A Comparison of Services Advertising Strategies Used in US and Korean Magazine Ads a Content Analysis

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ournal of Services Marketingmerald Article: A comparison of services advertising strategies used inS and Korean magazine ads: a content analysis

ae-Kyong Bang, Young Sook Moon

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orean magazine ads: a content analysis", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 16 Iss: 5 pp. 443 - 459

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A comparison of servicesadvertising strategies used in USand Korean magazine ads:a content analysisHae-Kyong BangAssistant Professor of Marketing, Villanova University, Villanova,Pennsylvania, USA

Young Sook MoonAssistant Professor of Marketing, Hanyang University, Korea

Keywords Services marketing, Advertising, Korea, USA

Abstract This study assesses the level to which services advertisers follow guidelines foreffective services advertising suggested by prior academic literature. The study analyzesGeorge and Berry's five guidelines for effective services advertising strategies and Berryand Clark's four tangibilization strategies. The extent to which these suggested strategiesare actually implemented by practitioners in the USA and South Korea is investigated,using a content analysis methodology. It is hypothesized that advertisers in a moreadvanced services economy like the US would be more in tune with the distinctive natureof services (e.g. intangibility) and would practice these guidelines more frequently thanadvertisers in a newly developed services economy like Korea. The findings suggest thatUS services magazine ads do use most of the suggested services advertising strategiesmore frequently than the Korean counterparts. However, there are a few exceptions, andsome of the guidelines were not widely used in either country. Managerial implicationsand suggestions for further research are provided.

Introduction

The service sector of the US economy has grown substantially in recent

years. Cobb-Walgren and Mohr (1998) report that the service sector accounts

for approximately 54 percent of GDP and more than three-quarters of the

projected increase in new jobs between 1993 and 2005. Many newly

developed countries are also moving toward a more service-oriented

economy. Countries like South Korea offer their consumers an

unprecedented level of choices in services, especially in retailing, banking,

insurance, and higher education. Given the growth of the service sector in

newly developed countries, it is critical that service businesses understand

how to market their offerings. It is especially important for service

businesses to develop advertising campaigns that are effective since

advertising often represents the first contact a potential customer has with the

service provider (Green, 1998). Many services marketers who used to

believe that IRAs could be sold in the same manner as soap now question the

applicability of product marketing strategies to service marketing (Tauber,

1986).

In spite of the growing importance of the service sector, there has been a

limited amount of research on services advertising. However, those studiesthat have been conducted have provided some key conceptual insights. A

group of early articles focused on the intangible nature of services and called

for different strategies for services advertising as opposed to product

The research register for this journal is available at

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregisters

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0887-6045.htm

Service sector growth

Limited research

JOURNAL OF SERVICES MARKETING, VOL. 16 NO. 5 2002, pp. 443-459, # MCB UP LIMITED, 0887-6045, DOI 10.1108/08876040210436911 443

An executive summary for

managers and executive

readers can be found at the

end of this issue


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advertising. For instance, Shostack (1977) argued that while product

advertising intentionally seeks abstract associations (e.g. Coca-Cola tries to

be associated with authenticity or Dr Pepper with originality), services

advertisers should make efforts to establish non-abstract or tangible

manifestations of their intangible services for effective mass media

advertising. More recently, several content analyses, as well as one

experimental study, have also suggested a need for different strategies in

observing that services advertisers are better served by using rational appeals

as opposed to transformational (emotional) appeals (Stafford and Day, 1995;

Tripp, 1997).

Reiterating that special attention should be devoted to making the service

appear more tangible, George and Berry (1981) developed six guidelines for

services marketers. These guidelines state that services advertising should:

(1) Target employees as well as customers.

(2) Capitalize on word-of-mouth (i.e. by using testimonials/endorsements).

(3) Provide tangible cues about the service.

(4) Make the service more easily understood.

(5) Promise what is possible (i.e. not exaggerate).

(6) Provide continuity over time.

Berry and Clark (1986) also emphasized the need to tangibilize services

through advertising. They discussed four different ways to tangibilize

services, including visualization or association.

Unfortunately, no empirical studies to date have studied the extent to which

proposed guidelines for services advertising are actually followed by

practitioners. Most prior content analyses have focused on the information

content of services advertising or professional advertising. Generally, these

studies measure information content based on the Resnik and Stern (1977)

scheme originally developed for product advertising. While the Resnik and

Stern scheme allows for comparisons to many studies of information content

over time and across media (see Abernethy and Franke, 1996), it may not

capture all of the major types of information used by services advertisers

(Abernethy and Butler, 1992; Taylor et al., 1997). Consequently, much

remains unknown as to what type of advertising strategies are used by

services marketers, and research on the determination of factors and

practices contributing to effective services advertising is still evolving

(Grove et al., 1997).

