Comparetive Advertising - Essay Example

In a direct comparative advertising, a product or the particular features of a product are specifically compared with same features of a specified competitor. In the second classification, an advertisement describes only one product or the features of that one product and favorably compares it with all other competing products in an indirect and general way (Comparative Advertising 3). Comparative The utilization of comparative advertising in the United States mounted with the Federal Trade Commission's contention that "direct comparative ads, which provide information on named competitors, result in more informed decision making (Pechmann & Esteban 1).

" There had been a widespread debate whether this type of advertising must be permitted. After it had been approved in the US, there is an ensuing controversy of its effectiveness. Though many American companies use comparative advertising in their operations, its efficiency as a marketing tool to create demand is still in question. Others claim that instead of boosting revenue, comparative advertising fail to reach the target audience with the intended message. This situation dampens the efficiency of marketing campaign but also misleads buyers.

The effectiveness of comparative advertising is linked with various factors notably cultural and degree of comparison. . This paper aims to assess the efficiency of comparative advertising in the US market. It also aims to expose the significant factors which should be considered before coming up with an effective comparative advertising campaign. In order to develop the idea further, two different advertisements, Miller and Urine-Gone which are examples of comparative advertising will be utilized.

It should be noted while Miller employs a direct advertising campaign, Urine-Gone uses lesser degree by using an indirect approach. The commercial of Miller shows a consumer which made a decision of choosing the Miller product after being presented with other competitors' brands inside the refrigerator. The main rationale of using comparative advertisement rests on the premise that this marketing tool significantly affects the behavior of customers as well as the image of the business. This claim was supported by the study conducted by Bennett which revealed that projected brand quality in comparative ads is directly correlated with improvement in buyer behavior (Bennett 93).

Urine-gone was able to achieve this result as it became quite successful in gaining customers' preference towards the products by using a comparison on the features of its product to the ones made by its competitors. On the other hand, it was found out that the higher intensity of comparison in advertising decreases its efficacy. The research conducted by Barrio-Garcia which analyzed how buyers respond to comparative advertising and confirmed that the greater the degree of comparison results in lower consumer perception and increases counter-arguments among customers on the true value of the product.

Thus, analyzing the ad