Services Marketing Quarterly

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Differences in Advertising Strategies of Service

Marketers: A Content Analysis

Utkarsh, Harshit Maurya & Sanjay Medhavi

To cite this article: Utkarsh, Harshit Maurya & Sanjay Medhavi (2016) Differences in
Advertising Strategies of Service Marketers: A Content Analysis, Services Marketing Quarterly,
37:2, 109-124, DOI: 10.1080/15332969.2016.1154733

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15332969.2016.1154733

Published online: 12 Apr 2016.

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 SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY
, VOL. , NO. , –
http://dx.doi.org/./..

Differences in Advertising Strategies of Service Marketers:

A Content Analysis
Utkarsha , Harshit Mauryab , and Sanjay Medhavic
a
Fortune Institute of International Business, New Delhi, India; b Symbiosis Center for Management Studies,
Symbiosis International University, Noida, India; c Department of Business Administration, University of
Lucknow, Lucknow, India
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ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
A stream of research has investigated advertising strategies for Advertising strategy; appeal;
services, but to our knowledge no study has explicitly addressed credence; India; service
the differences in advertising strategies of service providers in advertising; service quality
Indian markets. Moreover, there is lack of research in the role
of service types—specifically, search, experience, and credence
(SEC)—in advertising of services. To address these issues, adver-
tisements of goods, noncredence, and credence services from
print magazines were analyzed using content analyses. The study
uncovers the differences in use of appeal, service quality cues, and
tangibilization strategies in service advertising.

Introduction
The intangible, variable, and perishable nature of services makes services market-
ing a challenging task for marketing professionals. George and Berry (1981) sug-
gested a set of guidelines for service marketers to tangibilize services, and Mittal
(1999) pointed out that the presence of SEC attributes lead to “nonsearchability,”
which is a characteristic of intangibility. An effective advertising strategy is required
to communicate intangible offerings like services. Appeals are an intrinsic part of
advertising strategies. Advertisers generally rely on emotional or rational appeals to
communicate the benefits of products and services. Research has shown that while
emotional appeals are preferred for goods, rational appeals are preferred for ser-
vices (Tripp, 1997); however, contradictory evidence exists. Another point of con-
cern is that available research fails to address the issue of service quality cues in
service advertisements, though service quality has been widely studied. Service
quality cues like those indicating reliability, responsiveness, empathy, assurance, and
tangibles communicate the quality of service through visual and verbal elements.
Few researchers have paid attention to the use of quality cues in service advertise-
ments. Beside quality cues, tangibilization emerges as an important facilitator when
it comes to judging a service. Berry and Clark (1986) suggested the use of four

CONTACT Utkarsh utkarshmay@gmail.com; utkarsh@fiib.edu.in Fortune Institute of International Business,

Plot no. , Rao Tula Ram Marg, Vasant Vihar, New Delhi , India.
©  Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
 110 UTKARSH ET AL.

tangibilization strategies: visualization, association, physical representation, and

documentation to tangibilize services.
Advertising strategies may also differ by service type, but this issue has often been
overlooked by researchers. In a bid to analyze variations in the advertising strategies
employed as per services types, the advertising strategies of business-to-business
and business-to-consumer services (Turley & Kelley, 1997; Clow, Roy, & Hershey,
2002), services directed at people versus service directed at things (Grove, Carlson,
& Dorsch, 2002), utilitarian and hedonic services (Albers-Miller & Stafford, 1999b;
Stafford & Day, 1995; Hill, Blodgett, Baer, & Wakefield, 2004), and service indus-
try type (Decaudin & Lacoste, 2010) have been examined. Researchers (Stafford,
1996; Ha, 1998; Choi, Rosen, & La, 2012) have attempted to investigate differences in
advertising strategies employed for SEC services. SEC classification of services was
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proposed by Zeithaml (1981). This classification is grounded in Nelson’s (1970) eco-