The purpose of this study is to analyze the content of services advertising in

the USA and Korea, in order to examine whether services advertisers in the

two countries practice the guidelines suggested by prior scholars. In

particular, this paper focuses on the following aspects of the content of

existing services advertising in the USA and Korea:. the extent to which the guidelines suggested by George and Berry (1981)

are followed; and

. the extent to which the tangiblization strategies proposed by Berry and

Clark (1986) are used.

George and Berry's guidelines are used because the study is considered

seminal and, as noted by Mittal (1999), consistent with subsequent

conceptual frameworks for services advertising, including Mittal's along

Service marketers

guidelines

Advertising content

444 JOURNAL OF SERVICES MARKETING, VOL. 16 NO. 5 2002


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with Legg and Baker (1987) and Hill and Gandhi (1992). Berry and Clark's

tangibilization strategies are used because of their widespread acceptance in

the services advertising literature.

Korea was chosen for inclusion in the study because it represents a newly

developed services economy in Asia. Ha (1998) compared appeals used in

services advertising in Hong Kong and the USA. This study compared the

USA and a country with a more recently developed service sector. Overall,

Korea's development represents a remarkable success story, as it went from

being a country with a per-capita income of just US$87 in 1962 to US$8,450in 1994, and well over US$10,000 today. Additionally it is important to

study Korea because it is a major trading partner for the USA, being its fifthlargest export market and eighth largest importer in 1997 (Business America,

1998).

While Korea has come a long way in terms of its economic development, it

is not surprising that its service sector is not as well developed as that of the

USA (McKinsey, 2001). In the USA, the service sector almost tripled in size

between 1959 and 1990, eventually rising to account for a majority of US

GDP (Triplett, 1993). As of 1998, the service sector accounted for 40 percent

of Korean GDP (Koreascope, 1998). While substantial, this figure isindicative of Korea having entered the ranks of developed countries

relatively recently. Numerous government regulations affecting the servicesector, including zoning restrictions that make it difficult to build large retail

outlets, have also inhibited the service sector's growth in Korea (McKinsey,2001). In general, it is unlikely that most Korean service firms face the same

high level of competition domestically that comparable US firms do.

This study is designed to contribute to the literature both by assessing the

extent to which US service advertisers are following the conceptualguidelines and by comparing the use of these guidelines in the USA and

Korea. On the latter point, it is hypothesized that services marketers in a

more advanced services economy, that is, the USA, are more likely to

practice advertising strategies developed for services advertising than thosein Korea, which has a newly developed services economy.

Literature review

US content analyses of services advertising

Tripp (1997) reviewed the services advertising literature since 1980 and

found that only a limited number of empirical studies have been conducted.

Tripp's review notes that research in this area has produced conflictingfindings and that the focus has consistently been on differences between

product and services advertising in two areas, that is, message appeals and

information cues. In spite the limitations of this narrow focus, Tripp asserts

that these studies have provided initial confirmation of differences in the way

goods and services advertisers present their messages.

An early content analysis of message appeals that broke out data by

product/service category was conducted by Zinkhan et al. (1992). Based onan analysis of 760 television commercials, the study reported that bothservices ads and product ads relied primarily on informational appeals as

opposed to transformational appeals. In terms of the use of transformational

appeals, more services ads were found to use transformational appeals than

product ads (27.7 percent vs 12.1 percent). Using the television commercial

types developed by Hefzallah and Maloney (1979), they also found that more

staged formats and testimonials were used by services advertisers than by

other advertisers. An analysis of appeal types conducted during the same

A newly developed services

economy

Content anlysis

JOURNAL OF SERVICES MARKETING, VOL. 16 NO. 5 2002 445


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time frame on 4,220 television commercials also found that services

advertisers used factual appeals significantly more often than physical

product advertisers (Bush and Bush, 1992).

Abernethy and Butler (1992) used the information cues developed by Resnik

and Stern (1977) to analyze 562 half- (or larger) page newspaper ads. They

found that services ads contained fewer informational cues than product ads

(2.10 vs 3.20). Yet they noted that the lower frequency of information cues

found in services advertising was largely due to the fact that they used a

scheme originally developed for product advertising. Interestingly, the studyfound that availability information was significantly underrepresented in

services advertising although such information is considered more important

for services.

A number of subsequent studies examined a subset of the 14 information

cues from the Resnik and Stern scheme. For instance, Grove et al. (1995)

used four information cues (i.e. price, guarantees/warranties, documentation

of performance, and availability) to compare services advertising and

product advertising in 17,000 newspaper and 9,800 television ads. They

found that services ads provided more factual cues than product ads, and that

their incidence increased as service products became more intangible in

nature.

