If “Advertising Attracts Dummies”, Could It Be Bad to Advertise? Exploring How the Third-Person Effect Impacts Consumer Reactions to Information That a Brand Will Advertise

This paper builds on the third-person effect (TPE) to test whether consumers expect that advertising will attract “others” that are less smart and sophisticated than them, and thus react negatively to information that a brand advertises. Testing this notion in an experiment, we find that information about a brands’ intentions to advertise indeed has a negative effect on the image of the consumer of the brand, which in turn has a negative impact on brand evaluations. We hereby extend the research on TPE to include also the effects of non-controversial advertising.