Chapter 5 Flashcards
Persuasion
Any change in beliefs and attitudes that results form exposure to a
communication.
The Yale Reinforcement Approach
Hovland founded the Yale Communication and Attitude Change Program after WWII
Yale Reinforcement Approach: Exposure to a persuasive communication that
successfully induces the individual to accept a new opinion constitutes a learning
experience in which a new verbal habit is acquired.
o Recipients of a persuasive message would silently rehearse the arguments
together with the recommended response and their own initial attitude
o They will only accept the recommended attitudinal response if the incentives
associated with this response are greater than those associated with their own
original position
Communication and Persuasion
o In order to understand persuasion, one must know “who says what to whom
with what effect”
o Innovative experimental research on the impact of communicator credibility,
on features of the communication such as fear-arousing appeals or the
organization of persuasive arguments, on individual differences in
susceptibility to persuasion and on the extent to which attitude change was
maintained over time
o The impact of any of these factors on attitudes could be mediated by three
different processes:
1. Attention to the content of the communication
2. Comprehension of the message
3. Acceptance of the conclusion advocated by the communication
Source effects: The impact of the source of a communication on persuasion.
o Attribution of a communication to either a prestigious or a non-prestigious
source influenced the target’s evaluation of the communication
Fear-arousing communication
o The weakest appeal was most effective in changing attitudes and behavior
o Defensive avoidance: The strong fear appeal was so threatening that it was
more effective for recipients to reduce fear by rejecting the appeal as alarmist
rather than accepting the recommendation.
o Findings have rarely been replicated in later research; actually, reverse effect
has been found
Hovland
founded the Yale Communication and Attitude Change Program after WWII
Yale Reinforcement Approach
Exposure to a persuasive communication that
successfully induces the individual to accept a new opinion constitutes a learning
experience in which a new verbal habit is acquired.
Source effects:
The impact of the source of a communication on persuasion.
o Attribution of a communication to either a prestigious or a non-prestigious
source influenced the target’s evaluation of the communication
Defensive avoidance:
The strong fear appeal was so threatening that it was
more effective for recipients to reduce fear by rejecting the appeal as alarmist
rather than accepting the recommendation
The information processing model of McGuire
Information processing model: (1) There are different stages involved in the processing
of persuasive communications and (2) determinants of persuasion could have different
impacts at different stages
Five stages of persuasion:
1. Attention
2. Comprehension
3. Acceptance
4. Retention
5. Behavior
The receiver must go through each of these steps if the communication is to have an
ultimate persuasive impact, and each depends on the occurrence of the preceding
step
One has to question whether recipients really have to go through these steps for the
advertisement to be effective
o There are a variety of ways by which messages can influence, even without
having been carefully processed
o Processing motivation is likely to be higher for more complex and expensive
products
The probability of a communication influencing attitudes [P(I)] is the joint product of
the probability of reception [P(R)] and acceptance [P(A)]
o P(I) = P(R) × P(A)
McGuire stated that most personality characteristics have opposing effects on
reception and acceptance
o People are more likely to understand a message the more intelligent they are
o More intelligent people are also likely to be more critical and therefore less
likely to accept everything they hear or read
Curvilinear relationship of reception and acceptance, with the maximum level of
influenceability found at some intermediate level for the personality characteristic
A meta-analysis of studies of individual differences in influenceability provided limited
support for the McGuire model
Information processing model:
1) There are different stages involved in the processing
of persuasive communications and (2) determinants of persuasion could have different
impacts at different stages.