Cutler and Javalgi (1993) examined visual components of print advertising

for services and goods in four areas the visual process used, the appeal

content, the headline typology, and implied target audiences. A total of 471

ads were sampled from 1989 and 1990 issues of business, general interest

and women's magazines and were classified into four product categories:

consumer services, consumer non-durable products, consumer durable

products and other. The results of their content analysis showed service

advertisements more often contained an emotional appeal, an emotional

appeal process (metaphor, storytelling, or aesthetic) and an emotional

headline than did product advertisements. They also found no difference in

the frequency of quality claims for services ads versus product ads. This is

interesting because ambiguity and uncertainty are greater in the marketing of

services than in the marketing of physical products (Weinberger and Brown,

1977) and quality claims in services advertising can be used to reduce such

risks (Clow et al., 1996).

While most content analyses have focused on consumer services advertising,

Turley and Kelley (1997) examined the differences between business-to-

business (B2B) services advertising and consumer services advertising on a

variety of advertising execution variables. In their sample of 186 magazine

advertisements, 91 ads were for B2B services and 95 were for consumer

services. The specific message elements evaluated were message appeal,

headline usage, price information, quality claims, and the inclusion of an

Internet address. The results showed that while B2B services ads were more

likely to use rational advertising appeals than consumer services ads, therewas no difference between the two types of ads in the usage of headline,

quality claims, price information, and Internet address.

In general, most studies have found that services advertisers tend to use

rational appeals more often than emotional appeals (Tripp, 1997). It is

notable that the use of rational appeals is consistent with the findings of an

experiment by Stafford and Day (1995), in which it was found that rational

appeals are more effective in generating favorable attitudes toward services

advertising. Another experiment of note is Stafford's (1996), in which the

Information cues

Business-to-business



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presence of verbal and visual tangible cues in advertisements for services

were manipulated. Results indicated that verbal tangible cues were

associated with higher effectiveness on most dependent measures for the two

service categories studied (hotels and auto service). The findings of this

study are especially important, because they provide empirical support for

the notion that if services advertisers actually use certain tangibilization

strategies they will be rewarded with more effective ads.

Prior studies of international services advertising

Some prior research has also focused on international services advertising.

While none of these studies focused specifically on the guidelines for service

advertisers investigated in the current study, some interesting findings have

resulted. Most of the prior studies have not focused exclusively on services

advertising in the countries where data were collected, but have made

product versus service comparison (Albers-Miller and Stafford, 1999). For

example, Cutler and Javalgi's (1994) of B2B magazine advertising included

ads from the UK. It was concluded that services ads in the UK used a

narrower range of appeals than those in the USA. Rajarnatam et al. (1995)

compared the information content of appeal types used in Indian and US

magazine advertising and found more similarities than differences between

the two countries for both product and services ads. In a large-scale study of

11 countries, Albers-Miller and Gelb (1996) found that the use of the

advertising appeals identified by Pollay (1983) ``was often related to culture

in a nonrandom way.''

A few studies focusing on advertising in the People's Republic of China have

also been conducted. Swanson (1996) found that a wider array of appeals

was being used in Chinese advertising as foreign firms entered the market.

Chan's (1996) study of response to television advertising found that Chinese

respondents rated emotional ads higher on liking and perceived brand image

than informative advertising. She speculated that a reason for this might be

more exposure to informational ads when the economy was just beginning to

develop. Cheng and Schweitzer (1996) also studied Chinese television

commercials and found that the appeals used in Chinese advertising variedby product category and product origin.

Two studies are especially notable, since they focused more directly on

services advertising. The first of these is a content analysis conducted by Ha

(1998). Ha's study compared the information and values present in services

ads in the USA (n = 105) and Hong Kong (n = 107). Both countries were

chosen because their service economies are highly developed. The variables

examined included eight information cues derived from the Resnik and Stern

scheme, instrumental values (e.g. heroic, stylish, traditional, or easy), and

terminal values (e.g. health, love, harmony, or success). It was found that the

US services ads scored high on the quality cue, but much lower on price and

availability cues than the Hong Kong services ads. In terms of instrumentaland terminal values, the US services ads reflected more traditional heritage

and appeals to consumers' health than their Hong Kong counterparts.

A second key study is Albers-Miller and Stafford's (1999) content analysis

of ads in business publications from 11 countries. It was found that the type

of appeal used (rational vs emotional) varied by service category (utilitarian

vs experiential) when the data were pooled. It was also found that culture had

more influence on appeals when the appeal was central to the service selling

premise.

Product versus servicecomparison

Services advertising



7/18

In summary, while a considerable amount has been learned from prior

studies, most have not directly investigated the use of strategies believed to

improve services advertising. Moreover, in spite of the contributions of the

Albers-Miller and Gelb (1996) and Albers-Miller and Stafford (1999)

studies, the level to which culture plays a role in determining what appeals or

strategies help make services advertising effective is not clearly known.

While this study is not designed to make inroads into the level to which

culture influences strategy, it is designed to explore whether the services

advertising strategies in two distinct countries are similar or different.

