A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF INTRUSIVENESS AND FLUENCY EFFECTS OF WEB ADS

Advertising online has increasingly become an important marketing strategy. Along with the rising ad dollars invested on the web, marketers have also devised more powerful ad delivery tactics to garner online consumers’ attention. These powerful online advertising tactics may result in intrusiveness perceptions and processing fluency effects. As Westerners tend to focus on the focal object whereas East Asians tend to pay attention to the focal object and contextual background simultaneously when processing a visual scene, East Asians’ and Westerners’ culturally divergent visual processing styles would lead them to develop varying intrusiveness perceptions and experience differential processing fluency when exposed to web ads. Specifically, we propose that when a web ad’s visibility increases, Westerners will perceive it to be more intrusive than East Asians and East Asians will be more likely to experience perceptual and conceptual fluency to choose a product that is perceptually related to the web ad than Westerners. Designs of the experiment testing the propositions are discussed

Is digital advertising effective under conditions of low attention? : the impact of low attention processing on consumer brand consideration and choice : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Marketing at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

A crucial task for digital advertising is to influence choice despite consumers' lack of attention. Although lack of attention can reduce advertising effectiveness, recent research suggests that incidental exposure to ads while accessing digital content can lead to some outcome for the exposed ads. This evidence prompts four critical questions: (1) is digital advertising effective if processed at low attention; (2) can low attention processing increase brand consideration and choice; (3) what specific brand/product characteristics embedded in the ads are likely to influence the effect; and (4) what measures are appropriate to capture the low attention effects. To address the questions, three experimental studies (n = 1,423) were conducted in laboratory and online settings. The research manipulates two conditions for low attention processing, namely divided attention and incidental attention. The results show that, at least in the Twitter environment, advertising is effective even under conditions of low attention. Although focused attention still drives the greatest impact, low attention significantly increases the likelihood of target brands being included in the brand consideration and selected as preferred brand choice more than ‘no exposure’. The low attention effects were obtained without subsequent correct respondent recognition. This shows that brand consideration and choice measures were capable of capturing the low attention effects that the recognition measure failed to do. However, the results for source factors – factors that can moderate the effect of stimuli on the outcome – are more nuanced. Brand familiarity, utilitarian/hedonic products, rational/emotional appeals, and (mis)matching between appeals and brands affect the results in some unexpected ways when they interact with low attention. The thesis makes substantive contributions to the application of attention theory in advertising research, testing methodology for ads that are not actively processed, and design of advertising that can work at low attention. The findings are particularly relevant to address current phenomena such as multitasking, multiscreening, and ad avoidance behaviour. Unless advertisers understand how to make advertising work at low attention, the practice of bombarding consumers with attention-grabbing ads will continue to rise, and ad avoidance will accelerate, which in turn, will put advertising at a greater risk of being wasted

Baby Boomers’ Attitudes Towards Product Placements

Including branded products within mass media programming is becoming common. Previous research has focused almost entirely on college-age students\u27 attitudes about placements in movies and television. This research focuses on Baby Boomers and is the first to include questions about multiple media in forming attitudes towards product placements. Six hypotheses were tested. Attitude toward product placement is related to media consumption. Males appear more positive than females. Interactions effects of media consumption x gender and media consumption x age appear insignificant. Analytical results, graphs, tables and managerial implications and representative comments from respondents are presented

Implicit Memory and Online Advertisement Priming

Implicit Memory research has been investigating the attentional requirements needed for something to be encoded and accessible through implicit memory. So far, previous research has produced mixed results on attentional requirements for perceptual implicit memory, some studies citing evidence for the need of attention, others citing the opposite. As well, research has been consistent in producing results showing that conceptual implicit memory has higher attentional demands than that of its perceptual counterpart. Adopting Transfer-Appropriate Processing framework, the current paper investigates attention requirements for both a perceptual task (picture identification) and a conceptual task (category exemplar generation). Participants examine webpages with advertisements embedded in both an ad-engaged and webpage-engaged condition manipulation. Study 1 had participants perform speeded picture identification, whereas Study 2 had them perform a category exemplar generation task. Results were consistent with TAP framework and showed that, when not accounting for explicit contamination, the perceptual task did not significantly differ between conditional manipulations, whereas the conceptual task produced results highlighting the need for attention and deeper levels of encoding for conceptual implicit memory to be activated

