It’s Not the Quality But the Effort Itself That Matters? Advertiser Effort and Consumer Perceptions of Equitable Exchange

Introducing the concept of equitable exchange to advertising, this paper tests the popular notion that “advertising needs to earn consumers’ attention”. Drawing on equity theory, we hypothesize that higher advertiser effort generates more favorable ad attitudes, brand attitudes and purchase intentions. Two experiments support the hypotheses, and find that the positive impact of advertiser effort increases with consumer effort to take part of the advertising.