Race-Specific Advertising on Commercial Websites

Abstract

Avatars and anthropomorphic characters by marketers are becoming more commonplace on commercial web sites. Moreover, a trend among marketers is to use ethnically ambiguous models in advertising to appeal to specific consumer segments. This study helps our understanding of not only how best to segment and appeal to racially diverse consumers but how people interact with virtual human agents in relationship to the literature on audience response to real humans. It was predicted that Blacks would respond more positively to a Black agent, than they would to either a White agent or an ethnically ambiguous agent. It was also expected that Whites would show no difference in their response based on the race of the computer agent. The findings demonstrate that Blacks had more positive attitudes toward a computer agent, had more positive attitudes toward a web site and recalled more product information from a site when the site featured a Black agent vis-à-vis a White agent. Whites showed no significant response difference concerning the agent, the brand or the site based on the racial composition of the computer agents. Interestingly, the ethnically ambiguous character was overall just as effective in persuading both White and Black browsers as were the same-race agents.

The effect of animated Sci-Fi characters’ racial presentation on narrative engagement, wishful identification, and physical activity intention among children

“…Of the few studies investigating people’s perception of racial ambiguity, one found that racially ambiguous synthetic characters are as effective as racially matched ingroup characters in generating identification and positive consumer attitudes ( Appiah & Elias, 2011 ). Another found objectively measured positive responses from audiences toward racially ambiguous models relative to unambiguous ones ( Read, 2020 ).…”