nomics of information theory, where he identified search and experience attributes
of products. Darby and Karni (1973) added credence attributes to the classification
based on the work of Nelson (1970, 1974). Researchers have defined search ser-
vices as those with attributes that consumers can evaluate prior to purchase. Expe-
rience services have attributes that consumers can assess only after purchase and
consumption; credence services have attributes that consumers cannot judge com-
prehensively even after purchase and consumption (Mitra, Reiss, & Capella, 1999;
Zeithaml, 1981). There is dearth of research in the field of advertising of SEC ser-
vices, although the importance of SEC classification in the context of services mar-
keting is widely accepted.
In addition to the gaps previously identified, a vital point to be noted is that
although advertising strategies for services have been extensively investigated, they
have been studied in the Western context (Albers-Miller & Stafford, 1999a; Bang &
Moon, 2002; Bang, Raymond, Taylor, & Moon, 2005; Choi et al. 2012; Mortimer,
2000; Stafford, 1996). Mainly Western countries and few Asian countries have been
covered in this context. Stafford (2005, p. 82) concluded, in her review of interna-
tional service advertising research, that “little is known about advertising services
in different countries”; the same concern was echoed by Mortimer (2000). Suc-
cinctly, the thematic and informational content of ads (Rajaratnam, Hunt, & Mad-
den, 1995), comparative ads (Kalro, Sivakumaran, & Marathe, 2010), and promo-
tional ads (Joseph & Bharadhwaj, 2011) has been studied in an Indian context, but
very little has been said about advertising strategies used by service providers in
Indian markets. The current study fills the previously identified gaps by exploring
the advertising strategies of service providers in India. The objectives of the study
are (a) to investigate the differences in appeal used in goods and service advertise-
ments; (b) to examine the use of service quality cues in service advertisements; (c)
to examine the use of tangibilization strategies in service advertisements; and (d)
to explore the differences in use of appeal, service quality cues, and tangibilization
strategies in advertisements of credence and noncredence services.
Broadly, this study aims to explore the differences in advertising strategies of ser-
vice marketers in India. In the existing literature, few studies have attempted to
 SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY 111

understand the differences in advertising strategies of SEC services. The present

study analyzes and will attempt to address the difference, and contribute to the
development of different advertising strategies accordingly for different services.
The findings will aid practitioners in formulating better advertising strategies.
The organization of the article is lead by a review of the research in the area of
service advertising focusing on advertising strategy, particularly the use of appeal,
service quality cues, and tangibilization strategies. This is followed by identification
of critical gaps in the literature. A delineation of the research methodology employed
follows this, and finally, the results are presented and managerial implications and
limitations of the study are discussed.
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Literature review

Appeal and service advertisements

Researchers have investigated whether a particular appeal should be chosen on the
basis of type of product advertised (Abernethy & Butler, 1993; Cutler & Javalgi,
1993). Stafford and Day (1995), after some detailed study and research, concluded
that service marketers are better served when they use rational appeals. As per Young
(1981), emotional appeals are more effective for service marketing. On the other
hand, no difference was found by Clow, Roy, and Hershey (2002) in the use of appeals
by advertisers of goods and services in business magazines.
Different appeals are used for advertising different products and services.
Zinkhan, Johnson, and Zinkhan (1992) were the first to differentiate between service
and product ads on the basis of appeal. Cutler and Javalgi (1993) found that emo-
tional appeals are used more widely in services than goods. Tripp (1997) found the
use of rational appeals more prominent in services marketing. Bang et al. (2005)
studied the use of appeals in service advertisements from the United States and
Korea. They found that in both countries, despite the cultural differences, rational
appeals were preferred over emotional appeals, while Mortimer and Grierson (2010)
found that emotional appeals were used more than rational appeals in services. In
another study, Mortimer (2008) suggested an increment in the use of emotional
appeals while designing marketing campaigns for both experiential and utilitarian
services, as customers are found to be more emotionally involved while buying ser-
vices as compared to when buying products. The point of contention is the suitability
of rational or emotional appeals for services marketing. The results are found to be
contradictory (Turley & Kelly, 1997). All said and done, there is no consensus on the
appropriate appeal that should be used in goods and service advertisements.

Service quality cues and service advertisements

Service quality serves as a guideline or framework to evaluate advertising and

communication strategy of service providers (Day, 1992), and quality claims
are an important ingredient of a service advertisement (Turley & Kelley, 1997;
 112 UTKARSH ET AL.

