Lecture notes with Psychology of Advertising at Leiden University - 2015/2016

Lecture 1: Psychology of Advertising: setting the stage

The door in the face technique: making unreasonable requests so the actual question you want people to say yes to doesn’t same that unreasonable. It seems as if both parties are compromising, while that’s not true. People say yes eventually because of reciprocity.

Advertisings send and people receive. Advertising means payed communication to convince. People are exposed to a thousand ads a day. In the earlier advertisements, the focus lay on information, but nowadays the focus lies on convincing.

Functions of advertising are: sponsoring, it provides jobs, it gives information and it convinces people. The effects of advertising:

• On cognition are: on recognition and memory and on beliefs and thought.

• On affect are: on liking the product and on emotional response.

• On behavior are: purchase intention and on actually buying the product.

The hierarchy model of DAGMAR consists of: Define (unconscious), Advertising (conscious), Goal, (comprehension and image), Measured (attitude), Advertising and Result (Action). The hierarchy model FCB Grid looks like this:

The four stages of processing are between unconscious/automatic and conscious/reflective. They are pre-attentive analysis, focal attention, comprehension and elaborative reasoning. the pre-attentive analysis happens incidentally, with little attention and has an implicit influence. Different kinds are:

• Perceptual/conceptual processing: this relies on physical features (perceptual) and use of the object (conceptual).

• Matching activation

• Fluency

• Mere exposure

Shapiro investigated incidental exposure and this can still induce conceptual processing. He tested this with recalling something from an ad with pictures (with an object in an hand or not) or an article. The conclusion was that memory is based on concept.

The matching activation hypothesis states that the right hemisphere is for text and the left hemisphere for pictures. When one hemisphere is activated, the other is triggered to process materials more fully. The first is focal attention and the second is nonfocal attention. Conscious processing is necessary for focal attention, but not for nonfocal attention.

The conclusion of the experiment with a brand name and picture, is that even if brand names are not consciously attended to, if they are placed in the right place they and be easily processed by the unused hemisphere (and ultimately influence consumer attitudes).

Hedonic fluency is the subjective ease with which a stimulus can be perceived and processed. Ease can cause positive emotions which can be misattributed to a stimulus. These is a difference between perceptual fluency and conceptual fluency. Conceptual fluency is the match between concepts, like an athlete and a sports drink.

The mere exposure effect means that people like predictable things. When a neurtal object is repeatedly seen, this can cause positive feelings and evaluations.

Focal attention: when something catches your attention and then you pay attention to it. This can be voluntary (by choice, motivated by relevance of the stimulus, has effect on your mood and personality and is influenced by the need for cognition) or involuntary (because a stimulus stands out and processing motivation is low). Something can stand out because it is salient (humor), novel or vivid.

Vivid stimuli do not depend on context, are interesting, concrete, image provoking and near in time. Novelty causes a response of surprise and this causes them to reason more and pay more attention.

The expectancy discomfort model: expectations are formed and if this isn’t compatible with the actual performance, satisfaction is low.

Comprehension: this is important for persuasion, especially when it is careful and effortful. 80% of the commercials aren’t understood. Sometimes this is the goal of a commercial. The truth effect means that people tend to believe things more than not, even if it isn’t comprehended. Seeing is believing.

Elaborative reasoning: stimuli are actively related to stored knowledge and this requires full consciousness and attention. Three dimensions are: extent of thinking (superficial or deep), valence (positive or negative) and the object of thinking (self-schema or meta-cognition). This first means how you see yourself and congruence with a self-schema motivates to process more fully. Someone is convinced with strong arguments. Meta-cognitions means thinking about thoughts. Ease of retrieval is the ease with which product- and brand-related information can be retrieved from memory. This is a meta-cognitive process that influences persuasion and a form of hedonic fluency.

Wänke: people have a preference for BMW over Mercedes and tend to be more negative if they only have to give one reason for their preference. When they have to give 10 reasons, they are more positive, because it’s easier to think of one reason than of 10. If there aren’t a lot of reasons to not like the other brand, people assume that the product is okay. They forget that with everything, it’s much harder to think of 10 things. The conclusion of this experiment is that meta-cognition has an influence on consumer behavior.