Conceptual framework and hypotheses

This study examines whether services advertising follows the

recommendations made by academic researchers. In particular, the use of

George and Berry's (1981) guidelines for advertising services, and the use of

various methods of tangibilizing the service are analyzed. The primary basis

for predicting differences between the USA and Korea is that while the USA

has had a developed services economy for many decades, Korea's service

sector is newly developed. As noted by Czinkota and Ronakainen (1998), US

firms in several service industries, including banking, legal services,

accounting, management consulting, telecommunications, and transportation

have proven to be highly competitive in global markets. This has been

attributed to the experience of these firms, as well as to intense competition,which has produced higher consumer expectations. Given the level at which

US service firms have been operating to serve an advanced services economy

at home, as well as expansion into more global markets, one would expect

US firms to make use of more advanced techniques for advertising services.

In contrast, in Korea, which has a less developed service sector, one would

expect to see services ads that are closer in style and format to advertising for

physical products than is the case in the USA. This distinction will play an

important role in the derivation of the hypotheses developed in the

subsequent section.

George and Berry's guidelines

Of the six guidelines presented by George and Berry (1981) for moreeffective services advertising based on certain special characteristics of

services, five guidelines were deemed applicable for this study. One

guideline (i.e. advertising continuity) was omitted since the sample of the

current study was not collected for a longitudinal or a multi-media study.

The first six hypotheses relate to overall adherence to the guidelines and

adherence to each of the five relevant individual guidelines.

The hypotheses are based on the USA having a more developed services

economy that Korea. Since US services industries generally have higher

levels of marketing and advertising experience, it is expected that US firms

will follow George and Berry's guidelines more often. Our first prediction is

that the total number of guidelines followed in an average ad will be higher

in the USA than in Korea:

H1. In total, the guidelines for effective services advertising proposed by

George and Berry are followed more closely by US advertisers than

Korean advertisers.

George and Berry's first guideline is that services advertising should be

directed to employees in addition to consumers because a major

characteristic of service marketing is that it relies more heavily on contact

personnel for service performance. Thus services advertising messages

The study

The hypotheses



8/18

should be directed to employees who may then be motivated to deliver

enhanced performance to consumers. Employee performance is deemed

critical since true differentiation in services marketing lies with contact

personnel (Berry, 1986). Not unlike product advertising which targets one or

more segments, services marketers should treat their own employees as a

potentially important ``second audience'' for services advertising. Given the

higher level of development of the US services economy, US ads are more

likely to reflect this guideline. Thus:

H2. US services ads are more often aimed at employees than are Koreanservices ads.

A second guideline is that services advertising should capitalize on

word-of-mouth. The ever-present potential for variability in the provision of

labor-intensive services is well understood by those who consume services.

The higher level of ambiguity and uncertainty associated with services may

lead consumers to rely on word-of-mouth in an attempt to reduce perceived

risk related to intangible services. Thus effective services advertising in a

developed services economy should capitalize on the use of tactics such as a

testimonial or endorsement.

H3. US services ads use techniques designed to build word-of-mouth more

often than Korean services ads.

The third George and Berry guideline is that services advertising should

provide tangible cues about the quality of service. Consumers tend to be

attentive to tangibles associated with a service for cues about the service

quality. Although a service is intangible in the sense that performance rather

than an object is purchased, objects with well-known meanings may be

associated with the service being offered. Thus, advertisers can help lower

the consumer's perception of uncertainty and risk-taking by using tangibles

in advertising in such a way as to convey appropriate signals about the

service. Stafford's (1996) finding that the presence of verbal tangible cues

increases effectiveness in an experimental setting reinforces the idea that this

strategy will be effective. It is expected that advertisers in a more developedservices economy would be more attuned to this advice. Thus:

H4. US services ads are more likely to provide tangible cues about service

quality than are Korean services ads.

The fourth guideline is that services advertising should make the service

more easily understood. One of the problems arising from the intangibility of

services is that they are often difficult to define or grasp mentally. One

method for dealing with intangibility is to use tangibles in advertising as

evidence of the service's quality. Sometimes providing tangibles can make

the service more easily understood. Again, Stafford's (1996) findings

provide support for this conceptual suggestion:

H5. US services ads are more likely to contain content aimed at making the

service easier to understand than are Korean services ads.

Lastly, George and Berry assert that services advertising should promise

what is possible. Since service buyers have only fulfilled promises (as

opposed to a tangible good) to carry away from the service transaction, it is

especially important that service firms deliver on advertising promises. It is

better to promise only that which can be delivered at a very high percentage

of the time than to promise something that they can deliver only a few times:

Word-of-mouth

Using tangibles



9/18

H6. US services ads are more likely to promise what is possible than are

Korean services ads.