Choi et al., 2012). Parasuraman, Berry, and Zeithaml (1991) gave the concept of ser-
vice quality. There are five dimension of service quality: reliability, responsiveness,
assurance, empathy, and tangibles. Reliability is defined as the ability to perform
the promised service dependably and accurately. Responsiveness is the willingness
to help customers and provide prompt service. Assurance is defined as the knowl-
edge and courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire trust and confidence.
Empathy is the caring and individualized attention the firm provides its customers.
Tangibles are the physical facilities, equipment, and appearance of personnel. Clow,
Tripp, and Kenny (1996) found that all service quality cues had a significant nega-
tive effect on perceived risk. They also found that conveying assurance, reliability,
and tangible cues were most effective in increasing perceived expertise of service
provider in consumer’s mind. Advertisements that contained almost all the service
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quality cues were rated most effective by respondents.

Choi et al. (2012), in an experiment, found that service quality cues in ads have
a favorable impact on consumer buying behavior. In a content analysis study, Day
(1992) found tangible cues were the most commonly used quality cues in service
advertisements, followed by assurance cues. Responsiveness cues were least likely
to be used in these advertisements, followed by reliability cues. Bang et al. (2005)
analyzed around 200 magazine advertisements from the United States and Korea.
Though there were differences in service quality cue usage, they found significant
differences only for tangibles and empathy dimension. Korean ads included more
tangible cues than ads in the United States. Empathy cues were found more in ads
in the United States than Korean ads, quite contrary to the researcher’s hypothe-
sis. Another important finding of this study was that the least-used dimension was
responsiveness in advertisements pertaining to the United States, while empathy
was the least-used dimension in Korean advertisements. The most-used cue was
reliability in American ads, and tangibility was used more often in Korean ads.
The use of service quality cues has been linked to culture but there are few inves-
tigations that analyze content from different countries to explicate the relationship.
As a lot of earlier research has focused on Western countries, it would be important
and interesting to explore the use of quality cues in Indian context.

Tangibilization strategies and service advertisements

Guidelines to promote services have revolved around the concept of converting

intangible offerings to tangible (Berry & Clark, 1986; George & Berry, 1981; Hill
& Gandhi, 1992; Mittal, 1999). Berry and Clark (1986) offered a set of strategies for
tangibilizing a service: visualization, association, physical representation and docu-
mentation.
Visualization is painting a vivid picture (in the advertisement) of the benefits the
user of the service would get. A depiction of an individual or a group of individ-
uals using the service and enjoying the benefits can be termed visualization of the
service. Association is linking the service to an extrinsic person, event, or object.
For instance, a healthy and fit man with a smile on his face represents the service
 SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY 113

related to health care. Physical representation, as the word conveys, is portrayal of

physical elements of service that are used directly or indirectly to provide service.
Documentation refers to a depiction of statistics, facts, and comparisons that convey
the service quality, its scope, and dependability.
Researchers and practitioners of advertising services recommend tangibilization
strategies (Mortimer & Mathews, 1998), but these strategies should be evaluated in
terms of different types of services (Hill & Gandhi, 1992). Bang and Moon (2002)
investigated the use of tangibilization strategies suggested by Berry and Clark (1986)
in the context of service ads from the United States and Korea. They found docu-
mentation to be the most popular strategy and association to the least popular strat-
egy in both U.S. and Korean advertisements. Stafford (1996) also advocated use of
verbal cues (documentation) for effective advertisements. Hill et al. (2004) exam-
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ined the effect of visualization and documentation strategies on advertisement effec-

tiveness in utilitarian (banking) and hedonic services (travel package). Documen-
tation was found to be effective in hedonic services but not in utilitarian services,
as consumers are highly involved in hedonic services and tend to read and look for
more information before opting for the service. Visualization strategy was effective
in both hedonic and utilitarian services, as customers can mentally feel the service
benefits and quality. Bang et al. (2005) and Donthu and Yoo (1998) suggested that in
cultures high in uncertainty avoidance such as France, tangibilization is an effective
way to advertise.