Lecture 2: How advertising affects consumer memory

Memory and all

Memory can be seen as separate systems like sensory input, sensory memory (where information can be lost when it’s not transferred), the short term memory (STM, where information can also be lost if it’s not transferred) and the long term memory, LTM. Repetition happens in the short term memory. Information can be transferred from the short term memory to the long term memory and back.

Sperling studied recall by the recall of letters. After having seen some letters, there is a sound that indicates about which group of letters a question is going to be asked. This makes recalling those letters easier.

Proof for separate systems in memory:

• STM retrieval is faster than LTM retrieval.

• STM has limited capacity, about 7, and LTM doesn’t.

• There are primacy and recency effects: primacy effects means that the information is rehearsed more and is encoded into the LTM. Recency means that the information is still in the STM.

• STM is sensitive to mode (visual or acoustic information), while LTM is sensitive to semantics. In the STM Pee and Tea can be confused.

• Neurological impairment: the STM may be affected while the LTM is still intact. This is also true for the other way around.

Craik’s theory is that the memory doesn’t consist of separate systems, because of the role of attention and processing. If information is well processed, on a semantic level rather than phonological, memory increases.

The model shouldn’t be discarded, but information should be added to it. This is what Baddeley and Hitch did with their model, consisting of allocated attention and coordination, which influence the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad and the episodic buffer. The phonological loop has to do with language, the visuospatial sketchpad with visual semantics and the episodic buffer with short-term episodic memory.

There is also a difference between explicit memory (conscious awareness) and implicit memory (unconscious awareness). The explicit memory can be measured with recall and recognition and the implicit memory with word stem completion, word fragment identification (like a.p.l. > apple) and with a lexical decision task. This means that a person has to decide whether a group of letters is an actual word or not. There is an overreliance on explicit measure, also in marketing, and implicit measures can sometimes be superior.

Primes can affect implicit and explicit memory differently. Prior words can have an effect with or without context. This is followed by an implicit perception task in which you have to say whether it was a word. This is followed by an explicit recognition task. With context, recognition increases, but perception is worse.

Priming

People are like fish, because fish see something and react to it, without really thinking about it. People do this when they are primed.

Bargh studied what people did when they were primed with elderly. The reacted to this by walking to the elevator slower. Bargh can be seen as the guru of priming. Priming in advertising with food causes children to eat more.

Park researched priming with scrambled sentences with extravagance (a negative sentence about money) and control sentences, which are also negative. The primed people tended to buy extravagant product for someone else and less extravagant products for themselves.

Memory is relevant for advertising, to measure effectiveness and memory also affects brand choice. Implicit measures can capture positive effects that would otherwise go unnoticed, like banners. An example is a study about positioning of eyes in ads. If the eyes look towards the product, more people look at the product. This can only be measured with implicit methods.

Yue and colleagues researched involvement in a computer game and the effects of priming with an ad. It turns out that even if a person is highly involved with the game, the ad is noticed, which can be measured with implicit methods (T…… > tropical).

Brand choice

How do we make up our minds?

• This can be done online: immediately, while the information is being read. The recalled arguments are weakly related to evaluation.

• Or memory-based: later on and the recalled arguments for the choice where strongly related to evaluation.

Hastie and Park research was about who is suitable for a job as computer programmer? After a 5 minute conversation, someone has to make a choice, or the fact that a choice has to be made is known beforehand. The correlation between memory and judgement is stronger in the memory-based group, who don’t know they have to make a choice before having the conversation. The implication here is: how useful is it to rely so much on recall to ad effectiveness?

When someone chooses online, the information is elaborated and a person relies more on this than on the information itself. How we make decisions isn’t always based on the specifics of the product ad more on our evaluations.

When someone makes a choice, they go through the following steps: total set > awareness set > considerations set > choice set > decision set. In the presence of the products is stimulus based and the opposite of this is in the absence or memory based. This is not the same as online and memory-based, but similar.