An Examination Of Adult Age Differences In Implicit And Explicit Memory For Prescription Drug Advertisements

Prescription drug advertisements are commonly seen in magazines and on television, and as a result, the public is familiar with them. Many drug ads are targeted toward older adults, who tend to use more medications, because they suffer from more chronic conditions than younger adults. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of drug advertising at persuading older adults to ask physicians for specific medications remains uncertain. Older adults’ explicit memory for drug ads is poor, but their implicit memory for drug ads may be better. Therefore, older adults may be implicitly persuaded by drug ads even when they cannot explicitly remember seeing them. The current study measured implicit memory with an incidental ratings exercise and an indirect test of preference; explicit memory was measured with intentional studying and a direct test of recognition. The purposes of the study were to compare implicit and explicit memory for drug ads in older and younger adults, to determine whether age differences in memory are affected by salient information or anxiety, and to demonstrate that a test of implicit memory may be useful in estimating advertising effectiveness. The results showed no age difference for implicit memory for drug ads, but an age difference was found for explicit memory for drug ads. However, contrary to hypotheses, neither salient information nor anxiety had an effect on implicit or explicit memory. The results were consistent with previous research demonstrating implicit memory in the absence of explicit memory. Although older adults had slightly worse explicit memory, both implicit and explicit memory for drug ads was generally good in both groups. The results were also obtained within the everyday context of prescription drug advertising, which extends memory research to an important real-world setting. Ethical considerations for research on aging and advertising are discussed. Drug ads are designed to be persuasive, but ads should be carefully designed to inform consumers, rather than to manipulate them. The implicit memory manipulation succeeded in demonstrating that ads are persuasive, suggesting that a complete assessment of advertising effectiveness should include a test of implicit memory

Breaking Through Complexity. Visual and Conceptual Dimensions in Logo Evaluation

This research investigates the effects of visual and conceptual complexity (VC and CC) on brand logo evaluations at single and multiple exposures. Building upon the theoretical distinction between visual and conceptual constructs and on a processing fluency account, it is proposed that the effects of VC and CC on attitude toward the logo change across exposures following opposite patterns, and are driven by the mechanisms of perceptual fluency and conceptual fluency, respectively. The results of a hybrid experimental study suggest that the initially positive effect of VC on attitude toward the logo becomes negative with multiple exposures, whereas the initially negative effect of CC on attitude toward the logo becomes positive as exposures increase. The findings contribute to research on consumer reactions to the visual elements of brands, and offer guidelines to brand managers and logo designers for leveraging on VC and CC, as well as on the number of exposures, in order to raise the attractiveness of logos

The Effect of Repeated Ad Exposure and Physical Avoidance on Consumers’ Mobile Ad Response

Opt-in mobile advertisement platform services are increasingly popular. In this paper, we explore how repeated ad exposure and physical avoidance influence consumers’ responses to mobile ads. Using a unique panel-level data of 1,193,131 million users from Cash Slide, a Korean mobile advertising platform, we find that 1) repeated ad exposure and physical avoidance has a negative impact on a consumer’s response to mobile ads; 2) information richness in a mobile ad has a negative impact on mobile users’ response to ads; 3) the negative effect of a user’s repeated exposures to a mobile ad and physical avoidance increases in magnitude when the advertisement involves a context of higher information richness. Our finding bridges the gap in the extant literatures by examining the impact of repeated ad exposure and avoidance on consumers’ mobile ad response. Moreover, we provide practical implications to advertisers on the mobile platform

