Quality certificates alleviate consumer aversion to sponsored search advertising

Xiang Hui, Meng Liu

We study consumer response towards sponsored search advertising and how to improve advertising performance on a large e-commerce platform. Our research design is based on a field experiment which randomizes the salience of ad disclosure to consumers, and a natural experiment which eradicates a listing-level quality certificate for all listings because of a system glitch. Results suggest that consumers dislike search advertising in our setting, but quality certificates mitigate this aversion and increase advertising sales.

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Year of publication:	August 2022
Authors:	Hui, Xiang ; Liu, Meng
Publisher:	Munich, Germany : CESifo, Center for Economic Studies & Ifo Institute
Subject:	sponsored search advertising \| quality certificates \| e-commerce \| Online-Marketing \| Internet marketing \| Suchmaschine \| Search engine \| Konsumentenverhalten \| Consumer behaviour \| Electronic Commerce \| E-commerce \| Produktqualität \| Product quality \| Werbewirkung \| Advertising effects \| Werbung \| Advertising \| Standardisierung \| Standardization \| Warenkennzeichnung \| Product labelling \| Online-Handel \| Online retailing \| Qualitätsmanagement \| Quality management