Service and Service Brands

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Frame of Reference

In this chapter, the academic literature that serves as a foundation to this research is presented. The literature covers relevant topics in relation to the purpose of this study. The chapter is concluded with the proposed research framework of advertising brand avoidance.

Edvardsson, Gustavsson and Roos (2005) suggested that “we may conclude that there are two approaches within service research: service as a category of market offerings and service as a perspective on value creation.” (p. 118). Accordingly, with literature, it is proposed that a service can be viewed from the two perspectives of a Service Logic Approach (SL) and Service Dominant Logic (SDL) (Vargo & Lusch, 2004; Grönroos & Gummerus, 2014).
From the SL perspective, value creation is driven by the customer and a “service is the use of resources in a way that supports customers’ everyday practices – physical, mental, virtual, possessive – and thereby facilitate their value creation” (Grönroos & Gummerus, 2014, p. 208). The value can be explained by the extent of how a customer feels in relation to the brand, i.e. better (positive value) or worse (negative value), thus accumulating over time through experiences (Grönroos & Voima, 2013). Contrary to traditional concept of brands being product-centric, the nature of service brands, i.e. the intangibility, uniqueness and co-production, portrays a challenge for brands in the current service-dominant economy (Klaus & Maklan, 2007).
Since the 1980’s and forward, Service Dominant Logic (SDL) has emerged, where intangible resources are vital, and the process can be viewed as both social and economic (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). The SDL is demonstrated by co-creation and value co-creation, as the service provider drives value creation (Grönroos & Gummerus, 2014). It customizes offerings by using customers as co-producers, in order to meet the customer’s needs and removes the focus on the movement of goods taken to the market, while instead including the customer in the process (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). From the SDL perspective, the service brand itself is an important intangible asset, as it has the ability to establish relationships (Brodie, Glynn & Little, 2006). Vargo and Lusch (2008) argued that “enterprises can offer their applied resources for value creation and collaboratively (interactively) create value following acceptance of value propositions but cannot create and/or deliver value independently” (p. 7), which emphasizes the importance of a relationship with customers.
The distinct difference between product and service brands in these perspectives is visible in the implementation of the branding strategy (Chernatony & Segal-Horn, 2003; Dall’olmo Riley

De Chernatony, 2000). Fundamentally, both perspectives share the acknowledgement of the importance of services and the interaction between service provides and customers (Grönroos
Gummerus, 2014). Alongside with the SDL and SL perspective, an altered definition of a service brand has been applied for the purpose of this study. Here, a service brand is defined as the functional and emotional values derived from a service and delivered by the service provider, thus creating value from co-creation (Brodie et al., 2006; Dall’olmo Riley & De Chernatony, 2000).

Advertising

Advertising involves the promotion of products, organizations and/or services, and aims to raise the interest in what is being advertised (Hallahan, 2013). Richards and Curran (2002) defined it as “a paid nonpersonal communication from an identified sponsor, using mass media to persuade or influence an audience.” (p.64). More recently, Dahlen and Rosengren (2016) defined advertising as “brand-initiated communication intent on impacting people” (p. 359). For this study, these two definitions have been merged into “a paid nonpersonal brand-initiated communication with an intent on impacting people”. Advertisements often contain non-advertising discourses (Cook, 2001), e.g. narrative styles, aesthetics and drawing on imagery (Hackley, 2012). There are different formats to consider, including web-, mobile-, print- and broadcast advertising (Hallahan, 2013).
Consumers usage of media and purchasing behavior has changed, due to rapid development of Information Technology (IT) (Cho, 2016). These developments have led to a shift, as digital video advertising is under continuous growth (Li & Lo, 2015). Hussain and Lasage (2013) argued that there are two types of online video advertisements (OVA); linear and interactive video advertisements. Linear video advertisements are commonly inserted in the start, middle or end of a video, typically, they cannot be fast forwarded (Hussain & Lasage, 2013). Even though traditional linear television advertising and OVA contain similar aspects and sensory systems, they differ in effectiveness because they are present in different media environments (Li & Lo, 2015).
As in-stream advertising interrupts consumers, characteristics such as frequency, duration and complexity can affect an individual’s response (Kirmeyer, 1988). Chih-Chung, Chang, Lin and Yau-Nang (2012) argued that there is a fine line between frequency which improves consumer knowledge and too many broadcasts which might instead disgust the consumer. De Pelsmacker and Bergh (1999) argue that irritation in advertising can arise from the factors of the media, content, repetition, and consumer characteristics, and they argue that the frequency and what the advertising says matters. The behavior followed by seeing advertising plays a central role, as “negative affective reactions evoked by advertising stimuli easily transfer to the attitude towards the advertisement and the brand” (Dens, De Pelsmacker, Janssens, 2008, p. 251). If advertisements are seen to be too informative it can lead to irritation (Greyser, 1973). There are product categories that lead to more irritation than others, e.g. toothpaste and female hygiene products (Aaker & Bruzzone 1985; Greyser 1973; Biel & Bridgwater, 1990). If consumers find advertisements to be misleading or false, there is a perceived deception, which arguably has more negative effects if consumers expect the consequence of the deception to be serious and negatively affects how consumers evaluate the brand behind the advertisement (Xie, Madrigal & Boush, 2014).