Non-conscious Effects of Marketing Communication and Implicit Attitude Change: State of Research and New Perspectives

International audienceThe article shows that many psychological effects of the marketing communication, sometimes called "non-conscious effects", really produce implicit attitude changes. We show that the theoretical and methodological framework of implicit attitude is well adapted to study these effects and to open new perspectives to study the persuasion in a marketing communication context. On the basis of research conducted within advertising contexts, product placement and TV sponsorship, four types of non-conscious influences are examined: a) non-conscious perception of brands, b) low-attention and forgotten exposures, c) attitude conditioning, d) brand insertion into emotional contexts. While discussing the contributions and limitations of major research methodologies, we highlight new perspectives likely to further the progress of research. We open up new perspectives first to increase the ecological and theoretical validity of methodologies; secondly, to improve the validity of effects measure. At a practical level, we posit that the measures of effects currently used by advertising agencies and advertisers underestimate the effects of marketing communication campaigns. A third research perspective endeavors to better understand the links between implicit and explicit attitudes on the one hand, and behavior on the other hand. The article gives some basis to the field called by some people "neuromarketing".L'article dresse d'abord une synthèse de la littérature concernant les effets non conscients de la communication-marketing (publicité à la télévision ou sur Internet, placement de produit, parrainage télévisuel...). Il explique les processus psychologiques qui sous-tendent les effets en montrant que le contexte théorique et méthodologique de la cognition implicite (attitude et mémoire implicites) est adapté pour mieux comprendre de tels effets. Quatre types d'influence non conscientes sont examinés : la perception non consciente des marques, les expositions en faible attention et aussitôt oubliées, le conditionnement des attitudes, l'insertion des marques dans des contextes émotionnels. Après avoir discuté des principales contributions et limites des méthodologies de recherche dans ce champ, nous ouvrons de nouvelles perspectives de recherche afin d'accroître les validités théoriques et écologiques des méthodologies utilisées. À un niveau pratique,il semblerait que les mesures d'efficacité actuellement utilisées par les agences de publicité et les annonceurs sous-estiment les effets réels des campagnes de communication marketing en partie non conscients. L'article intéresse également les spécialistes du "neuromarketing" (même si ce terme et sa finalité sont critiquables...)

Implicit memory and fluency effects in communication research

One of the fundamental questions researchers in mass communication generally and advertising specifically want to answer is how to measure the effectiveness of a message. The purpose of this dissertation is to highlight the usefulness of implicit memory measures for doing just that. By using the transfer appropriate processing framework as a guide, this dissertation will examine the differences between implicit and explicit memory. This comparison will be done by manipulating both how the ad is encoded and the level of cognitive load the participants are under. Finally, the different types of memory performance will be correlated with attitudes to see if and when memory might serve to predict affect. In a 2 (encoding: conceptual or perceptual) X 2 (attention: full or divided) between-subjects experimental design, participants were exposed to a series of advertisements embedded on news websites. After performing a distraction task, participants completed one of the following memory measures, depending on which condition they were assigned: conceptual implicit memory, perceptual implicit memory, conceptual explicit memory, or perceptual explicit memory. All participants then completed attitudes measures. Results suggest that compared to a control group, significant priming occurred in both the conceptual and perceptual implicit memory tests such that those who had seen the advertisements performed significantly better on the memory measures than those who did not see the advertisements. Furthermore, for the conceptual measures, how the information was encoded mattered, as those who encoded the advertisement conceptually significantly outperformed those who had encoded the advertisement perceptually. More importantly, only conceptual implicit memory performance significantly correlated with the attitude measures. Overall, this dissertation provides evidence that implicit memory measures are important to be used within future advertising research studies. These measures represent an alternative and indirect method to assess advertising effectiveness. Furthermore, this dissertation adds to the literature on fluency effects by suggesting that it is conceptual fluency that mediates the relationship between ad exposure and attitudes toward the brands in the ads