McGuire’s Five stages of persuasion
- Attention
- Comprehension
- Acceptance
- Retention
- Behavior
McGuire stated that..
most personality characteristics have opposing effects on
reception and acceptance
o People are more likely to understand a message the more intelligent they are
o More intelligent people are also likely to be more critical and therefore less
likely to accept everything they hear or read
The cognitive response model
The cognitive response model was developed by Greenwald, Petty, and their
colleagues partly to explain the frequent failure to find a correlation between
argument recall and attitude change, despite evidence that recipients had
systematically processed the message arguments
The model stresses the importance of the thoughts individuals generate – and thus
rehearse and learn – in response to a persuasive communication
Listeners are active participants who relate the communication to their own
knowledge
o Generating thoughts for and against the arguments presented
o The cognitive response to the message arguments produced by the recipient,
rather than the message arguments themselves, determine the impact of the
persuasive communication on attitudes
Thought-listing technique: Subjects are asked to list all the thoughts or ideas they had
while listening to the communication. After elimination of thoughts that are irrelevant
to the communication, the relevant thoughts are then categorized by participants or
external raters into those that are favorable to the position advocated by the message
and those that are generally unfavorable. An index based on these thoughts can then
be used to assess the extent to which cognitive responses mediated the impact of a
communication on attitudes.
With strong and well-reasoned arguments, thinking about them might in fact reduce
our reluctance to change our minds
Although cognitive responses to weak arguments would reduce persuasion, thinking
about strong and well-reasoned arguments would produce favorable thoughts that
would enhance persuasion
Since recipients process messages more or less intensively, persuasion should depend
on both:
o The extent to which recipients engage in message-relevant thoughts
o The favorability of these thoughts
Distraction
o Until it begins to interfere with reception, distraction should enhance
persuasion by impairing a recipient’s ability to counterargue
o The persuasion-reducing effect of distraction was not necessarily due to
impairment of comprehension but due to impairment of the ability of
recipients of a well-argued communication to produce positive thoughts that
might have persuaded them to change their attitudes
o Increased distraction increased attitude-change for weakly argued messages,
but decreased change for strongly argued message
Thought-listing technique
Subjects are asked to list all the thoughts or ideas they had
while listening to the communication. After elimination of thoughts that are irrelevant
to the communication, the relevant thoughts are then categorized by participants or
external raters into those that are favorable to the position advocated by the message
and those that are generally unfavorable. An index based on these thoughts can then
be used to assess the extent to which cognitive responses mediated the impact of a
communication on attitudes.
Since recipients process messages more or less intensively, persuasion should depend
on both:
o The extent to which recipients engage in message-relevant thoughts
o The favorability of these thoughts
Dual process theories of persuasion
Dual process theories of persuasion
o They acknowledge that recipients may sometimes take shortcuts and accept or
reject the position recommended by the communicator without thinking about
message arguments
o They specify the factors that determine the intensity of message processing,
and thus the conditions under which attitude change will be mediated by
message-relevant thinking
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)
Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM)
Two routes to persuasion:
1. Systematic processing: Recipients carefully and thoughtfully consider the
arguments presented in support of a position.
2. Heuristic processing: The use of simple decision rules in deciding on whether to
accept or reject a persuasive communication.
Two types of qualitatively different information that message recipients use when
trying to decide whether to accept or reject the position advocated by a
communicator:
1. Arguments contained in the information
2. Heuristic cues
Message arguments offer better and more reliable evidence for the validity of a
position advocated by a communicator than heuristic cues, but heuristic cues are
easier to process
Processing motivation is important because unless an issue is relevant to participants,
they will not expend much effort in thinking about arguments for or against the issue
Processing ability is important because in order to judge the validity of the arguments
contained in a communication, a person needs knowledge, time, and peace of mind
It was originally assumed that the two processing modes are compensatory; more
recently, it has been suggested that the two modes of processing can co-occur, if
systematic processing of arguments does not allow one to arrive at a clear-cut
conclusion
Variables can affect persuasion in multiple ways, depending on the extent to which a
message is processed systematically
Multiple-role assumption: Depending on the level of processing motivation, the
attributes of an endorser of a product can be used as a heuristic cue to influence
attitude towards a product, but they can also serve as an argument.
