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Does it really hurt? Consumer reactions to content sponsorships in daily newspapers

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Abstract

Daily print newspapers have been facing dramatic decreases in advertising revenues and therefore require alternative sources for additional funding such as editorial content sponsorships. However, sponsorships of daily newspapers’ major editorial content sections have not been implemented yet because editors primarily suspect negative effects on the perceived journalistic quality of the newspaper’s reporting. Thus, editors seem to be in a dilemma since the realization of additional sponsorship funding might come at the cost of negative consumer reactions. Against this background, this study for the first time analyses consumer reactions to sponsorships of major editorial content sections in daily print newspapers. The results of three experimental studies show that editorial content sponsorships deteriorate consumers’ attitudes toward the newspaper by decreasing the perceived journalistic quality of the newspapers’ reporting. However, we identify relevant boundary conditions under which these negative effects disappear. Specifically, sponsorships of low thematic congruence between the sponsor’s business activity and the editorial content which are placed in editorial content sections with low societal relevance (i.e., sections which provide editorial content of low relevance for societal and political decision making) seem to be a promising configuration from a newspaper’s as well as a sponsor’s perspective.

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Notes

  1. The top nine, most-sold newspapers in the German newspaper market include BILD-Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Financial Times Deutschland, taz-Tageszeitung, Die Welt, Handelsblatt, Frankfurter Rundschau, and Neues Deutschland (BDZV 2011). The qualitative analysis in January 2012 includes ten editorial content sections: politics, economics, finance, sports, science, culture, feuilleton, local news, weather, and TV-program. Overall, we identified three specific sponsorships: Emirates sponsoring the weather-section of Financial Times Deutschland, Lufthansa sponsoring the weather-section of Die Welt, and TV-Digital sponsoring the TV-program section of BILD-Zeitung.

  2. All post hoc-tests are tested considering Bonferroni-correction for multiple significance tests.

  3. As expected, the mediation analysis regarding the comparison of the control group with the low thematic congruence sponsorship neither reveals a significant impact of the editorial content sponsorship on the perceived journalistic quality of the newspaper’s reporting (βa = −0.29, p = 0.11) nor on consumers’ attitudes toward the newspaper (βc = −0.21, p = 0.31). However, the analysis again reveals a significant positive impact of the perceived journalistic quality of newspapers’ reporting on consumers’ attitudes toward the newspaper (βb = 0.58, p = 0.00).

  4. Although there exists no sponsor–sponsee connection in consumers’ minds in the control conditions (as the newspaper is not mentioned in these conditions), we included control conditions as a baseline for quantifying the effects of the sponsorships on consumers’ purchase intentions regarding the telephone directory (i.e., a potential low thematically congruent sponsor for the real estate section) and the saving and loans association (i.e., a potential highly thematically congruent sponsor for the real estate section).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Hamburg, Von-Melle-Park 5, 20146, Hamburg, Germany

    Christian-Mathias Wellbrock

  2. Department of Environmental and Business Economics, University of Southern Denmark, Niels Bohrs Vej 9, 6700, Esbjerg, Denmark

    Oliver Schnittka

Authors
  1. Christian-Mathias Wellbrock
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  2. Oliver Schnittka
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Correspondence to Christian-Mathias Wellbrock.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Experimental manipulation (study 1)

Appendix 2: Experimental manipulation (study 2)

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Wellbrock, CM., Schnittka, O. Does it really hurt? Consumer reactions to content sponsorships in daily newspapers. J Bus Econ 85, 107–128 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11573-014-0705-9

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