Lee researched the distinction between conceptual and perceptual priming.

• Conceptual: a brand is seen in a sentence. This is tested with listing as many brands as possible. More recall happens with recalling in a sentence. Conceptual priming on memory based choice means that people are asked to choose between two brands.

• Perceptual: just the brand name is seen. This is tested with word completion. More recall happens when just the brand name is seen. Perceptual priming on stimulus based choice means that people are asked to choose between any brand.

The combination of the brand name shown in a sentence, choosing between any brand and conceptual priming based on memory and the combination of seeing just the brand, choosing between two brans and perceptual priming on stimulus based choice work best.

Priming doesn’t always work for the better, because priming with Dr. Pepper can cause people to buy Coca Cola, which is related. This is because of the fact that they just remember something about Cola and Coca Cola may pop in their head instead of Dr. Pepper, because this is the dominant response. They do buy Dr. Pepper, when primed with Dr. Pepper, when something positive is said about Dr. Pepper.

Interference

Advertising clutter can cause interference. Reactive is the effect of what you are learning now on what you have learned. Proactive is the effect of what you have learned on what you are learning now. Sources of competitive interference can be the product (two similar products) or the context (similar advertising execution).

Burke and Srull studied the competitive interference. The retroactive type happens after having watched an ad while not yet considering to buy the product. They tested this with watching a target ad and confusing ads afterwards. This causes interference for similar products. The proactive type is tested with watching the confusing ads before the target ad. This causes interference for similar products too, but it isn’t affected by processing a goal. This could be a matter of time. Most important from this research is that ads can interfere and that clutter and repetition is problematic. This is moderated by processing goal and familiarity. It can be better incorporated in existing schemas and there is more attention for familiar brands.

Confusion isn’t all that bad for copycats of familiar brands. They actually hope for it. If confusion is bad, the ad has to be repeated. Repetition has an effect on attention, encoding and retrieval. These have less effect with repetition, because the message is received in different situation, with different moods, contexts and learning happens in different ways. Repetition can be risky when it comes to attitudes, so repetition has to be spread out. The more repetition, the more positive the attitude up to a certain point. Than the attitude becomes more negative, because of boredom for example.

Primacy in an ad block works best, because people have more attention, so the message is better processed. The end (recency) may work when the decision about the product has to be made right after the ad. Retrieval cues can help. Information after the fact may distort memory (like with leading questions in the car ‘crash’ experiment of Loftus). Seeing the ad before having the product can cause selective information search. Seeing the ad after having the product can cause memory reconstruction and selective retrieval or distortion.

The relevance of memory to advertising is storing, retrieving, explicit VS implicit memory, primes and schemas, multiple inputs, distortion and much more.

Lecture 3: Advertising and Attitudes

According to the theory of planned behavior, attitudes are important determinants of behavior. The definition of an attitude is that they are evaluative responses, directed towards something (unlike a mood) and are based on cognition, affect and behavior. There is some disagreement on the definition, like whether attitudes are unidimensional or not and whether they are context dependent or not. The problem here is that there is a distinction between explicit and implicit attitudes.

Ways to measure implicit attitudes are affective priming and implicit association test. In the first case, negative, neutral and positive pictures are shown briefly before the target picture. The question is how a person then feels about the target picture. The slower the reaction, the more negative the implicit attitude is. With IAT a picture is shown and the test subject has to press the correct buttons. It’s easier to press the button, when it is in check with your implicit attitudes, like white & good and black & bad.

Implicit attitudes cause implicit behavior like less touching of black confederate hands, when sharing a pen. This also includes sitting further away, being less friendly, making less eye contact and blinking more. This shows a negative implicit attitude. This behavior isn’t conscious or under voluntary control.

Are attitudes unidimensional?

Attitudes are likely not unidimensional. This can be proved with dual attitudes. This is a combination of old implicit attitudes and new explicit ones. An old attitude about McDonalds can be that it’s fun, because you had parties there as a kid, but a new one could be that they serve unhealthy food. Implicit associations can cause controversial products, like when a lot of racists wear Lonsdale, even it Lonsdale doesn’t want to be associated with racism. This also goes for unhealthy products. Alcohol triggers the reward system and is associated with positive things, like parties, when there are a lot of negative consequences. This also goes for smoking.

