With the penetration rate of the web approaching 70 percent, profiles of general web usage are less important. Web marketers must begin to focus on the profile of heavy web users and users by type of web usage. This article develops a demographic and lifestyle profile of heavy web users (those using the web for 20 hours a week or more) based on a survey of over 5,000 respondents. It also identifies six key web usage categories—Web Generalists, Downloaders, Self-Improvers, Entertainment Seekers, Stock Traders, and Socializers—and develops a profile of each.

This may be the first study providing a detailed demographic and lifestyle description of both heavy users and web usage types. The profiles should be useful to web marketers for selecting media and setting the tone of their marketing effort in targeting these groups.The author would like to thank Dr. Joseph Plummer, executive vice president for research and insight development at McCann-Erickson for contributing the data for this article, as well as Susan Nathan and Karen Ring at McCann for their help in making the data accessible. He would also like to thank Caresse Sakagawa, his research assistant at the Stern School, for conducting the analyses in the article.

This article is about affective advertising, defined as that which works more on our emotions and feelings than on our knowledge and beliefs. This sort of advertising can be processed effectively at relatively low levels of attention and as a result does not always perform well on recall measures. We compare the most popular recall-based metric—claimed advertising awareness—against an approach that deduces effectiveness from recognition and find claimed advertising awareness seriously underestimates the effectiveness of the advertising tested.

A handbill (i.e., a leaflet distributed by hand) is a form of advertising especially common in high-traffic pedestrian districts. However, there are no previous reports in the literature relating to consumer perceptions of handbills as a promotional medium. This article reports on a telephone survey of a random sample of 240 interviewees in Hong Kong and represents a starting point for research on this topic. One hundred and seventy-four (72.5 percent) of the interviewees were classified as handbill acceptors, and 66 (27.5 percent) were classified as handbill nonacceptors. Among the handbill acceptors, 71.8 percent actually read the handbills. In addition, handbill acceptors were more likely to be female, younger, and to have had secondary or tertiary education. The main reason acceptors gave for taking handbills was to help the distributor finish his or her work promptly. The main reason nonacceptors gave for refusing handbills was that the handbills are distributed during peak hours, when they are too busy to stop. Handbill acceptors predictably had more favorable perceptions of handbill attributes than handbill nonacceptors. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for advertisers and future research.

How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding by Douglas B. Holt, Harvard Business School Press, September 2004, ISBN: 1578517745, $29.95, 263 pp.

Your reviewer is usually not a big fan of “academic” business books. But let's dispense with suspense here—your reviewer find's Dr. Holt's new book to be a must read—for practitioners as well as academics, for new-product marketers as well as advertising folks. Depending on your brand and product category, you very well may want to add a new section to your positioning statement and a new column to your creative brief—a cultural brief.

Consumer purchase decisions often require reliance on various information sources. Although prior research on information seeking has focused on the number of information sources used, the types of sources used and their impact on satisfaction have not been examined as thoroughly. The authors address this issue in the context of product-focused print media—magazines in particular—by exploring information source usage for the automobile purchase process. The impact of source usage on satisfaction with the purchase decision and with the product is examined as well. Implications for advertisers and brand managers are discussed in terms of media planning issues.

162 Advertising's Role in Capitalist Markets: What Do We Know and Where Do We Go from Here?

171 In Search of True Brand Equity Metrics: All Market Share Ain't Created Equal

187 Brand Key Performance Indicators as a Force for Brand Equity Management

198 Marketers Challenged to Respond to Changing Nature of Brand Building

201 Radical Brand Evolution: A Case-Based Framework

211 The Double Jeopardy Phenomenon and the Mediating Effect of Brand Penetration between Advertising and Brand Loyalty

222 The Role of Brand Parity in Developing Loyal Customers

229 How Behavioral Primacy Interacts with Short-Term Marketing Tactics to Influence Subsequent Long-Term Brand Choice

241 A Look at the Long-run Effectiveness of Multimedia Advertising and Its Implications for Budget Allocation Decisions

255 Ten Years of Learning on How Online Advertising Builds Brands

269 Measuring Affective Advertising: Implications of Low Attention Processing on Recall

With the size of ethnic minority groups expanding and their disposable income increasing, the consumption landscape and media environment are constantly evolving. It is important for advertisers to understand how ethnic minority group members feel about being targeted by current multicultural marketing communication practices and if English language media for the general market are still a good way to reach these consumers. Past research has often employed a content analysis technique to gauge instances of ethnic minority representation in advertising. However, a void exists in the literature with respect to examining how ethnic minorities actually feel about tactics and messages directed at them. Therefore a cross-cultural survey of adults in three ethnic groups in the United States was carried out to examine these attitudes and also to assess current media use patterns. The results suggest that English broadcast media are still a good way to reach people across the various groups. The study further reveals that attitudes toward the frequency and accuracy of these groups as portrayed in advertisements are somewhat different from the negative viewpoints historically found in the literature. In fact, the results suggest that today's advertisements are not considered inadequate or inaccurate by many and that efforts toward targeting ethnic minorities are potentially welcomed. However, a bi-modal distribution across several representation issues indicates that advertisers must still be cautious in the minds of some ethnic minority consumers. Implications for advertisers and media planners are discussed as well as suggestions for future research.

9 Managing Brand Experience: The Market Contact Audit™

19 Simultaneous Media Experience and Synesthesia

27 Television Optimizers: Did They Change the Way We Do Business?

34 Avoiding Television Advertising: Some Explanations from Time Allocation Theory

49 The Effects of Program Responses on the Processing of Commercials Placed at Various Positions in the Program and the Block

60 Comparing the Current Effects and Carryover of National-, Regional-, and Local-Sponsor Advertising

73 A Managerial Investigation into the Product Placement Industry

93 A Demographic and Psychographic Profile of Heavy Internet Users and Users by Type of Internet Usage

124 Perceptions of Handbills as a Promotional Medium: An Exploratory Study

132 Information Source Usage and Purchase Satisfaction: Implications for Product-Focused Print Media

140 Can English Language Media Connect with Ethnic Audiences? Ethnic Minorities' Media Use and Representation Perceptions