Tangibilization strategies

Berry and Clark (1986) proposed four specific communication strategies

which attempt to tangibilize aspects of a service or to link a service with

tangible cues in such a way that the service itself appears less intangible. A

first strategy is visualization. When visualization is used, something in the

communication evokes in the minds of prospective customers a sense of

experiencing the service itself. Thus, advertising using visualization isdesigned to give consumers a vivid, mental picture of a service's benefits or

qualities. An example would be a cruise line advertisement showing a couple

enjoying a romantic dinner on deck on a moonlit evening.

A second strategy is association. This strategy links a service to some

extrinsic good, person, event, place, or object. Thus, the marketer focuses

attention not on the service itself, but on a tangible with credentials that are

relatively easier to evaluate. Prudential has been associating themselves with

a rock in their advertising to communicate solid and safe service

performance.

Physical representation is the third strategy. Here, marketers incorporate

physical evidence and artifacts into the service itself, and tangibles that aredirectly or peripherally a part of the service are brought to center stage and

emphasized. An example would be showing a UPS truck and uniformed

employees carrying a package.

Finally, a documentation strategy uses facts or figures to underscore the

value or quality of the service. With this strategy, marketer attempts to

document the scope, characteristics, performance record, or effects of the

service with concrete information to provide a more realistic picture of the

service and give the service credibility. Demonstrating the past performance

of annual yields in a graph uses this strategy.

As a result of the USA having a more advanced services economy, it follows

that US advertisers will be likely to make a wider use of the abovetangibilization strategies. Thus:

H7. US service advertisers use strategies for tangibilizing the service more

frequently than do Korean service advertisers.

Method

Sampling

The sample used in this study was drawn from services ads in US and Korean

magazines. News/business magazines and general interest magazines from

1997 and 1998 were selected as the general categories of analysis due to the

infrequent incidence of services ads (except for retailers) in other types of

Korean magazines. Comparable magazines were chosen For the US sample.

For the US sample four of the largest circulation weeklies ( Time, Newsweek,US News and World Report, Business Week) and two high circulation

monthlies (Readers Digest and National Geographic) were randomly

selected. For the Korean sample two monthly magazines (Shin Dong A

Monthly Chosun) and three weeklies (Economist Korean version,

Hankyung Business, Shisa Journal) were randomly selected from a list of

high circulation magazines. Owing to the differences in the media landscape

and the amount of advertising for services in both countries, the Korean

sample was drawn first to include all the unduplicated services advertising

Communication strategies

Using facts or figures



10/18

that appeared in the magazines. Then the US sample (n = 202) was drawn by

utilizing a stratified sampling (i.e. every fourth services ad, unduplicated)

procedure to yield a sample that was of comparable size to the Korean

sample (n = 201), yet representative of services advertising that appeared in

the selected magazines. Only full-page and larger ads were included in the

sample.

Both the verbal and visual content of the services ads were classified

according to the following major variables: the five guidelines for services

advertising and the four tangibilization strategies. Coders were provided withoperational definitions of each category.

Coding categories

Operational definitions of all coding categories discussed in the paper are

shown in the Appendix. In order to arrive at these definitions, prior literature

was drawn on. As seen in the codebook, additional guidance was given to

coders by using examples that were either drawn from prior literature or

presented themselves as being represented during pre-testing. Extensive

pre-testing on a set of 40 ads not included in the main study was conducted in

both countries in order to train the coders. Lessons learned from this process

were incorporated into the codebook.

Guidelines. The two US coders were graduate students at a US universityand the two Korean coders were graduate students at a Korean university.

Coders were instructed to code whether each of the five relevant guidelines

was present. Thus, the coders analyzed whether the ad:

(1) was directed at employees;

(2) attempted to build or reinforce word-of-mouth;

(3) provided tangible cues about the quality of service;

(4) made the service more easily understood; and

(5) promised what is possible.

Tangibilization strategies. A next group of variables the coders were askedto code were related to whether and how the ad attempted to tangibilize the

service. The coding scheme used was based on Berry and Clark's (1986)

strategies for tangibilization. Thus, the categories were:

. visualization;

. association;

. physical representation; and

. documentation.

Coding procedure

The data coding instrument and codebook were initially developed in

English. A translation and back-translation procedure was then followed toensure equivalence of the variables measured. In both countries, coders were

trained extensively on ads not included in the sample. On conclusion of the

training, each coder coded every ad in their respective sample so that

reliability could be measured. Disagreements were resolved by one of the

researchers. Table I shows intercoder reliability for these variables based on

Perreault and Leigh's (1989) reliability index (Ir). While the reliability

figures are generally high, the figures for tangibilization strategy in the USA

are somewhat lower.

