Measuring the impact of creative viral advertising content on hierarchy-of-effects: an application of structural equation modelling

The study measured the impact of creative viral advertising content on consumers' response process. Based on the traditional hierarchy-of-effects model, a conceptual model was framed by considering new developments in advertising practices. The attempt here was made to identify the impact of creative viral advertising content on four stages: drawing the attention of the consumer, generation of interest in advertisement or brand advertised therein, product purchase intentions, and intentions to disseminate positive word-of-mouth (WOM) about advertised product/brand. SEM technique was applied to know whether the impact of creative viral advertising content is mediated through each succeeding hierarchy-of-effect stage. The results indicated that though the hierarchy-of-effects model is applicable, creativity, an independent variable, also has the strength to directly impact consumers' intents to purchase and diffuse positive WOM for the products/brands advertised. Hence, the study leaves implications for practitioners to redesign their advertising content to enhance the ad's attention-catching capacity, which will impact the consumers' intentions to share advertisement online.