The Seal of Approval. Introducing the Third-Party Seal Model.

Abstract

The use of third-party seals within marketing and advertising materials is a long-standing industry practice used by marketers worldwide. And while the effectiveness of seals as a marketing and advertising tactic has been widely studied, to date, no single model has been developed to predict the impact of seals on consumer purchase intent. To uncover what impact seals really have, two online surveys were conducted to understand how aware of seals consumers are, how credible they perceive them to be, and what impact they have on purchase intent. The results of these surveys reveal that the success of a seal is dependent of the consumers knowledge of the brand being marketed, their awareness of the third-party seal being applied in marketing material, and the seals ability to convey information important to the consumer in differentiating offerings. These results have also been applied to the Third-Party Seal Model, a three-step process which allows marketers to select third-party seals to use in brand communications.

Keywords

• Third-party seals
• third-party endorsement
• marketing tactics