Operational definitions

The coding scheme



11/18

Results

H1-6

The five guidelines developed by George and Berry in 1981 were used to

examine whether services marketers practice recommended services

advertising strategies in the USA and Korea. Overall, as shown in Table II,

US services advertising used the guidelines at a higher frequency than

Korean services advertising (chi-square = 50.66, d.f. = 5, p = 0.000). Thus

H1, which predicted greater adherence to the guidelines by US services

firms, is supported.

In terms of specific guidelines, the US services ads were significantly more

likely to address employees than the Korean ads (7.4 percent vs 1.5 percent).

This finding supports H2. For H3, US service advertisers capitalized on

word-of-mouth more frequently (6.4 percent vs 2.5 percent) than their

Korean counterparts. This difference is, however, not statistically significant

(p = 0.094). Interestingly, these first two guidelines were by far the least usedin both countries.

US services ads were also significantly more likely than the Korean services

ads to make the communication more easily understood (98.5 percent vs 79.6

percent) and to advertise what is possible (95.5 percent vs 87.6 percent).

Both of these differences are statistically significant and provide support for

H5 and H6.

As can be seen in Table II, the lone exception to the pattern of US firms

being more prone to follow the George and Berry guidelines is that Korean

firms were actually somewhat more likely than the US firms to use tangible

Number of categories Reliability (Ir)

Variable USA Korea USA Korea

Guidelines (total) 2a 0.89 0.95

Also adv. to employees 0.84 0.92

Word of mouth 0.89 0.92

Tangible cues 0.85 0.95

Easily understood 0.94 0.97

What's possible 0.93 0.97

Tangibilization strategy 2a 0.77 0.88

Visualization 0.81 0.88Association 0.71 0.84

Physical representation 0.80 0.92

Documentation 0.76 0.92

Note:a Either present or absent was checked for each of the five guidelines and for each of

the four tangibilization strategy. The numbers represent the overall reliability figures

Table I. Reliability data

Variable/category USA (%) Korea (%) 2

d.f. pGuidelines Overall 50.66 5 0.000

Also adv. to employee 7.4 1.5 6.98 1 0.008

Word-of-mouth 6.4 2.5 2.81 1 0.094

Tangible cues 54.6 68.7 7.80 1 0.005

Easily understood 98.5 79.6 35.11 1 0.000

What's possible 95.5 87.6 7.31 1 0.007

Table II. Comparison of guidelines between the USA and Korea types of

guidelines used in all services ads

Marketers' practice

Tangible cues



12/18

cues (68.7 percent vs 54.5 percent). This leads to the rejection of H4.

However, it appears that the operationalization of tangibilization was not

adequate to pick up all cases in which a specific tangibilization strategy (as

defined by Berry and Clark) was used. As the Appendix shows, coders were

trained to only code cues associated directly with the service and only a

limited number of specific types of cues were included in the codebook.

Therefore, it is likely that the figures presented below from Berry and

Clark's scheme present a more accurate representation of the frequency of

use of tangibilization strategies. Hence, our operationalization based on the

George and Berry definition of tangibilization appears to have been

inadequate for testing H4.

H7

Results shown in Table III also demonstrate a different degree of usage of various

tangibilization strategies between the USA and Korea (chi-square = 27.79,

d.f. = 3, p = 0.000). In general, the US service ads were more likely to use

tangibilization strategies than the Korean ads based on the Berry and Clark

framework, thus supporting H7. Visualization and documentation strategies were

used significantly more often by US advertisers. Association strategies were also

used more frequently in the USA, but the difference was not statistically

significant. The lone exception to the above pattern of greater frequency of

tangibilization in the USA was found for physical representation. The frequency

of using a physical representation to tangibilize the service was similar in the two

countries. In both countries, documentation was the most widely used strategy

(64.7 percent of US ads and 47.3 percent of Korean ads).

Table IV shows the distribution frequencies for the number of tangibilization

strategies used in individual ads, as well as t-test results comparing the mean

number of the strategies used. As can be seen, the US ads used significantly

more tangibilization strategies than the Korean ads (t = 4.16, d.f. = 401,

p = 0.000). Moreover, a considerably higher proportion of the Korean ads did

not use any tangibilization strategies.

Variable/category USA (%) Korea (%) 2 d.f. p

Tangibilization strategy Overall 27.79 3 0.000)

Visualization 29.7 16.9 8.51 1 0.004

Association 12.9 7.5 2.66 1 0.103

Physical representation 21.3 22.4 0.022 1 0.883

Documentation 61.4 47.3 7.54 1 0.006

Table III. Comparison of tangibilization strategies between the USA and Korea

types of tangibilization strategies used in all services ads

USA Korea

Number of strategies used N (%) N (%)

None 23 11.4 63 31.3One 117 57.9 90 44.8

Two 50 24.8 45 22.4

Three 12 5.9 3 1.5

Four 0 0 0 0

Total 202 100.0 201 100.0

Average number of strategies used: 1.25 0.94 (t = 4.16, d.f. = 401, p = 0.000)