Types of services and service advertisements

A recent study (Choi et al., 2012) dealing with consumer behavior for experi-
ence and credence services was conducted on the effects of portraits (tangibles)
and performance statements (assurance) in the yellow pages. Results showed the
enhanced effectiveness of assurance cues in the case of credence services. Stafford
and Day (1995) were the first to empirically investigate the effectiveness of advertis-
ing strategies on the basis of the type of service rendered. Investigating the interac-
tion of message appeal and medium in the case of experiential and utilitarian service
types, they found that rational ads generated more positive attitude in both types
of services. They concluded that product and appeal interaction does not exist in
services.
Besides studies examining appeal usage, Stafford (1996) investigated the effec-
tiveness of the use of two tangibilization strategies, namely physical representa-
tion (visual) and documentation (verbal) in experience and credence services. They
found verbal tangible cues to be more effective in both services, but these cues were
not able to influence patronage intention in credence services. They suggested that,
contrary to the popular belief of tangiblizing services though physical represen-
tation, verbally tangiblizing services (documentation) is a more effective strategy
in the print medium. Hill et al. (2004), in an experimental investigation, found
that a visualization strategy is effective in both hedonic and utilitarian services,
 114 UTKARSH ET AL.

while a documentation strategy is effective in hedonic services but not in utilitarian

services.
Albers-Miller and Stafford (1999b) investigated the usage of appeals in ads of
different service types across 11 culturally diverse nations using content analy-
sis. They found that overall, rational appeals were preferred for utilitarian ser-
vices and emotional appeals were preferred for experiential services. The find-
ings were true for nine countries, including India. They also noted that, despite
the similarity in appeal preference, each country has its “unique combination” of
both appeals and the number of appeals used varied across cultures, therefore
research exploring appeal usage in a target country is warranted. Very little has been
said when it comes to the factors governing advertising strategies other than the
appeal. In his study of tangibilization strategies in experience and credence services,
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Stafford (1996) found tangible cues to be the most effective. Mortimer and Grierson
(2010) also suggested investigating the use of different appeal in different service
types.
As evident from the review, only a few studies have investigated the differ-
ences in advertising strategies for different service types. For this purpose, a proper
classification into SEC services is important. Detailed research shows the amount
of knowledge available for consumers in search of credence services is the low-
est, while the amount of knowledge available for those looking for search ser-
vices is highest (Utkarsh & Medhavi, 2015). Mitra et al. (1999) found that a con-
sumer’s level of perceived risk in buying services is lowest for search and high-
est for credence services. In addition, a study by Sharma, Bharadhwaj, and Mar-
shall (2014) revealed that search services are more prone to impulse buying when
compared to experience and credence services. Stafford (1996) argued that expe-
rience services are more likely to be influenced by advertising. To determine the
effectiveness of verbal and visual cues in the case of experience and credence ser-
vices, Stafford (1996) conducted two experiments and ended up investigating two
tangibilization strategies. Likewise, Ha (1998) analyzed experience and credence
services using content analysis in U.S. and Korean ads, but the investigation was
limited to appeal usage. Stafford (1996) investigated verbal cues (documentation)
and visual cues (physical representation) in advertising experience and credence
service.
Researchers also found some strategies more apt for some specific ser-
vices. For instance, visualization is found to be more effective in case of
experience services where consumers could be given a mental image of the
benefits of the service through effective advertisement. Further studies are
required to understand the differences in advertising strategy for service clas-
sified according to SEC properties. Albers-Miller and Stafford (1999b) real-
ized the dearth in literature when it comes to investigating the use of appeals
in different service types. There is also a dearth of suitable research in the
use of proper advertising guidelines or framework used across different service
types.
 SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY 115

Methodology

Content analysis
Content analysis is used to arrive at an objective assessment of qualitative data, and
was used in this study to analyze the print advertisements. This is a popular tech-
nique used to analyze words, pictures, and symbols in an advertisement message.
For this purpose, advertisements from widely circulated Indian-English magazines,
India Today and The Week (MRUC, 2013) were analyzed to find the presence of
appeals, service quality cues, and tangibilization strategy. Both weekly magazines
are targeted at a general audience (Rajaratnam et al., 1995; Srivastava & Schoen-
bachler, 2000) and are highly circulated all over India (MRUC, 2013).
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English magazines were chosen because of the currency of English in a linguisti-

cally and culturally diversified country like India, and their reach to different regions
in India. Only two publications were considered because magazine readership is
quite low in India as compared to the Western countries. In addition, very little
variation was found to exist in the nature of advertisements appearing in other mag-
azines. Moreover, other publications are customized for a specific segment.