The extended dual process framework incorporates two further processing motives or
goals:
1. Defense motive
-Need for positive self-regard
- Vested interests
- Attitudinal commitment
- Need for consistency
- Impression motive
- Desire to express attitudes that are socially acceptable
-Assessing the social acceptability of alternative positions in order to
accept attitudinal positions that will please or appease potential
evaluators
Defense-motivated as well as impression-motivated processing can be heuristic as
well as systematic
Assessing the intensity of processing
Two strategies for assessing processing intensity:
1. Thought-listing
2. Manipulation of argument quality
If attitude change is due to systematic processing, then (thought-listing):
o Recipients should have generated some thoughts favorable to the position
advocated by the communicator
o The relative favorability or unfavourability of these thoughts should be
correlated with the amount of attitude change
o A favorability index (the ratio of favorable thoughts to total number of relevant
thoughts) should act as a mediator of the impact of the manipulated variables
on attitude change with systematic but not under heuristic processing
Manipulation of argument quality
o Persuasive appeals containing strong arguments should stimulate mainly
favorable thoughts in recipients who engage in systematic processing, and
result in substantial attitude change
o Weak arguments should trigger mainly negative thoughts and fail to result in
attitude change or even result in negative change (i.e. boomerang effect)
Boomerang effects have never been observed empirically
Two strategies for assessing processing intensity:
- Thought-listing
- Manipulation of argument quality
If attitude change is due to systematic processing, then (thought-listing):
o Recipients should have generated some thoughts favorable to the position
advocated by the communicator
o The relative favorability or unfavourability of these thoughts should be
correlated with the amount of attitude change
o A favorability index (the ratio of favorable thoughts to total number of relevant
thoughts) should act as a mediator of the impact of the manipulated variables
on attitude change with systematic but not under heuristic processing
A favorability index
the ratio of favorable thoughts to total number of relevant
thoughts
Processing ability is important for
the comprehension of the arguments presented by
salespersons
o Intelligence and education are of limited use in such situations
The impact of working knowledge on processing ability
The amount of working knowledge the individual possesses in a given area is the most
important personal factor influencing processing ability
Your knowledge about a certain area, at least if it is cognitively accessible, provides a
standard that allows you to detect the strengths and weaknesses of the information
provided
Overall, more knowledgeable participants were less influenced by the
communications than participants with little knowledge
o Argument strength influenced only the most knowledgeable individuals
o Message length affected only the least knowledgeable
Longer message = seen as more valid
o The more knowledgeable participants listed significantly more content-
oriented thoughts than the least knowledgeable individuals
Study with stereo system produced in Germany vs. Thailand
o Experts were only influenced by argument strength
o Novices were only influenced by country of origin
If arguments do not allow one to draw clear-cut conclusions, individuals will rely on
heuristic cues even under high processing intensity
The impact of distraction of processing ability
Distraction will reduce attitude change when arguments are strong, but increase it
with weak arguments
The impact of message repetition on processing ability
Whereas argument recall increased monotonically with frequency of exposure,
attitude change showed a curvilinear relationship with frequency of exposure
o Change increased between zero and three exposures, but decreased
afterwards
o Up to three exposures, message repetition increased the number of favorable
thoughts and decreased the number of counterarguments; however, further
repetition reversed this effect
Initially, repetition of arguments provided recipients with opportunity to think about
and elaborate the message
However, when message repetition was further increased, boredom motivated people
to attack the now tedious argumentation
Whereas exposure to strong arguments resulted in an increase in change from one to
three repetitions, repeated exposure to weak arguments led to immediate decrease in
change
o Lowering of processing motivation
Marketers try to avoid or at least delay tedium by varying their advertisements
o Cosmetic – changing substantive features of an advertisement that are not
essential in evaluating the product
o Substantive – change in message content
Once processing intensity increases, cosmetic variation will be ineffective and only
substantive variation will reduce tedium
Cosmetic variation reduced the impact of tedium slightly under low, but not high
product relevance
People often look at ads without really processing any of the text message
o With deep processing, attitude change followed the familiar curvilinear
pattern, even thought the downturn only occurred at ten exposures
o No downturn with shallow processing
o Whereas the attitude change pattern is correlated with the net number of
favorable thoughts produced by participants under deep processing, no
systematic relationship between thoughts and attitudes emerged under
shallow processing
o Frequency of exposure is likely to have increased perceptual fluency that, in
turn, resulted in greater liking for these advertisements
Personal relevance as motivator
Personal relevance: The importance of an outcome for the individual.
