文档介绍：WHAT’S ADVERTISING CONTENT WORTH? EVIDENCE
FROM A CONSUMER CREDIT MARKETING
FIELD EXPERIMENT∗
MARIANNE BERTRAND
DEAN KARLAN
SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN
ELDAR SHAFIR
JONATHAN ZINMAN
Firms spend billions of dollars developing advertising content, yet there is
little field evidence on how much or how it affects demand. We analyze a direct
mail field experiment in South Africa implemented by a consumer lender that
randomized advertising content, loan price, and loan offer deadlines simultane-
ously. We find that advertising content significantly affects demand. Although it
was difficult to predict ex ante which specific advertising features would matter
most in this context, the features that do matter have large effects. Showing fewer
example loans, not suggesting a particular use for the loan, or including a photo
of an attractive woman increases loan demand by about as much as a 25% re-
duction in the interest rate. The evidence also suggests that advertising content
persuades by appealing “peripherally” to intuition rather than reason. Although
the advertising content effects point to an important role for persuasion and re-
lated psychology, our deadline results do not support the psychological prediction
that shorter deadlines may help e time-management problems; instead,
demand strongly increases with longer deadlines.
I. INTRODUCTION
Firms spend billions of dollars each year on advertising
consumer products to influence demand. Economic theories em-
phasize the informational content of advertising: Stigler (1987,
p. 243), for example, writes that “advertising may be defined as
the provision of information about the availability and quality
of modity.” But advertisers also spend resources trying to
∗Previous title: “What’s Psychology Worth? A Field Experiment in the Con-
sumer Credit Market.” Thanks to a Lowry, Karen Lyons, and Thomas Wang
for providing superb research assistance. Also, thanks to many seminar partici-
pants and refere