Sample and coding categories

To achieve the first objective of the study, to investigate the differences in appeal
used in goods and service ads, 105 ads of goods and 125 ads of services appearing
in year 2012 issues were analyzed for appeal usage. Unique instances were chosen
making sure there were no repetitions of ads in sample chosen for analysis. The
study ignored any special issues of the publications.
A method of coding was arrived at after some careful deliberation. The com-
plete advertisement was to be examined by the coders to fish out visual/verbal cues.
This way, it would be easier to choose one of the dominant visual/verbal cues under
appeal, quality, and tangibilization strategies. Advertisements of goods were coded
only for the appeal used, while service ads were coded for use of appeal, quality cues,
and tangibilization strategies. The appeal dimension was coded as either emotional
appeal or rational appeal based on Moriarity (1991), and as frequently done in pre-
vious studies (Bang et al., 2005; Cutler & Javalgi, 1993; Turley & Kelly, 1997). An ad
was classified as emotional if its dominant visual/verbal theme gave some clues of
being adventurous, fearful, humorous, romantic, sensuous, caring, guilty, or play-
ful. Likewise, an advertisement could fall under the heading of being rational if the
dominant visual/verbal themes pointed towards comfort, convenience, ease of use,
economy, health, profitability, quality, reliability, timesaving, efficient, environment
friendliness, or comparison.
Further, 125 service ads were explored for the presence of service quality
cues and tangibilization strategies. The definition of service quality was adopted
from Parasuraman, Zeithmal, and Berry (1988), and the quality dimensions of
reliability, responsiveness, empathy, assurance, and tangibles were recognized.
The coding definitions for service quality cues were adopted from Day (1992).
 116 UTKARSH ET AL.

Table . Intercoder reliability for variables.

Variables Reliability (κ)
Appeal (for goods and services) .

Service quality cues

Reliability .
Responsiveness .
Empathy .
Assurance .
Tangibles .
Tangibilization strategies
Visualization .
Association .
Physical representation .
Documentation .
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As suggested by Berry and Clark (1986), four dimensions were used for tan-
gibilization strategy. The coding definition was adopted from Berry and Clark
(1986), and the dimensions of tangibilization strategy was adopted from Bang and
Moon (2002).
The definition of each dimension of the components of the ad strategy along with
examples were presented to both coders in form of a code book, and they had to
record a 0/1 response for each category in the code sheet. The absence of a variable
was marked 0, and the presence of variable was marked 1. In case of a discrepancy,
two coders discussed the ads in which disagreements occurred to reach to a final
response. Interrater reliability was calculated using Cohen’s kappa for appeal in 95
ads of both goods and services that were analyzed by both coders. Interrater reliabil-
ity for quality cues and tangibilization strategies was calculated using 53 ads in the
case of services. The reliability subsample is in accordance with Neuendorf ’s (2002)
suggestion of using at least 50 samples to assess reliability. Table 1 denotes the reli-
ability coefficient for each variable. The kappa value for every variable is above .80,
which indicates high reliability and low chance agreements as suggested by several
researchers (Neuendorf, 2002; Popping, 1988)

Classification of services
To explore the difference between noncredence and credence services in the use
of appeal, service quality cues, and tangibilization strategies, service ads were ana-
lyzed and classified based on credence and noncredence attributes. The base of the
classification was the Zeithaml’s (1981) typology of services. The latter classified ser-
vices as SEC services. The analyzed ads were classified in SEC based on Ha (1998),
a study close to the objectives of current study. In addition, SEC framework stud-
ies, in which at least some empirical test was conducted to classify services (Mitra
et al., 1999; Sharma et al., 2014), were looked into to make sure the classification
done was accurate. Besides this, studies that explicitly classified the services used in
the study in one or the other SEC category (Heaney & Goldsmith, 1999; Mattila &
Wirtz, 2002; McColl-Kennedy & Fetter, 2001; Mortimer & Pressey, 2013; Stafford,
1996) were also used to classify services.
 SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY 117

Table . Services analyzed and classified in SEC categories.