Casino Advertising

Through internet advertising, online casinos have multiple ways to strategically target, retain and attract customers (Hing, Cherney, Blaszczynski, Gainsbury & Lubman, 2014). McMullan and Kervin (2012) asserted that the most common messages in gambling advertisements concentrated either on gambling as a path to a winning way of life or virtual socialization. Advertising of online casinos might increase the consumptions levels through the retention of problem gamblers (Binde, 2009; Derevensky, Sklar, Gupta & Messerlian, 2010). There has been little research on the effects that gambling advertising has on behavior and attitudes (Clemens, Hanewinkel & Morgenstern, 2016). It is suggested that gambling advertisements rarely attract new users, instead increases the amount of gambling that existing gamblers conduct, further, problem gamblers are more negatively influenced by gambling-related advertising than others (Hing et al., 2014; Binde & Romild, 2018).
Gambling advertising impacts the behavior of adolescents, as the content and features can be misleading with little reference to actual odds winning, and show appeal to children with animals, animated characters, humor, glamour and youth-oriented music (Monaghan, Derevensky & Sklar, 2008; Deverensky et al., 2010). Adolescents perceive the message of gambling advertisements to promote gambling as being entertaining and exciting, portraying that it is easy to achieve success, happiness and wealth through gambling. Deverensky et al. (2010) found that individuals express dislike for gambling advertising because of its frequent prevalence.

Casino Advertising in Sweden

By Swedish law, it is illegal to promote gambling that is offered by companies who do not have a Swedish licence, however, this law has been ineffective, as it has no influence over broadcasts from abroad (Binde & Romild, 2018). Håkansson and Widinghoff (2019) recorded Swedish gambling advertisements on television, to analyze the frequency, extent and content of them. They identified 16 components present in advertisements that promote online casinos in Sweden (See Table 1). They found that out of all types of gambling-related advertising, online casino advertising was most frequent (Håkansson & Widinghoff, 2019).

1. Introduction
1.1. Background
1.2. Problem
1.3. Purpose and Research Question
1.4. Key Terms
2. Frame of Reference
2.1. Service and Service Brands
2.2. Advertising
2.3. Generation Y and Online Casinos
2.4. Anti-Consumption
2.5. Service Brand Avoidance
2.6. The Proposed Research Framework
3. Method
3.1. Research Philosophy
3.2. Research Approach
3.3. Research Design
3.4. Qualitative research
3.5. Time Horizon
3.6. Sampling
3.7. Data Collection
3.8. Data Analysis
3.9. Trustworthiness
4. Empirical Findings
4.1. General Knowledge and Impression of Industry
4.2. Advertising Avoidance and Online Casinos
4.3. Summary of Findings
5. Analysis
5.1. Advertising Avoidance and Online Casinos
5.2. Revised Research Framework
6. Conclusion
6.1. Purpose of The Research
6.2. Implications
6.3. Limitations
6.4. Suggestions for Future Research
7. List of References
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