Does congruency matter for online green demarketing campaigns? Examining the effects of retargeting display ads embedded in different browsing contexts

Hye Jin Yoon, Yoon-Joo Lee, Shuoya Sun (PhD alum), and Jinho Joo (forthcoming), “Does congruency matter for online green demarketing campaigns? Examining the effects of retargeting display ads embedded in different browsing contexts,” Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing

Abstract: Green demarketing, which promotes anti-consumption as a more extreme sustainability tactic, could help consumers and societies move toward healthier consumption patterns while building strong, long-lasting relationships with consumers. This research proposes that the media context (i.e., news or shopping browsing context) in which the retargeting ad is embedded could determine how much congruency of the demarketing campaign across owned and paid media matters. An experiment with a 2 (homepage content: green vs. demarketing) x 2 (retargeting ad content: product vs. demarketing) x 2 (browsing context: shopping vs. news) between-subjects factorial design was employed with an online panel of 430 participants. In a news browsing context, users perceived higher congruency when product retargeting ads (vs. demarketing) were shown after a green homepage exposure and when demarketing retargeting ads (vs. products) were delivered after a demarketing homepage. The elevated perceived congruency successfully led to higher ad argument and ad attitude. These differences were not present in a shopping browsing context. These results showed that the congruency between the homepage and the retargeting ad for demarketing campaigns mattered more in certain media contexts (i.e., news browsing context).