College 1 Flashcards
Sending
Advertising; advertisers are the ones that are sending the information.
Receiving
Consumers
Definition of advertising
Advertising is any form of paid communication by an identified sponsor aimed to inform and/or persuade target audiences about an organization, product, service, or idea
Are we used to advertising?
Yes, we see about 1000 ads per day.
People tend to get annoyed by commercials and commercial breaks and try to skip them or get a drink or go to the bathroom.
That’s why a lot of people are happy with streaming services that have no breaks.
Some people like breaks because then you can go to the bathroom or get a drink, but not because they like to look at the commercials.
What did they do in Sao Paolo concerning advertisements on walls of buildings?
There were so many that they put a ban on outdoor advertising. After 5 years they evaluated the ban and people were very happy with it. The city looked a lot prettier.
What did advertisements look like and what were they focused on?
There used to be a lot of information on an ad. You had to read or listen to the entire ad to be persuaded.
Focus on information
Why did advertisements change, what do they look like now and what do they focus on?
Nowadays we know that people don’t read or listen to the entire ad. So the advertisements changed.
Nowadays they try to associate the product to a positive feeling, to make you happy for example.
Focus on affect
What are the functions of advertising?
- Existence of television programs, newspapers, magazines, public events.
- Advertisements sponsor these things, maybe they wouldn’t exist without advertising. - Employment
- Not only for tv programs and events that are advertised, but also for people that work in advertisement. - Information function
- E.g., new products, prices, where to find them. - Persuasion function
- This is the function this course focuses on.
Function of persuasion
Forming, strengthening, or changing attitudes through advertising.
This can influence consumers behavior.
Effects of advertising; the ABC effect
Cognitive
- What do people think about the product?
- Recognition and memory of the ad, brand or product. You want people to recognize and remember the brand.
- You want to influence beliefs/thoughts about the ad, brand, or product.
Affective
- You want to influence their emotions.
- Product liking or make people feel more positive about a specific product.
- Emotional response to an ad (e.g., surprise, fear, or interest), not necessarily about the product.
Behavioral
- Purchase intention.
- Buying the product.
- This is the ultimate goal.
Hierarchy of effects models
These models assume that advertising influences the ABC consumer responses, these cognitive, affective and behavioral responses, in a very specific order. From cognitive to affective to behavior.
DAGMAR model
A hierarchy of effects model.
This model suggests that first we become aware of the product/advertisement => we try to understand the product/ad => we try to relate it to our current knowledge => we store it in our memory => can influence our attitude => can influence our behavior (aursii).
What does DAGMAR stand for?
Defining Advertising Goal Measured Advertising Result
Why has there been a lot of criticism on hierarchy of effects models?
Because people don’t always go from this unawareness to actions in this specific order. Sometimes people skip steps and sometimes only people’s behavior is influenced, but not their attitudes. We aren’t always involved and pay attention to ads, but unconsciously we are affected quite a lot by ads.
But at least, based on this model we know which steps can be involved when people are influenced by advertising.
FCB Grid model
Hierarchy of effects model.
As a consequence from the problems that people don’t always go from complete awareness to actions, people came up with the FCB grid.
What this grid says is that there are think-feel-do steps, but in which order you go through the steps depends on the type of product and how involved you are.
High involvement * Think-Feel-Do = Informative
High involvement * Feel-Think-Do = Affective
Low involvement * Think-Feel-Do = Habit
Low involvement * Feel-Think-Do = Self-satisfaction
Four stages of processing advertising messages
Unconscious/automatic to conscious/reflective:
Pre-attentive processing => Focal attention => Comprehension => Elaborative reasoning
Pre-attentive analysis
Often, consumers see a lot of ads and you learn about products incidentally (e.g., in newspaper, magazine, on television, internet). Not much attention (scan info).
BUT: Still impact you through an unconscious/implicit process and can still influence your behavior. Info gets in implicit memory which can be retrieved later.
Think about the clip where two people had to come up with a campaign and drew all the things they unconsciously saw on the street.
What concepts are related to the pre-attentive stage?
