Can I Live Up to That Ad? Impact of Implicit Theories of Ability on Service Employees' Responses to Advertising
Journal
Journal of Service Research (JSR)
ISSN
1094-6705
ISSN-Digital
1552-7379
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2010-04
Author(s)
Abstract
Service researchers have postulated that ads have an important "second" audience, namely an organization's own service employees. Specifically, ads may depict how employees deliver on the service promise, thereby communicating to other
service employees what kind of behaviors they are expected to perform. This research examines when and to what extent service employees are motivated to live up to such ad models. Two experiments at a Swiss bank demonstrate that the effectiveness of an ad model is determined not only by the challenge presented by the model's behavior but also by an employee's implicit beliefs. Employees who believe that their abilities are fixed (i.e., entity-focused) are more motivated to imitate an ad model if the model's behavior is moderately challenging rather than strongly challenging. In contrast, employees
who believe that their abilities are malleable (i.e., incremental-focused) are not affected by how challenging the model's behavior is. Moreover, the reactions of entity-focused employees to challenging ads may be improved by encouraging them to mentally simulate the process they need to go through to achieve a similar performance as the model.
service employees what kind of behaviors they are expected to perform. This research examines when and to what extent service employees are motivated to live up to such ad models. Two experiments at a Swiss bank demonstrate that the effectiveness of an ad model is determined not only by the challenge presented by the model's behavior but also by an employee's implicit beliefs. Employees who believe that their abilities are fixed (i.e., entity-focused) are more motivated to imitate an ad model if the model's behavior is moderately challenging rather than strongly challenging. In contrast, employees
who believe that their abilities are malleable (i.e., incremental-focused) are not affected by how challenging the model's behavior is. Moreover, the reactions of entity-focused employees to challenging ads may be improved by encouraging them to mentally simulate the process they need to go through to achieve a similar performance as the model.
Language
English
Keywords
advertising's internal audience
advertising models
implicit theories of ability
mental simulation
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Publisher
Sage Periodicals Press
Publisher place
London UK
Volume
13
Number
2
Start page
137
End page
152
Pages
16
Subject(s)
Eprints ID
61215