Tijdschriftreclame uit de kleedkamer van de redactie

Advertorials zijn reclameboodschappen die zijn vermomd als journalistieke bijdragen (editorials), maar die wel degelijk van een merk afkomstig zijn om tot koop aan te zetten. Het ligt voor de hand dat advertorials daarom een commerciëler karakter hebben dan editorials die informatiever zouden moeten zijn. Herkennen lezers advertorials als commerciële, en editorials als informatieve berichten?

  • Hornikx, J., & Estourgie, V. (2010). Tijdschriftreclame uit de kleedkamer van de redactie. Tekstblad, 16 (5/6), 18-21. [pdf]

Review of “Fallacies and judgments of reasonableness: Empirical research concerning the pragma-dialectical discussion rules”

One of the core concepts in argumentation theory are fallacies, often considered to be arguments that seem valid but that are invalid. Argumentation scholars and philosophers, such as Aristotle, Locke and Hamblin, have approached fallacies from a theoretical and non-empirical perspective. Such an approach has enabled the field of argumentation theory to intensively reflect on the concept of fallacies. A disadvantage of such an approach, however, is that it is naturally limited to the views and knowledge of argumentation theorists themselves. How would ordinary language users respond to fallacies? Would these laymen also consider fallacies to be unreasonable? Frans van Eemeren, Bart Garssen and Bert Meuffels have addressed this question by conducting an impressive set of experiments in the course of 10 years, involving more than 1900 participants. In Fallacies and judgments of reasonableness, they introduce these studies, present their results, and conclude that laymen’s conceptions of reasonableness are very similar to the theoretical conceptions of reasonableness in their own pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation.

  • Hornikx, J. (2010). Review of “Fallacies and judgments of reasonableness: Empirical research concerning the pragma-dialectical discussion rules” by Frans H. van Eemeren, Bart Garssen and Bert Meuffels. Information Design Journal, 18 (2), 175-177. [pdf]

Is het aanpassen van advertenties aan culturele waarden in West-Europa zinvol?

Een prominente lijn van onderzoek naar cultuur en reclame wordt gevormd door experimenten waarin advertenties met cultureel aangepaste waardeappels worden vergeleken met advertenties met cultureel onaangepaste waardeappels. Uit een eerdere meta-analyse van bestaande experimenten bleek dat aangepaste advertenties overtuigender zijn en meer gewaardeerd worden dan onaangepaste advertenties, maar dat dit effect niet optrad voor West-Europese proefpersonen (Hornikx & O’Keefe, 2009). Een oorzaak hiervoor ligt mogelijkerwijs in de gebruikte waardedimensies: in studies met Europese proefpersonen werden waardeappels nauwelijks aangepast aan individualisme – collectivisme, terwijl andere studies met deze waardedimensie juist aanpassingseffecten vonden. In een nieuwe serie experimenten werd daarom nagegaan of advertenties met een aangepast individualistisch waardeappel in West-Europese landen effectiever waren dan advertenties met een onaangepast collectivistisch waardeappel. Een meta-analyse van deze experimenten laat zien dat ook aanpassing aan individualisme – collectivisme geen voordeel oplevert in advertenties voor West-Europese proefpersonen.

  • Hornikx, J., Groot, E. de, Timmermans, E., Mariëns, J., & Verckens, J. P. (2010). Is het aanpassen van advertenties aan culturele waarden in West-Europa zinvol? Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing, 32 (2), 114-127. [pdf]

English or a local language in advertising?

Studies have demonstrated frequent use of English in international advertising, but little is known about people’s preference for English versus local languages. This paper empirically investigated the difficulty of the English language as a possible determinant of people’s preference for English or the local language. In an experiment, Dutch participants judged a number of car ads with English slogans that were pre-tested as easy or difficult to understand. They were subsequently asked to express a preference for either the English slogan or the Dutch equivalent. Results showed that easy-to-understand English slogans were appreciated better than difficult-to-understand English slogans. Moreover, the degree of difficulty in comprehension of the English slogans affected participants’ preference for English. English was preferred to Dutch when it was easy to understand; when it was difficult to understand, English was appreciated as much as the Dutch equivalent. In conclusion, the experiment provides empirical support for the role of comprehension in the preference for and appreciation of English in international advertising.

  • Hornikx, J., Meurs, F. van, & Boer, A. de (2010). English or a local language in advertising? The appreciation of easy and difficult English slogans in the Netherlands. Journal of Business Communication, 47 (2), 169-188. [pdf]

The effects of cultural adaptation in fundraising letters

Gender has been shown to affect the persuasiveness of help-self and help-others appeals in fundraising: men prefer help-self appeals, and women help-others appeals. This gender difference has been attributed to world-view differences. Women have a care-oriented world-view and men a justice-oriented world-view – at least in masculine cultures. In feminine cultures, however, both men and women have a care-oriented world-view. The present study investigated whether in the feminine, Dutch culture the culturally adapted help-others appeal was more persuasive than the culturally unadapted help-self appeal for both men and women (N = 166). Results showed that the culturally adapted help-others appeal was the most persuasive appeal for men and women, who were both found to have a relatively care-oriented world-view.

  • Hornikx, J., Hendriks, B., & Thijzen, D. (2010). The effects of cultural adaptation in fundraising letters: The case of help-self and help-others appeals in a feminine culture. Communications, the European Journal of Communication Research, 35 (1), 93-110. [pdf]