An evaluation of source effects in consumer generated ads

The contiuous advancement in information and communication technologies leads to transformations in media and its audiences. The new media environment has given a great control power to audiences over the media consumption process. Interaction and participation are the connatural features of new media, therefore this environment offers audiences brand new opportunities for both content creation and distribution. This environment has also reshaped the interaction between consumers and brands and enabled active participation by consumers. Therefore, consumer-brand relationships have become more complex and interactive than ever before. The phenomenon of consumer generated ads (CGA), which is the main focus of this study is one of the most remarkable example for consumers' high level of participation in brand related content creation. This phenomenon has attracted an increasing attention from scholars in recent years. A limited number of studies has covered the different aspects of consumer generated advertising from the second half of the 2000's and have mostly originated from western countries. Most of those previous studies' findings have shown that the knowledge that an advertisement is consumer generated leads to less favorable ad evaluations. This study was conducted in Turkey and employed both experiment and semi-structured interview methods for data collection. Unlike the previous studies, this study has shown that the knowledge that an ad is created by the consumer leads to a more favorable ad evaluations. Besides this, another significant finding of this study is that a consumer generated ad (CGA) is seen as "a creative work of an amateur" rather than an ad being a "persuasion attempt" and "communication of the brand". Keywords: New media, consumer generated ad, attitude toward the ad