- Perceptual/conceptual processing
- Fluency
- Mere exposure
Perceptual/conceptual processing
Pre-attentive processing can rely on:
- Perceptual analysis; you only see the physical features (colors, contours).
o But that would mean that if you saw an iPhone ad in pink for example, and you see a green iPhone in a store you wouldn’t recognize it from the ad. And that is not true.
- Conceptual analysis; product use, usage situation.
o Can have even stronger effects.
o Can have effects even if product looks perceptually different from ad.
Shapiro experiment (1999) on conceptual processing
The first evidence for the idea that the pre-attentive stage can include conceptual processing came from a study by Shapiro.
Goal was to show that incidental ad exposure can induce conceptual processing of an advertisement.
Participants were asked to read an article (on the right) and there was an ad on the left, but he made sure people couldn’t really consciously focus on the ad. Then there were two conditions: half of the participants were shown an advertisement with an isolated object, the other half of the participants were shown an advertisement with the exact same object but then in context (e.g., a phone put in a hand).
Condition I: Isolated object
Condition II: Object in context
He then measured if participants remembered seeing the product in the advertisement. He measured memory in two different ways: the first way was by showing a catalogue with all kinds of isolated products, one of these was the object they saw in the advertisement (isolated condition). This is perceptual measure.
The other measure was a catalogue with all kinds of verbal labels, referring to the same objects as in the first catalogue. This was more a conceptual measurement.
Dependent measure: recall
Results Shapiro experiment (1999) on perceptual/conceptual processing
If memory would be based on physical (perceptual) processing → better memory when product in catalogue is exactly the same as in ad (isolated object condition).
BUT…
Object in context → facilitated memory, regardless of whether there was a perceptual match between the ad stimulus at exposure and the product depiction at test.
Conclusion experiment:
Memory mainly based on concept, not necessarily on physical features.
Hedonic fluency
The subjective ease with which a stimulus can be perceived and processed. So, how easy it is for you to process a specific stimulus.
Easy to process => positive emotions => misattributed to stimulus
The more difficult, the lower the hedonic fluency.
- Perceptual fluency
- Conceptual fluency
- Familiarity
Perceptual fluency
E.g., easy or hard to read font.
Conceptual fluency
It’s easier to process the information if the concepts in the commercial are a good conceptual match => a better conceptual fluence
- E.g., Michael Jordan and Gatorade have a lot in common because it’s an energy drink vs. Michael Jordan and Coca Cola.
Familiarity
Familiar stimuli are processed easier and therefore like better.
- E.g., repetitive songs
Mere exposure
The things that you see more often; that are familiar to you, is also described by the mere exposure effect.
Neutral object => Repeated exposure => Positive feelings/ evaluations to the product
People like the things that they know. This is why adjusting a brand colour or how they show the brand name is often not liked very well.
Moreland and Beach (1992) on familiarityin the lecture hall
In a lecture hall, they invited several confederate (bondgenoten) women to come to the lecture hall and they were instructed to not talk to anyone.
Some of these women came to the lecture 10 times, others 5 times and some only once.
After the course they asked people what they thought of the women in terms of how much they liked these women.
This showed that the more they saw these women, the more they liked them and the more they wanted to work with these women.
Focal attention
Involvement is already at least moderate.
Definition focal attention: after noticing a stimulus, it may be brought into conscious awareness where it is identified and categorized.
- Voluntary attention
- Involuntary attention
Voluntary attention
If you’re motivated
- Relevance of topic/product
If you’re able to
- Time pressure
- Distractions
Involuntary attention
Stimuli need special features that make them stand out from the background and capture conscious attention.
Especially effective when processing motivation is low.
Three classes of stimuli features that attract consumer attention:
- Salience
- Vividness
- Novelty
Involuntary attention: salience
Stimulus draws attention because it is different with respect to its context and therefore possibly interesting.
Nowadays there are so many commercials that you have to stand out and be salient.
Another way to stand out is to use humor, humor can also reduce resistence.
Involuntary attention: vividness
Vivid stimuli are not context dependent like salient stimuli; they do not need to stand out.
According to Nisbett and Ross (1980) vivid stimuli are:
- Emotionally interesting
- Concrete and image provoking
- Proximate in a temporal (i.e., soon) or spatial way (i.e., nearby)
Involuntary attention: novelty
Novelty: the extent to which information is unfamiliar and unexpected.