Major variable affecting processing motivation
Need to make a purchase decision
Consumers make many purchase decisions every day and these decisions vary on a
continuum of effort and time investment:
o Low effort – repetitive, routine, or habitual choices
- Low personal relevance
- Low risk
o High effort – infrequently bought and expensive goods
- High personal relevance
- Great deal of risk
The need to choose a particular brand of such a high involvement product from the
multitude of brands on offer will act as a powerful motivator to critically read
advertisements and test reports
For unimportant decisions people are likely to rely on heuristic cues
In line with predictions, personal relevance interacted with both celebrity status of the
endorser and argument quality, with celebrity status influencing attitudes mainly
under low involvement conditioning and argument quality being mainly effective
under high involvement conditions
Physical attractiveness, while serving as a heuristic cue under low involvement, might
have functioned as a visual evidence for the effectiveness of the product (i.e. an
argument) under high involvement
o Source congruity: The match between cognitively accessible endorser attributes
and attributes associated with the brand.
o Source congruity does not only apply to physical attractiveness, but also to
other attributes of a source
Source congruity
The match between cognitively accessible endorser attributes
and attributes associated with the brand.
Fear as motivator
Fear-arousing communications are widely used in health education campaigns, but are
less common in the advertising of consumer products
Fear-arousing communication mostly consists of two parts:
1. A fear-appeal warning individuals of some health threat
2. An action recommendation that advises individuals about how to protect
themselves against this threat
Research on fear-arousing communication has initially been guided by the drive-
reduction model of fear appeals, which assumes that individuals who are informed of
an impending health threat will be motivated to search for responses that reduce the
threat
o Higher fear should result in more persuasion, but only if the recommended
action is perceived as effective in averting danger
o Inconsistent empirical evidence
According to the parallel response model, a threat is cognitively evaluated and this
appraisal can give rise to two parallel or independent responses, namely danger
control and fear control
o Danger control: The decision to act as well as actions taken to reduce the
ganger.
o Fear control: Actions taken to control emotional responses as well as strategies
to reduce fear.
Problems:
o There is no empirical evidence for the predicted interaction between threat
and response efficacy
o Even though the two parallel response models assume that cognitive appraisal
mediates the impact of persuasion on attitude and behavior change, they
make no predictions about these processes of information processing
According to the stage model of processing of fear-arousing communications, the
important determinants of the intensity of processing are the perceived severity of a
health threat and personal vulnerability
o If both severity and vulnerability are low, individuals are unlikely to invest
much effort into processing information about this treat will rely on heuristic
processing
o When both are high, individuals will be motivated to engage in systematic
processing that is defensive
Highly motivated to minimize the risk
Biased search for inconsistencies; assessing evidence with a bias in the
direction of their preferred conclusion
o Defense motivation will lead to a positive bias in the processing of the action
recommendation and will heighten the motivation to engage in the protective
action regardless of the quality of the arguments supporting this action
Adding pictures to the health warning is unlikely to increase the efficacy of these
messages
Feeling vulnerable to a severe health threat triggered thoughts attempting to
minimize the threat and at the same time stimulating positive thoughts about the
value of the action recommendation
Danger control
The decision to act as well as actions taken to reduce the
ganger.
Fear control
Actions taken to control emotional responses as well as strategies
to reduce fear
Individual differences in processing motivation
The extent to which individuals think about message arguments is not only influenced
by situational factors, but also by individual differences
Individuals vary in the extent to which they engage and enjoy effortful cognitive
activity that is in their need for cognition
o Argument quality has a greater impact on attitudes of individuals who are high
in need for cognition
Need for cognitive closure: The desire for a definite answer on some topic, any answer
as opposed to confusion and ambiguity.