No. of ads
Service industry Type Study analyzed

Airlines Experience Sharma et al. (); Mortimer and Pressey (; 

noncredence)
Banking Search Mitra et al. (); Sharma et al. (); Heaney and 
Goldsmith ()
Consulting Credence Mitra et al. () 
Courier Search Mitra et al. (); Sharma et al. () 
Education Experience Ha (); Sharma et al. () 
Financial service Credence Sharma et al. (); McColl-Kennedy, and Fetter (); 
Mortimer and Pressey ()
Health Credence Ha (); Mattila and Wirtz () 
diagnostics
Hospitals Credence Ha (); Mattila and Wirtz () 
Hotel Experience Stafford (); Ha (); Sharma et al. () 
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Logistics Experience Ha () 

Match making Search — 
Others Search — 
Retail Experience Ha () 
Software Credence — 
Tourism Experience McColl-Kennedy and Fetter (); Sharma et al. (); 
Mortimer and Pressey (; noncredence)

Table 2 gives an analysis of studies done to classify services with the number of
ads analyzed under each service type. To complete the analysis, 125 service ads were
classified into 82 noncredence and 43 credence services. The advertisements of non-
credence services were further divided into 22 ads of search services and 60 ads of
experience services. The content analysis led to data nominal in nature, and chi-
square analysis, cross tabulation, and frequency count were used as data analysis
tools. The next section presents results from the analysis.

Analysis
The first objective of the study was to investigate the differences in appeals used in
goods and service ads. As per Table 3, clearly, there is an association between the
appeals used in an advertisement and product type advertised (chi-square 6.421, p
< .05). The analysis of 105 goods ad and 125 service ads revealed the preference of
a rational appeal over emotional appeal when it comes to the services being adver-
tised. An analysis of the percentage of the product type advertised and the appeal
used in the advertisement indicated the use of an emotional appeal in the case of
46.7% of the ads dealing with goods, while the rest used a rational appeal. When it

Table . Differences in appeal used by product type.

Appeal used
Product type Emotional Rational Total No.

Goods .% .% 

Service .% .% 
Total   

Note. Chi-square = .; p = ..

 118 UTKARSH ET AL.

Table . Percentage of service ads using a particular service quality cue.

Service quality cue used % of adsa

Reliability .
Responsiveness .
Empathy .
Assurance .
Tangibles .
No quality cue .

Note. Average . cues per ad.

a n = .

comes to services, only 30.4% of the ads used emotional appeals while 69.6% used a
rational appeal. This is a clear indication of the preference of rational appeals when
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it comes to services.
To explore the use of service quality cues and tangibilization strategies in service
ads, 125 service ads were analyzed. Table 4 mentions the percentage of ads in which
one or more of the service quality cues were present. An ad was coded for each cue’s
presence or absence in the copy. The results indicate that the most frequently used
quality cue is assurance, found in 51.2% of ads, followed by reliability, which was
found in 43.2% of ads. The least-used cue was responsiveness (9.6%) followed by
empathy (14.4%). Surprisingly, there was not even one service quality cue in 15.2%
of ads.
Table 5 gives the results of the issue dealt with by tangibilization strategy. Docu-
mentation was the most frequently used strategy, found in 66.4% of ads, and asso-
ciation was the least used, found in only 16% of ads. Physical representation and
visualization were used almost equally in 33.6% and 32.8% of ads, respectively. In
only 7.2% of ads there was no strategy for tangiblizing service. On an average, 1.5
cues and strategies were used for ads, excluding ads that did not have a single quality
cue and strategy.
The fourth objective of the study was to explore the difference between noncre-
dence and credence services in terms of use of appeal, service quality cues, and tan-
gibilization strategies. There has been a serious dearth in the amount of research
undertaken in this area, and consequently a specific hypothesis was not offered at
any point of time. Differences in the use of advertising strategies as per the variation
between credence and noncredence services were assumed to exist. The results were
compared with the results of previous investigations.

Table . Percentage of service ads using a particular tangibilization strategy.

Tangibilization strategy used % of adsa

Visualization .
Association 
Physical representation .
Documentation .
No strategy used .

Note. Average . strategies per ad.

a n = .
 SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY 119

Table . Differences in advertising strategy usage between noncredence and credence services.
% of ads

Variables Noncredence servicesa Credence servicesb Chi-square significance p

Appeal used . .