Table IV. Comparison of tangibilization strategies between the USA and Korea

number of tangibilization strategies used in individual ads

Use of tangibilization

strategies



13/18

Discussion

A number of interesting differences have been found in this comparative

study involving the USA and Korea. Consistent with our hypotheses, US

services ads used four out of five guidelines more frequently than the Korean

services ads. This suggests that US services advertisers, as a result of being

in a more developed service economy, may be more attuned to the unique

nature and requirements of services advertising. However, it is also possible

that aspects of Korean culture lead Korean advertisers to believe that the

guidelines are less applicable to them. The Korean services ads' relatively

frequent use of tangible cues may be due to a need for Korean servicesmarketers to literally demonstrate to their prospective customers something

about their service capacity or quality (e.g. new buildings or equipment, or

uniformed employees) in order for them to patronize the business. This

might be especially important in newly developing services industries in

Korea that are trying to attract new customers to the services industry in

general.

Interestingly, the level to which the various guidelines were adhered to

within each of the countries was quite variable. For instance, services

advertisers capitalized on word-of-mouth relatively infrequently (6.4 percent

for the USA and 2.5 percent for Korea), and addressing employees was

found to be infrequent for both countries (7.4 percent for the USA and

1.5 percent for Korea). While the latter finding may be compensated for by

internal company communications, the fact that word-of-mouth was

under-utilized may indicate that practitioners do not believe that most

services advertising needs to perform this function. Thus, it appears that

practitioners in both countries do not regard the first two of George and

Berry guidelines to be important in many contexts.

In contrast to word-of-mouth and addressing employees, much higher

frequencies were found for promising what is possible (95.5 percent for the

USA vs 87.6 percent for Korea) and for the advertising messages being

easily understood (98.5 percent for the USA vs 79.6 percent for Korea). It

appears that advertising practitioners in both of these two diverse countries

believe that promising what is possible and making the message easilyunderstood are important objectives for services advertising.

Making the service easily understood may involve different levels of

familiarity with services advertising. In this content analysis study,

understandability was measured in terms of understanding the category of

service (e.g. financial service or entertainment service), or different types of

the service offerings (e.g. availability of 401K, cash management, or

annuities). Whether this kind of information contributes to differentiation of

services is of much interest. An area for future research is whether improved

consumer understanding of ``what about the service,'' or ``how'' rather than

``what type of service'' would be a more effective differentiating advertising

message for services, which in turn may lead to meaningful consumer

understanding of what a service business has to offer. Some prior servicequality studies have addressed this issue, and there is a need to focus on

consumer understanding of services advertising as it develops (Day, 1992).

In terms of the use of tangibilization strategies, US services ads were,

overall, more likely to tangibilize their services than Korean counterparts.

The only strategy that the Korean services ads used slightly more often was

the physical representation strategy and this difference was not statistically

significant. The US services ads were more likely to attempt to help

consumers visualize the experiencing of the benefit of service, to link

Adherence to guidelines

Understandability



14/18

familiar extrinsic objects, symbols, or meanings to their service, and also to

provide facts and figures to support the scope or characteristics of their

service.

Managerial implications

The findings of this study suggest that US services advertisers make heavy

use of three of the five guidelines suggested by George and Berry. It is

apparent from this research that the vast majority of service businesses

believe it is important to promise what is possible and help the consumer

understand the service. Additionally, tangible cues are provided in more thanhalf of all US ads. These results suggest that services advertisers in the USA

typically hold a strong belief that good services advertising should provide

tangible cues, make the service easily understood, and describe what is

possible. While most Korean ads use these three guidelines too, Korean ads

are less prone to make the service easily understood or describe what is

possible. It is possible that this is a function of services advertising in many

service businesses being relatively new. Alternatively, it is possible that

some aspects of Korean culture make these strategies less viable. Further

research using an experimental methodology is needed, in order to assess the

impact of culture on advertising strategy in these two countries. Such studies

are important, as it has been suggested that cultural variables such as

contextual level of the culture, individualism versus collectivism anduncertainty avoidance, among others, affect Korean advertising (Taylor et

al., 1997).

The finding of a higher use of the Berry and Clark's tangibilization strategies

in the USA than in Korea suggests that some service businesses that compete

in Korea might want to consider making more effort to use such strategies,

and especially visualization and association strategies. Documentation was

found to be the most commonly used tangibilization strategy in both

countries. This is particularly interesting in that Stafford's (1996)

experimental study suggests that verbal cues can lead to higher effectiveness

while visual cues did not have the same impact. The high usage of

documentation strategies is consistent with the notion that managers'

conventional wisdom matches up with the findings of the Stafford study.

Nevertheless, more experimental studies like Stafford's (1996) are needed in

order to confirm this possibility.