o Time pressure
o People with a chronically high need for closure behave as if they were always
in a rush
- Relying more on heuristic cues
Processing intensity and stability of change
Attitude change induced by systematic processing is more persistent than change
induced by heuristic processing
Attitudes of high need for cognition individuals were more persistent than those of
low need for cognition participants
The more elaborated attitudes of high need for cognition individuals were also more
resistant to a message attacking the attitude
Substantive variation in ad repetition does not only help to avoid tedium, but it also
increases the resistance of individuals against the negative impact of
counterarguments
Persuasion by a single route: the unimodel
Unimodel: Arguments and heuristic cues are functionally equivalent in constituting two
separate content categories of evidence for drawing conclusions from persuasive
communications.
o Persuasion can be characterized as a singular process of drawing conclusions
from available evidence
o It does not matter whether evidence is contained in an argument or comes
from a heuristic cue
The unimodel shares with dual processing theory the assumption that depth of
processing will depend on processing motivation
o Because heuristic cues are typically more easily processed than message
arguments, and therefore will be preferred information of individuals who are
not terribly motivated to think about a communication
The unimodel rejects the notion that heuristic cues are typically less valid than
message arguments
The information about heuristic cues is typically presented before the message
arguments in practically all studies
The relevance of the information contained in a message argument or a heuristic cue
for the evaluation of the position advocated in a communication will always depend
on the belief systems of the members of the target audience
Unimodel:
Arguments and heuristic cues are functionally equivalent in constituting two
separate content categories of evidence for drawing conclusions from persuasive
communications.
o Persuasion can be characterized as a singular process of drawing conclusions
from available evidence
o It does not matter whether evidence is contained in an argument or comes
from a heuristic cue
Strategies to attract attention and to lower resistance to advertising
Consumers often try to avoid exposure to advertising
Consumers’ awareness of persuasive intent might increase their resistance to
persuasion and decrease the impact of the message
Persuasion knowledge: The theories consumers have developed about the motives,
strategies, and tactics of marketers as well as their beliefs in their ability to resist these
tactics.
There is evidence that the perception of a communicators’ intention to persuade
increases resistance in recipients of a message
The expectation of being exposed to counterattitudinal arguments will motivate
recipients to access the reasons that support their own position
o They will use these reasons to generate arguments to refute the persuasive
communication
o Recipients have to be motivated, and have time, to generate
counterarguments
Merely warning recipients about persuasive intent without providing information
about the direction of the arguments contained in a communication induces
resistance even without a delay period, suggesting that the impact of these warnings
is not mediated by counterargumentation
o Psychological reactance: A motivational state that can be triggered by the
perceived threat to one’s attitudinal freedom implied by a social influence
attempt and motivates individuals to re-establish their freedom.
Biased processing of the communication
Disregarding the message as invalid
Sleeper effect: The phenomenon that the impact of a message increases over time,
because after some delay recipients of an otherwise influential message might recall
the message but no longer remember the source.
o The conditions under which sleeper effects occur are rarely realized in
advertising contexts
Message arguments need to have strong initial impact
strategies:
-humour
-sex
-two-sided ads
-product placement
-sponsorship
Persuasion knowledge:
The theories consumers have developed about the motives,
strategies, and tactics of marketers as well as their beliefs in their ability to resist these
tactics.
Psychological reactance:
A motivational state that can be triggered by the
perceived threat to one’s attitudinal freedom implied by a social influence
attempt and motivates individuals to re-establish their freedom.
Biased processing of the communication
Disregarding the message as invalid
Sleeper effect:
The phenomenon that the impact of a message increases over time,
because after some delay recipients of an otherwise influential message might recall
the message but no longer remember the source.