Emotional . .
Rational . .
Service quality cue
Reliability . . . .∗∗
Responsiveness . . . .
Empathy . . . .∗
Assurance . . . .∗∗
Tangibles . . . .
No quality cue .  . .∗∗
Tangibilization strategy
Visualization . . . .
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Association . . . .∗

Physical representation . . . .∗
Documentation . . . .
No strategy used . . (small cell)
a n = . b n = , ∗ p < .. ∗∗ p < ..

As is obvious from Table 6, no significant difference exists between credence

and noncredence services when it comes to the use of appeals. Both credence and
noncredence services ads use rational appeals over emotional appeals. However, a
comparison of percentages reveals the preference of emotional appeals in noncre-
dence services, as rational appeals are preferred when it comes to credence services,
although the differences are not significant.
Differences were found to exist in terms of service quality cues. There were signif-
icant differences in the use of cues like reliability, empathy, and assurance, while the
difference was not found to be of any significance in terms of use of responsiveness
and tangible cues.
Reliability cues were used more in case of credence services (53.5%) in compar-
ison to noncredence services (37.8%), significant at p < .10. Empathy and assur-
ance cues were also used more in case of credence services. Empathy was used in
27.9% of credence services and in 7.3% of noncredence services, significant at p <
.05. Assurance cue was used in 62.8% of credence services, which is higher than in
noncredence services ads (45.1%), significant at p < .10. Tangible cues were found
in 37.8% of noncredence services as compared to 23.85% in credence service, but
the difference was not significant. Different tangibilization strategies were used for
advertisements of credence and noncredence services. Association was more com-
monly used in credence services (27.9%) than noncredence services (9.8%), differ-
ence significant at p < .05, whereas physical representation was used more in non-
credence services (40.2%) as compared to credence services (20.9%), difference sig-
nificant at p < .05. There was no significant difference in usage of visualization and
documentation strategies. Overall, documentation strategy was the most popularly
used among all strategies, and was used extensively in both noncredence (62.2%)
and credence service ads (74.4%)
 120 UTKARSH ET AL.

Discussion
With an aim to analyze the advertising strategies of service advertisers in India, the
use of appeal, service quality cues, and tangibilization strategies in service advertise-
ments in print magazines were investigated. Conclusions arrived at from the find-
ings of this study and earlier instances of research (Bang et al., 2005; Choi et al., 2012;
Zinkhan et al., 1992) merit discussion. The first objective was to investigate use of
appeal in good and service advertisements. Rational appeals are certainly preferred
over the use of emotional appeals in ads of services. There exists a high amount of
risk in service offerings (Ha, 1998), and since rational appeals reduce perceived risk
they are considered more effective in case of service advertisements. This could also
be because highly educated and intellectually bright readers refer to ads in print
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magazines and other print media. These ads contain a lot of information, and so
the concept of rationality collates from them (Bang et al., 2005). The popularity of
rational appeals in service marketing cuts across cultural boundaries, as Bang et
al. (2005) found in the popularity of rational versus emotional appeals in both the
United States and Korea. Similar conclusions are drawn from the present study in
the Indian context.
The second objective of the study was to explore the use of service quality cues in
service ads. Of all the service quality cues used in service ads the most popular in the
Indian context was assurance, followed by reliability—similar to findings of Bang et
al. (2005). Responsiveness was found to be used the least in Indian ads consistent
with previous research in a Western context (Bang et al., 2005; Day, 1992). Further,
empathy is one of the least-used dimensions in advertisements in American, Korean,
and Indian contexts. Tangible cues were used most often in Korean ads, followed by
U.S. and Indian ads. Tangible cues would be used more often in cultures that are
high in uncertainty avoidance (Dhonthu & Yoo, 1998). The notion is confirmed by
the study done by Bang et al. (2005), and the present study also points in the same
direction.
The third objective of this study was to explore the use of tangibilization strate-
gies in service ads. In tangibilization strategy, documentation was most preferred
strategy to tangiblize services while association was the least used strategy. This is
true regardless of the cultural differences in countries. Documentation and tangi-
bility were found to be equally present in both U.S. and Korean service ads (Bang &
Moon, 2002).
The fourth objective of this study was to investigate differences in advertising
strategies between noncredence and credence services. There is a marked difference
in the use of service quality cues, particularly reliability, empathy, and assurance.
The results of this study indicate that use of reliability, empathy, and assurance was
significantly higher in credence services, while the usage of tangible cues was not
significantly different between two service types. This shows a preference of some
quality dimensions over other dimensions for a particular service type. Contempo-
rary research points in the same direction. Choi et al. (2012) found assurance cues to
be more effective in credence services while tangible cues were effective across both
 SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY 121

