advertising, the Journal of Advertising Research, the Journal of International Marketing, and the Journal of Business Research. He co-authored the textbook International Marketing, published by Sage Publications. Currently, he serves as the Assistant Dean and Director of the University

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of Denver MBA. Rick T. Wilson is an assistant professor of Marketing at the McCoy College of Business at Texas State University. His research interests include out-of-home advertising, creativity in advertising, and foreign direct investment promotion. His publications have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Advertising, International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, Journal of International Marketing, and International Marketing Review. Maria M. van Dessel, Ph.D., is a Research Scholar in the Department of Marketing, University of Denver. Her research has been published in a variety of outlets, including book chapters, the Journal of Marketing Communication, and published proceedings. She is currently engaged in a number of research and consulting projects involving expert witness research, branding and positioning, as well as customer experience metrics for the cable industry. Charles H. Patti, Ph.D., is Professor of Marketing in the Department of Marketing, University of Denver. He is the inaugural James M. Cox Professor of Customer Experience Management at the University of Denver and his research focuses on marketing communication and customer experience management. Dr. Patti has extensive international experience and has been the Head of the School of Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations at Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia).

Please cite this article as: Baack, D.W., et al., Advertising to businesses: Does creativity matter?, Industrial Marketing Management (2015), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2015.10.001