Produces surprise response => results in extended reasoning.
- When people feel surprised, they start to reason more. When they get rid of this surprise, they start think about why they are surprised.
- People want to understand their environment, so when they see something they don’t expect they want to understand it.
Surprise can be positive or negative.
Comprehension stage
People scan their environment in the pre-attentive state. If something draws their attention or pay attention to it voluntarily, they go into the focal attention state. Then comes the stage where they want to understand it.
Why is comprehension important?
It is important for achieving persuasion.
Especially when careful and effortful information processing is needed.
What can go wrong with comprehension?
80% of all messages are initially miscomprehended in some way because they don’t put their focal attention on it.
BUT… Sometimes a lack of understanding is not a problem.
Truth effect of advertising/ seeing is believing effect
Lack of understanding is not always a problem:
- People tend to uncritically accept information rather than not believe it, even when certain elements are not fully comprehended.
o Especially when distracted or unmotivated to process.
Elaboration stage
People scan their environment in the pre-attentive state. You pay attention to a stimulus, either voluntarily or involuntarily in the focal attention state. Then you either understand the message or don’t. This is when you start to elaborate.
Elaborative reasoning
The stimuli or product is actively related to previously stored consumer knowledge.
- Requires full consciousness.
- Consumer motivation and ability should be high to be able to elaborate on the message.
What are the three dimensions of elaborative reasoning?
- Extent of thinking
- How superficial/deep are you thinking about the ad/product/brand? - Valence of thinking
- How negative/positive are you thinking about the ad/product/brand? - Object of thinking
- About what are you thinking?
- What are you thinking about when you see a certain advertisement?
What are the two types of objects of thinking?
Self-schema
Meta-cognition
Self-schema
The way people see themselves (values, beliefs).
So when you think about yourself, what concepts come to mind/relate to you. What is important to you and what are your beliefs.
What happens when product info in advertising is congruent with self-schema?
Motivates consumer to process information more fully.
Persuasion then depends on strong arguments.
Meta-cognition
Thoughts about thoughts/ thinking about thinking.
Realizing something based on your thoughts.
People reflect on their own thoughts and draw inferences from that
- “I have thought about my friend a lot, I must miss her”
- “It is easy for me to find arguments in favor of this product, I must like it”
Which sentences are self-schemas and which sentences are meta-cognitions?
“I am very much concerned with the environment”
“It is easy for me to find arguments in favor of this product, I must like it”
“I have thought about my friend a lot, I must miss her”
“I am a sophisticated person”
“I am very much concerned with the environment” = self-schema
“It is easy for me to find arguments in favor of this product, I must like it” = meta-cognition
“I have thought about my friend a lot, I must miss her” = meta-cognition
“I am a sophisticated person” = self-schema
Ease of retrieval
Ease with which product- and brand-related information can be retrieved from your memory.
A meta-cognitive process that influences persuasion.
A form of hedonic fluency.
If it is easy to process you are more likely to be influenced because you feel more positive about it.
First half of the experiment by Wänke et al. (1997) on ease of retrieval of car brands
He showed that ease of retrieval influences persuasion.
Condition 1: List 1 reason for choosing BMW over Mercedes.
Condition 2: List 1 reason against choosing BMW over Mercedes.
Then they asked participants for their preference for the BMW.
There was a preference for BMW
Second half of the experiment by Wänke et al. (1997) on ease of retrieval of car brands
Condition 1: List 10 reasons for choosing BMW over Mercedes.
Condition 2: List 10 reasons against choosing BMW over Mercedes.
More people were contra BMW than pro BMW.
What is the explanation and conclusion of Wänke et al. (1997) on ease of retrieval of car brands?
In general people find it really hard to come up with 10 reasons for anything. If people find it difficult to find 10 reasons in favor of BMW, they think there must not be many reasons and the BMW is not as good. When they had to come up with 10 reasons against the BMW, the BMW must be really good.
Conclusion experiment: meta-cognition can influence consumer judgements.
Summary
People first scan the environment. If their attention is drawn, they focus their attention on the stimulus. Then they understand it or they do not understand it and then they start to think about the message more.
And the way people process information can be influenced by the way the product is advertised.