o The conditions under which sleeper effects occur are rarely realized in
advertising contexts
- Message arguments need to have strong initial impact
Humor in advertising
Counters the tendency of consumers to try avoiding exposure to advertisement, by
making it so funny that people enjoy looking at it
Humorous advertisements are liked more than advertisements without humor
Positive effect on attitudes towards the advertised brand
Positive impact on purchase intention
Humor, distraction, and memory
Humor in advertisement distracts consumers → lack of impact on behavior
Humor will lead to better memory for the humor-related part of advertisements that
attracted the attention, but to less recall for the parts that are unrelated to the humor
Humorous advertisements impair mainly explicit memory, but do not affect implicit
memory
Humor and liking for the ad and the brand
People love funny advertisement; it makes them feel good about the advertisement
and this humor increases (explicit) liking for the advertisement and for the brand
Recognition for the product paired with humorous cartoons was significantly poorer
than recognition for the product paired with cartoons that were not humorous
Evidence for evaluative conditioning effect when the product was not recognized, that
is, when there was no explicit memory for the brand
Humorous advertisements and brand choice
The fact that the positive feelings created by humorous advertisements become
attached to the advertised brand through evaluative conditioning raises the possibility
that humor in advertising might influence purchasing behavior under certain limited
conditions, namely when the purchase is made without much deliberation
Low-cost items or impulsive purchase decision
Limitations
Most of the research on the effect of humor in advertising has used humor that was
unrelated to the advertising message
Measuring the impact of humor on implicit, but not explicit attitudes in some studies
Studies of humor have nearly exclusively used brands that were unfamiliar to
participants
o With regard to distraction, one would assume that explicit brand memory
should be less impaired for brand names that are familiar rather than
unfamiliar
o Humorous advertisements can affect product choice even for familiar brands,
but only for consumers who:
- Have no strong preference for either brand
- Are unable or unmotivated to think much about their choice
- Practically all of the studies examined the effects of humor in the advertising of low-
cost items
o Low motivation of thinking about purchase
o Humor is most often used in the advertising of low-cost hedonic goods
Summary and conclusion
Humorous advertisements have three effects:
1. They attract attention to an advertisement
2. They distract from the part of the message that is unrelated to the humor
3. Humor elicits positive affect, which becomes associated with the brand
through evaluative conditioning
Humorous advertisements can affect product choice even for familiar brands,
but only for consumers who:
Have no strong preference for either brand
Are unable or unmotivated to think much about their choice
Humorous advertisements have three effects:
- They attract attention to an advertisement
- They distract from the part of the message that is unrelated to the humor
- Humor elicits positive affect, which becomes associated with the brand
through evaluative conditioning
Sex in advertising
Two important factors in “sex sells”:
o Relevance
o Function
Sex in advertising: Mediated messages that contain sexual imagery with the persuasive
purpose of selling branded goods.
o Extent to which models are undressed
o Type of physical contact between models
Effect of sexual imagery in attracting attention
The impact of sexual advertisements on information processing
Sexual imagery distracts from processing the message content
Sexual imagery has a positive effect on attitudes towards the ad as well as on
purchasing intention
Brand name recall is typically worse when the sexual content of an ad is unrelated to a
product than when it is related
Names might be remembered better when sexual images are combined with a
relevant product, especially if the brand names are of well-known products
The impact of sexual advertising on attitudes
Two pathways by which sexual imagery can influence attitudes towards the advertised
product, namely through sexual images serving as:
o Persuasive arguments
o Evaluative conditioning
The persuasive argument effects should only work if the sexual imagery is functional
or relevant for the advertised product and if the product serves self-expression or
identity-related functions
Whereas imagery that is mildly sexual typically elicits positive affect, gratuitous
(unnecessarily explicit and irrelevant) sexual imagery can elicit negative affect
Individuals who hold liberal attitudes towards sex are likely to react less negatively to
sexual imagery that individuals with more conservative attitudes might find gratuitous
Gender differences in attitudes toward sexual advertisement
In contrast to women, whose negative reactions to gratuitous female sex are
automatic, the spontaneous response of men would be positive; however, their initial
positive response tendency would then be moderated by the cognition that this
gratuitous display of sexual imagery is unfair and unethical
o Under cognitive load, men responded more positively to sexual than non-
sexual advertisement, whereas women rated the non-sexual ad more
positively
o Without cognitive load, male respondents rated the sexual advertisements as
