A Tale of Two Social Contexts: Race-Specific Testimonials on Commercial Web Sites
Troy Elias
University of Florida
Osei Appiah
Ohio State University
INTRODUCTION
Numerous studies have indicated that the type of spokesperson used in advertising can affect consumer response (Atkin and Block, 1983; Frieden, 1984). Further research exploring the effect of source-viewer similarity on advertising response has shown that mere similarity, however, is not enough if the audience does not make a connection. Viewers need to be aware of the similarity between themselves and the source to induce the positive responses that target marketing is presumed to cause (Appiah, 2004;...