Tag: finds

Research Finds Companies May Be Embracing Misleading Information Rather Than Correcting It

by  on  in Business Information Companies


Research finds companies may be embracing misleading information rather than correcting itDebunking is effective in changing customers’ beliefs, especially for those participants who had distorted beliefs before the experiment
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The digital era and the ubiquity of social media have intensified the impact of misleading advertising. For example, some brands might take advantage of unsubstantiated claims trending online about product components, and offer ingredient-free alternatives that purport to be healthier than the current offerings in the market, sometimes at a higher price.

Tong Guo, a professor of marketing at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business studied the impact of advertisers adapting to false messages about products by offering alternative options, versus trying to correct information not validated by science.

In a paper, “Debunking Misinformation About Consumer Products: Effects on Beliefs and Purchase Behavior” published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Guo and colleagues examine the effectiveness of trying to correct misleading information and the motivations behind why companies often don’t engage in trying to set the record straight.

The Effectiveness of Correcting Inaccurate Information

The researchers ran experiments to measure the effects of debunking messages.

They picked three categories of consumer-packaged goods impacted by advertising campaigns raising safety questions about one of their key ingredients: fluoride in toothpastes, aluminum in deodorants, and genetically-modified ingredients in nutrition shakes.

Guo says the group wanted to test whether a counter-message could change minds and the resulting purchases, or whether the psychological theory of confirmation bias—in which people refuse any piece of information that is different from their prior beliefs—would be too difficult to overcome.

“We start with a short corrective message embedded in a social media post and measure whether it would work,” Guo said. “If confirmation bias persists, we shouldn’t expect any correcting message to work.”

The researchers conducted two waves of online experiments with more than 20,000 participants from

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Traditional Advertising Drives More Pet Product Discovery Than Any Other Marketing Channel, Survey Finds |

by  on  in Advertising & Marketing

Two in five (40 percent) pet owners in the U.S. report using traditional advertising, including channels like print, radio or television, to get information about pet products and brands. This is according to a survey of nearly 1,500 U.S. pet owners (defined as those who own any type of pet) commissioned by FWV Fetching, the division of French/West/Vaughan (FWV) dedicated to pet and animal health PR/marketing, and conducted online by The Harris Poll.

According to the survey, pet parents more likely to use traditional advertising are ages 45-54 (46 percent versus 36 percent ages 18-34) and those living in the Northeast (46 percent versus 34 percent in the West). Traditional advertising was followed by review sites and digital advertising at 29 percent and 24 percent, respectively, when it comes to driving pet product/brand discovery.

Additional survey findings include:

  • About one in five pet owners use human (22 percent) or pet (19 percent) social media influencer pages to discover pet products/brands.
  • Younger pet owners, ages 18-34, are about twice as likely as their older counterparts, ages 35-plus, to use human (37 percent versus 15 percent) or pet (30 percent versus 15 percent) social media influencer pages to discover pet products/brands.
  • Older pet owners, ages 55-plus, are the least likely age group to use digital advertising (15 percent versus 33 percent ages 18-34, 30 percent ages 35-44, 21 percent ages 45-54) and official product or company social media pages (9 percent versus 27 percent ages 18-34, 20 percent ages 35-44, 16 percent ages 45-54) to discover pet products/brands.
  • Only 14 percent of pet owners say they do not use any marketing channels to discover pet products/brands.

“Although the pet products and marketing industries have both evolved and transformed in response to new technologies, tools and digital offerings in recent years, our research

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India News: India top destination being explored by MNCs as alternative to China, finds global CEO survey

by  on  in Best Business Newspaper
India is the top destination being explored by multinational corporations as an alternative to China, according to a survey of 100 CEOs who primarily represent foreign B2B-focused firms.

The CEOs also consider Vietnam, Thailand and their own home countries as potential options.

Amid China’s increasing geopolitical assertiveness, questionable trade and business practices, and rising labour costs, 88% of the CEOs who participated in research firm IMA India’s 2023 Global Operations Benchmarking Survey opted for India as their primary alternative to China. The survey was run among companies with a presence in India.