negatively as female respondents
o The negative effect of the sexual appeal on women was dependent on their
attitude towards sex and limited to women who held a conservative attitude;
women with liberal attitudes actually preferred the sexual advertisement
The value of the advertised product might also act as a moderator
One problem is that most of the studies have been conducted with students as
respondents
Historical changes in sexual attitude; comparison of findings of studies conducted
during different decades becomes problematic
None of the studies assessed actual behavior
Two pathways by which sexual imagery can influence attitudes towards the advertised
product, namely through sexual images serving as:
o Persuasive arguments
o Evaluative conditioning
Two-sided advertisements
Used to reduce the resistance to persuasion
Two-sided advertisements mention some negative features of a product in addition to
emphasizing its positive attributes
o Standing out from the advertisement clutter
o Appearing as more honest and therefore might have more impact
Reduce counterarguing
Viewed as more credible
More effective in enhancing perception of the advertised brand on those
characteristics that are described as positive
The positive effect of two-sided advertisements does not always translate into a
superiority in influencing overall brand evaluation or purchasing intention
Two-sided advertisements that include a refutation of the negative information may
be more resistant to counterattack or disconfirming information
Conditions under which two-sided advertisements might result in more positive
overall brand evaluations:
o Optimal proportion of negative information
Credibility gains at optimal level
o The negative information should not exceed two-fifths of the information
contained in an advertisement
o Including negative information on important product attributes should be
avoided
The optimal procedure would be to mention only negative attributes that are trivial or
of which the consumer is already aware
o Needs to be used with care
Conditions under which two-sided advertisements might result in more positive
overall brand evaluations:
o Optimal proportion of negative information
Credibility gains at optimal level
o The negative information should not exceed two-fifths of the information
contained in an advertisement
o Including negative information on important product attributes should be
avoided
Product placement
Product placement: The paid inclusion of braded products or brand identifiers through
audio and/or visual means within mass media programming.
Avoids the problem of channel switching
Two dimensions:
o Modality – is brand name only seen or also mentioned?
o Centrality – relevance of the product use to the plot
Background
Product used by main character but no relevance to story
Product plays a role in the story
The most frequently used measures of the efficacy of product placement have been
measures of explicit memory such as recall and recognition measures; recently,
measures of implicit memory have also been employed
Plot centrality influences explicit memory
Product placement can backfire
o Brand use by disliked characters results in a negative brand attitude
Heider’s balance theory is concerned with the relations a person perceives between
themselves, other individuals, and objects
o The perception of such relations will tend towards a balance state
o A state is balanced if one likes objects owned by a person one likes, or dislikes
objects owned by a person one dislikes
Viewers who like a program and regularly view it might also be irritated by blatant
product placement
Two dimensions of product placement:
o Modality – is brand name only seen or also mentioned?
o Centrality – relevance of the product use to the plot
- Background
- Product used by main character but no relevance to story
- Product plays a role in the story
Heider’s balance theory is concerned with
the relations a person perceives between
themselves, other individuals, and objects
o The perception of such relations will tend towards a balance state
o A state is balanced if one likes objects owned by a person one likes, or dislikes
objects owned by a person one dislikes
Product placement:
The paid inclusion of braded products or brand identifiers through
audio and/or visual means within mass media programming
Sponsorship:
Commercial sponsorship has become a multi-billion-dollar business
Sponsorship: A technique by which a commercial organization financially supports an
entity in order to associate the organization’s name with this entity in the media and to
use the entity for advertising purposes.
Different types of sponsorship:
o Program sponsorship
o Event sponsorship
There are various ways in which event sponsorship could influence brand awareness
and brand attitude
o Display and association of brand logo at/with the event
Increased hedonic fluency
o Linking the name of the sponsor to the event
Congruent sponsorships are better remembered than incongruent sponsorships
o If there is no link between the brand and event, they can be created
Whether a sponsor brand will profit from linking itself to some event will not only
depend on people’s attitude towards the event but also on their thoughts about the
sponsor’s motive in supporting the event
Sponsorship
A technique by which a commercial organization financially supports an
entity in order to associate the organization’s name with this entity in the media and to
use the entity for advertising purposes
Different types of sponsorship:
o Program sponsorship
o Event sponsorship