experience and credence services. Another important fact that emerged was that
there was a greater instance of noncredence services being advertised without using
any service quality cues. Mortimer and Mathews (1998) found that when designing
a message strategy, practitioners consider the classification of services. For services
high in search (noncredence) attributes, tangibilization is the most often used strat-
egy for advertisement. On the other hand, services low in search attributes (cre-
dence) employ many verbal cues. Different service types use different tangibiliza-
tion strategies. The use of association and physical representation was significantly
different between noncredence and credence services. In credence services, associ-
ation was used more frequently and in noncredence services and the use of physi-
cal representation was high. Visualization was used more in noncredence services,
but the differences in both visualization and documentation strategies did not reach
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statistical significance. Visualization was found to be the more popular in case of

noncredence services. In this context, Stafford (1996) stated that visualization may
work better with experience service as it can highlight service benefits and quali-
ties. A visual picture of a person using a service relating to the expectations of the
consumer from an experience service will fetch better results. Documentation is the
most commonly used tangibilization strategy in both credence and noncredence
services. Stafford (1996) also pointed to the effectiveness of documentation in tan-
giblizing a service when compared to visual strategies, like physical representation,
in both experience and credence services. Mittal (1999) also proposed that services
high on intangibility should be advertised using consumption documentation and
system documentation.

Conclusion
This study confirms that rational appeals are preferred over emotional appeals in
advertisements of services appearing in the print medium. The second interesting
point the study makes is that assurance is certainly the service quality cue used most
often in service advertising, also supported by previous findings. Thirdly, the study
brings out the importance of documentation in service advertising. Documentation
emerges as the most popular technique for tangibilization in both noncredence
and credence services. The print medium serves as a good way to convey the scope
of the service and all the relevant information. The fourth important point that
emerges from the study is a difference in the use of the service quality cues empathy,
association, and physical representation. Advertisements of credence services have
a higher instance of empathy cues as compared to noncredence services. In the
case of credence services, association is the most preferred tangibilization strategy,
while physical representation is the most popular in case of advertisements of
noncredence services.
To conclude, the present study makes three significant contributions to the
literature available on service marketing. First, the study is a first attempt to inves-
tigate the advertising strategy of service marketers in India, an emerging economy.
Therefore, it will improve our understanding of service marketing strategies in
 122 UTKARSH ET AL.

India. Second, this study will also help future researchers in the area to understand
the role of culture in advertising. Parallels can always be drawn in the context of
other Asian and Western countries. Third, this study reveals significant differences
in advertising strategies of credence and noncredence services. The study will
aid practitioners in designing messages by providing them a point of reference in
current practices. Future research can also attempt to investigate the effectiveness
of advertising strategies in services using experimental methods.

Limitations and future research

Like any work, our research also has limitations. To begin with, its findings and
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results cannot be generalized to the complete Indian market. As a multilingual coun-

try, India has a huge number of regional languages and several publications in these
languages. Analyzing ads of magazines in regional languages was beyond the scope
of the study.
Secondly, the sample size used in the study is low as compared to other content
analysis studies in the area. This could be explained by the fact that magazine read-
ership is quite low in India as compared to Western countries. Moreover, the ads
under question become quite repetitive after a number of advertisements were ana-
lyzed. This way, the small sample size could be said to be sufficient for an exploratory
investigation in the Indian scenario. Future research in this area could address these
shortcomings.

Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Mr. Faisal Zafar for his assistance in the proof reading of article.

Funding
The research was supported by funding provided to the first author by University Grants Com-
mission India, under the Junior Research Fellowship scheme during his tenure as PhD Candidate
at Department of Business Administration, University of Lucknow, India, where the major por-
tion of this research was done.

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