Sj. Grove et al., AN EMPIRICAL-EXAMINATION OF FACTUAL INFORMATION-CONTENT AMONG SERVICEADVERTISEMENTS, Service industries journal, 15(2), 1995, pp. 216-233
Services are generally thought to be less tangible to consumers than p
hysical goods, a trait which may create communication difficulties for
sellers of service products. To accommodate the special nature of ser
vice products and the generally greater perceived risk associated with
them, many scholars argue that services marketers need to stress fact
ual information in their advertisements. While this perspective has be
en advanced for years, little empirical research has been conducted to
examine its adoption by practitioners. In this article we investigate
the extent to which the advertisers of services emphasise specificall
y suggested factual information cues in their messages. Over 17,000 ne
wspaper ads and 9,800 television ads were scrutinized to reveal that s
ervices advertisements do indeed provide various proposed factual cues
and that their incidence increases as service products become more in
tangible in nature.