Negative comparative advertising evidence favoring fine-tuning

This study tested in the context of branded products a set of hypotheses de rived from theory in political science concerning negative advertising mess ages: those that unfavorably compare Brand B with Brand A. We expected and found that the most favorably-rated message contains negative elements, and that any negative comparison is perceived differently by users of Brand B, users of A, users of a third brand and users of multiple brands. Two other expectations were also supported. Responses are more favorable to a messag e simply denigrating product features of a rival brand vs, a message smeari ng a corporation. Also, all ratings do not differ in the same way when one contrasts responses to negative comparative messages with responses to mess ages that are simply brand comparisons.