Limitations

One limitation of the study is that it included only one medium, that is,

magazines. Additionally, only certain types of magazines were included due

to the differential media landscape of Korea and USA. Services ads from

women's magazines or more entertainment-oriented publications were not

included in the sample. Future research is needed to compare Korean and US

services advertising in other media. A second limitation is that two variables

used in the study (i.e. guidelines and tangibilization strategies) were derived

from conceptual studies, rather than empirical data. More studies are neededto improve operationalization of various variables important in

understanding the effectiveness of services advertising. This is not

unexpected, given that services advertising is a part of an evolving research

area (Fisk et al., 1993).

Conclusion

This comparative study found that services advertising showed some

differences between the USA and Korea. The study found that US services

Promise what is possible

Future research



15/18

advertisers used strategies conducive to generate more effective advertising

at a higher frequency than Korean services advertisers. More specifically, US

services ads were found to be more likely to address their own employees, to

make the communication more easily understood, and to advertise what is

possible. Additionally, the US services ads were more likely to use

visualization and documentation. A few similarities were found between the

countries. Some of the guidelines were under-utilized for both countries.

However, they were used more frequently in the USA than in Korea.

On the whole, the study seems to support that services marketers in a moreadvanced services economy are more sensitive to the unique nature of

services as opposed to products, and techniques to make services advertising

more effective than services marketers in a newly developing services

economy. However, caution must be taken in interpreting the results since

the impact of cultural variables cannot be isolated in content analysis studies

(Taylor et al., 1997). Future research that takes a longitudinal approach and

research examining other countries would be helpful in determining whether

this finding holds up across various different countries.

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Appendix. The codebook for services advertising

(1) #: Coder Id

(2) ###: Case Id #: (001-200)(3) #: Country: (1) USA (2) Korea

(4) #: Year: (1) 1997 (2) 1998

5-9 Five guidelines for more effective services advertising (George and Berry, 1981):

check for each guideline (presence/absence) if yes (1), if no (0).

Note: These categories are not mutually exclusive. Simply check whether each of these

guidelines has been followed by services advertisers.

(5) #: Advertising also to employees?: (1) Yes; (0) No

. Especially when the performance is people-based.

. To encourage, motivate, educate employees to perform.

. To positively impact employees.

. Setting a job performance standard for them to follow (as in a job requirement)?

. As a employee of this service firm, do I feel that the overall advertising message is

also communicating the management's expectations for me?

(6) #: Capitalizing on word-of-mouth?: (1) Yes; (0) No

. To persuade satisfied customers to spread the word.

. Customers with prior experiences speak from their personal experiences

(testimonials): if testimonials are used, write ``3''.

(7) #: Providing tangible* clues?: (1) Yes; (0) No

. Both visual and verbal.

. Tangible clues should be directly associated with the service.

. Well-known endorsers or symbols that have clear and distinctive image or meanings

for consumers.

. Use of photos showing facilities (e.g. buildings), personnel (e.g. with a friendly

smile) or numbers (e.g. history of the firm).

(8) #: Making the service more easily understood?: (1) Yes; (0) No

. Does the ad help the reader understand what the service is about?

. Tangible clues above are often used to make the service more easily understood.

(9) #: Advertising what is possible (possible in a sense that what they promise explicitly or

implicitly will be deliverable through the service provided)?: (1) Yes; (0) No

. Are they promising realistic expectations?

.

Can they provide the service as promised at a very high percentage of the time?. No fantasy, puffery, exaggeration.

. When making promises in services advertising, prudence and caution should rule.

(10) Tangibilization strategy (Berry and Clark, 1986) used?: check one strategy to tangibilize

benefits:

(0) No tangibilization strategy is used for this service advertisement.

(1) Yes.

11-14. Is this tangibilization strategy esed?: (0) No (1) Yes



18/18

(11) Visualization. By giving a vivid mental picture of a service's benefits or qualities to evoke

in the minds of prospective customers a sense of experiencing, or not experiencing, the

service itself (e.g. Carnival Cruise Lines and Carnival Tours):

. As if you were in the person's place, seeing a movie involving people or a situation,

or making the service very real to the potential consumer.

(12) Association. By linking a service to some extrinsic good, person, event, place, or object

which consumers can relatively easily evaluate (e.g. Quantas, the Australian national

airline, using a koala bear, or GM's Mr Goodwrench):

. These extrinsic objects have credentials or distinctive meanings for consumers so

that they can easily relate or recognize as such.

(13) Physical representation. By incorporating a part of physical evidence and artifacts of the

service itself (e.g. American Express gold card shown in an ad).

(14) Documentation. By using facts and figures to underscore the value or quality of the

service to document the scope, characteristics, performance record (e.g. graphs or charts),

or effects of the service with concrete information (e.g. certification by a recognizable or

reputable appropriate authorities, endorsements, or accreditation).

&


Documents

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