“In the last five years foreign MNCs have increased their onground presence in India, partly as a result of diversification away from China. In particular, the IT & ITES companies are ramping up the share of their global workforce that is based in India,” said Suraj Saigal, Research Director, IMA India.

graph

According to a report based on the survey, nearly 70% of the firms saw substantial changes to their business strategies and onground operations in China in the past three years. The industrial sector shows a more prominent pull-back compared to the services sector. Among those implementing changes 56% have decreased their sourcing from China and 41% reduced investments.

While a minority completely exited, 6% of the surveyed companies have scaled back their market engagement.

The research also examined how businesses are perceiving and capitalising on the opportunities presented by India, taking into account the recent shifts in commercial and geopolitical strategies.

From FY18 to FY23, India’s estimated global share in workforce has increased from 22.4% to 24.9% in mean percentage terms, while revenue share has risen from 14.8% to 15.8%. These figures demonstrate incremental growth for India on the global stage during this period.

As per the study, a larger proportion of manufacturing companies, in comparison to

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Advertising returns to depicting women of all ages far more often in domestic roles, research finds

by  on  in Advertising & Marketing

Dive Temporary:

  • Fifty-7 % of figures in advertisements across 2021 and 2022 were gals, while 43% were adult men, in accordance to the “Gender in Advertising 2023 Report” from CreativeX.
  • In 2022, adult men were solid in skilled roles 73% more frequently than ladies when compared to the past yr and 30% much more frequently in leadership roles. Females had been solid 46% more generally in domestic roles and 3.6% more normally in family settings. These trends have been compounded when age and race ended up taken into thought.
  • The illustration of females in skilled options declined 21% in 2022, whilst investing on these types of advertisements fell 35%. The results implies gender illustration in promotion shifted past 12 months, with ladies much more very likely to be cast in domestic or spouse and children roles than in the preceding calendar year. 

Dive Insight:

Irrespective of the larger percentage of woman representation in the promoting space, the advertising and marketing sector is continue to a prolonged way from genuine fairness. Past a change in direction of portraying gals much more commonly in domestic and loved ones roles, the selection of women of all ages operating in the field fell 24% concerning 2021 and 2022, according to She Runs It. The decline of girls employees in the space might be partly responsible for the diminished illustration of gals in the professional placing across advertising categories.

Although professional settings all round had been utilized less usually last year — possibly simply because of the progress of do the job-from-household and hybrid operating — there was continue to a very clear change in gender representation, for every the findings. Of the figures in adverts shown in specialist configurations, 61% had been gals in 2021. By 2022, that amount dropped to 48%. While

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Home Depot didn’t get customer consent before sharing data with Facebook’s owner, privacy watchdog finds

by  on  in Business Information Companies

Home improvement retailer Home Depot didn’t get customer consent before sharing personal data with Meta, which operates social media giants Facebook and Instagram, according to a new report by Canada’s privacy watchdog.

Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne released the findings of his latest investigation Thursday morning.

It found Home Depot began sharing details from electronic receipts with Meta in 2018 — including encoded email addresses and in-store purchase information — without the knowledge or consent of customers. The company said it stopped sharing customer information with Meta in October 2022.

Home Depot’s Canada division was using a service provided by the social media giant called “offline conversions.”

According to the privacy report, information sent to Meta was used to determine whether a customer had a Facebook account. If they did, Meta compared the person’s in-store purchases to Home Depot’s ads to gauge their effectiveness.

The program’s contract terms also allowed Meta to use the customer information for its own business purposes, including user profiling and targeted advertising unrelated to Home Depot.

‘Highly sensitive’

“While the details of a person’s in-store purchases may not have been sensitive in the context of Home Depot, they could be highly sensitive in other retail contexts, where they reveal, for example, information about an individual’s health or sexuality,” said the commissioner’s report.

A spokesperson for Home Depot said only non-sensitive information — such as the department in which a purchase was made — was used as part of the Meta program.

During a news conference Thursday, Dufresne said that even knowing when and how often a person buys an item can expose personal details.

 “The more information you have about an individual, the more you can create an image of that person. And so that’s why it is something that absolutely has to be taken seriously

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