Mistaken Inferences from Advertising Conversations: A Modest Research Agenda

I review the changing advertising landscape and suggest that the definition of advertising has inherently changed. Using the current advertising context, I develop research questions that consumer behavior scholars are well poised to address. This research agenda is rooted in real-world observations about advertising and can help us develop new theories about when, how, and why advertising influences and persuades consumers. A recurring theme in this article is that consumers may be misled due to information overload from multiple channels and sources. I use the advertising-as-conversation metaphor to derive hypotheses and test one such hypothesis in an experiment. I end with a summary and discussion of advertising impact measurement.