“In a Competition Full of Hamburgers, You’re a Steak:” American Idol and the Role of Reality Television in the Maintenance of our Egos

Over the past decade, reality shows have ascended to the top of the Nielsen rating charts and have assumed a dominance that is difficult to cast aside. One such reality show, American Idol has grown in popularity over its last six seasons. This chapter discusses one of the main arguments of a larger honors thesis that examines the underlying motives that keep American viewers watching. As a cultural commodity, American Idol can be viewed as a product of American values and holds a societal purpose for its viewers. Therefore, the arguments within this chapter propose that the great popularity enjoyed by American Idol is due to its ability to psychologically involve its viewers. More specifically, the psychological purposes of this show may lead to the amplified depiction of the humiliation of performing candidates. Current research within the field of media psychology suggests that the motives for viewing reality television can be explained by the uses and gratifications perspective, which includes the concept of social comparison, and by other more sociological means. The ability of social comparison to provide viewers the opportunity to protect and amplify their self-esteem is discussed. The potentially intensified emphasis on humiliation will be demonstrated through the aforementioned motives, due to their abilities to urge viewers to protect or increase their self-esteem

Postexperience Advertising Effects on Consumer Memory

Past research suggests that marketing communications create expectations that influence the way consumers subsequently learn from their product experiences. Since postexperience information can also be important and is widespread for established goods and services, it is appropriate to ask about the cognitive effects of these efforts. The postexperience advertising situation is conceptualized here as an instant source-forgetting problem where the language and imagery from the recently presented advertising become confused with consumers’ own experiential memories. It is suggested that, through a reconstructive memory process, this advertising information affects how and what consumers remember. Consumers may come to believe that their past product experience had been as suggested by the advertising. Over time this postexperience advertising information can become incorporated into the brand schema and influence future product decisions

Cultural issues in death and dying.

Although all of us experience death, not all of us think about death or respond to death the same way. This study begins to explore how cultural traditions, education, and tenure in Hawaii impact views of advanced directives, organ donation, suicide, and euthanasia. This information is useful to physicians who need to engage patients and families in discussions about death and end-of-life decision making

Memory Change: An Intimate Measure of Persuasion

A major goal for advertising is to have an enduring emotional impact on an audience by facilitating their creation of personally relevant understandings of an advertisement. This is achieved through a process of cocreation in which consumers integrate advertising content with their own attitudes, beliefs, and values to produce the meaning of an advertisement. This article proposes an approach to evaluating advertisements that builds on the reconstructive nature of memory, the dominant view of memory today. The reconstructive view of memory holds that the memory for the same event is different each time it is recalled and that the person doing the recalling is unaware of these changes. We present an experimental paradigm that assesses advertising\u27s influence on consumers\u27 own memory of their beliefs. We demonstrate that advertising can unconsciously alter consumers\u27 beliefs as reflected by a change in how consumers recall their earlier reporting of these beliefs following an advertising exposure. That is, advertising that causes consumers to remember differently earlier (preadvertising exposure) reported beliefs and in which the change is in the direction of the advertisement\u27s message is an advertisement that contains information the consumer has unconsciously adopted as their own and therefore is likely to be personally relevant and to have an enduring impact on their emotions

Transforming Consumer Experience: When Timing Matters

How advertising can influence or change consumers\u27 product experience has been a topic of great interest to marketers. The majority of research has suggested that advertising received prior to an experience can exert the most influence. In 1999, however, Braun introduced the concept of reconstructive memory, and demonstrated that advertising received after an experience can alter how consumers remember their experience. The issue of which order of framing of an experience through advertising is most influential on consumer memory has not yet been investigated. A constructive memory framework that can take into account both forward- and backward-framing effects and an experiment that tests hypotheses regarding the presentation order of advertising and experience is presented. The implications for the study of transformational advertising are discussed

Assessing the Long-Term Impact of a Consistent Advertising Campaign on Consumer Memory

How effective is an advertising campaign that has consistently used the same theme since consumers\u27 early childhood? To answer that question one has to consider the effect the campaign has had on consumers\u27 memory. This research begins by discussing the structure of memory and schematic processes that occur when similar or related information is presented over time. Evidence is reviewed which suggests that early exposure would be critical in the brand schema\u27s development. An experiment that tests the strength of the brand schema in a competitive environment and a survey that explores the importance of time of initial exposure to present-day affect and attitudes toward the brand are presented. The implications of the results for advertising research and practice are then discussed

Advertising\u27s Misinformation Effect

This research explores whether post-experience advertising alters information learned in a consumer\u27s direct experience. An advertising misinformation effect was obtained for colour memory of a previously seen candy bar wrapper upon both visual and verbal misinformation. However, the misleading visual information produced more ‘remember’ judgements than misleading verbal information. This advertising misinformation effect did not dissipate when the source was discredited. We found that such memory changes can be directly linked to consumer subjective judgements and choices when the misleading information is particularly salient. Not only do these findings constitute a novel generalizability of the misinformation effect, they also have implications for social policy research on deceptive advertising

Digging Deeper: Art Museums in Las Vegas?

[Excerpt] Las Vegas has been called the “city of reinvention” (Douglass and Raento 2003). Part of its more recent reinvention efforts has included the opening of five fine-art venues. However, one of the art museums––the Las Vegas Guggenheim––was shut down in its first year due to low attendance; another, the Bellagio Fine Art Gallery, has seen attendance dwindle (Schemeligian 2004). The question addressed here is whether the museums are bringing the intended intangible benefits to the host resort, or whether the sales and attendance figures represent overall disinterest. More broadly one considers the potential “fit” between sin-city and the high-art cultural world. The difficulty in addressing these issues is that tourists might not consciously recognize the value they feel about having a worldclass art museum onsite. Within nonprofit research there has been a call for ‘‘deeper understanding’’ of tourists (Thyne 2001) as reflected within the greater interest in new qualitative methodologies (Riley and Love 2000). The Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique, a patented research method, was chosen to investigate this research issue. Many of the world’s largest companies (such as Procter & Gamble) have utilized this method for insight on brand meaning and competitive positioning