Society relevant products, like green, electric cars, don’t look as cool as non-electric cars (implicit), but are good (explicit). Hygienic products like tampons are gross (implicit), but are necessary (explicit). This can cause disgust for products that touch hygienic products. Even after an hour of distraction, these implicit attitudes have a strong effect. Capacity and motivation make it easier to suppress implicit attitudes.

Are attitudes context dependent?

According to the file-drawer-model, attitudes are learned and retrieved from memory and are therefore stable. According to the attitudes-as-constructions-theory, attitudes are created online. The sources of information for this are relatively stable. There is evidence for both views. Political attitudes remain stable, but these can be changed when the reason for these attitudes is challenged. These views do not exclude each other. Weaker attitudes may be constructed online and stronger ones are retrieved.

Attitude strength formation and function

Consequences of strong attitudes are that they are more stable over time, they have a stronger impact on behavior, a greater influence on information processing and have a bigger resistance to change. According to Priester, strong attitudes on Colgate, cause a positive feeling and choosing Colgate. A weak attitude causes a negative or positive feeling and it doesn’t really matter if the toothpaste is Colgate or not. The conclusion is that attitude strength affects consideration of choices and actual choices.

Attitudes are strong when they are accessible, important, certain (non-ambivalent) and there is a lot of knowledge about it. If there is ambivalence, the attitude is equally positive as negative and the person is conscious of this. It an attitude is accessible, it is resistant to change and predicts behavior.

According to Fazio, a person chooses a particular object as a reward, when the person is first asked if they like the product. A faster reaction on this question, predicts the influence the question has on their choice.

Ambivalent attitudes are less stable, not easy, accessible, less predictive and are less resistant to influence and change. Heuristics have more influence on weak attitudes.

Haddock researched attitudes about Tony Blair, like attitudes about BMW verses Mercedes. These had the same results, except for the fact that people assume that there must not be that many negative attributes, only when an attitude is weak or ambivalent beforehand.

Attitude formation isn’t the same as attitude change

Formation happens with new objects and are based on cognition, affect and behavior (ABC). Cognition is based on experience (direct or indirect). Direct is more stable and accessible. This means that you experience something firsthand and indirect means that you hear about it from someone else. With samples, reciprocity kicks in. You get something, so you buy the product to give something back. Indirect experience has an influence when the person is an expert and trustworthy. Booking.com uses many different forms of persuasion. Heuristics can be used, like the country of origin and price. If something is more expensive, people assume that the product is of high quality.

Mere exposure, conditioning and affect as information are examples of how attitudes are formed on the basis of affect. Conditioning is when a dog starts drawling with food and not with the sound of a bell, the dog does start drawling with just the bell, if the two are put together enough times. They become associated. In advertising, the association between the product and a nice feeling is important. Coca Cola is a good example of this. Retrieval cues may help. Slow music can cause people to walk slowly and buy more. Music can also be used to create a positive feeling. According to the affect-as-information-hypothesis, associations and feelings have an influence on evaluations through feeling, rather than mere associations (like with conditioning).

According to Schwarz and Clore, sunshine causes a more positive mood and people are more satisfied with their life. They tested this by calling random people and comparing their answers with the weather at the time and place of the person. When people are asked about the weather, they become aware and the misattribution doesn’t take place. Dardis’ research measured a similar response. It matters how well a person does in a video game for the influence on brand attitudes. If the game is easy to play, the attitude is more positive.

According to the self-perception theory, people infer their attitudes based on the perceptions of their own behavior. Strack, Matin and Stepper researched rating cartoons in combination with holding a pen between your lips (frown) or teeth (smile). When a person is smiling, the attitude is more positive. This happens because the attitude is created online.

Janis and Kiny researched the change in attitudes in people who give a counter attitudinal speech. This has an influence, even with strong attitudes. This demonstrates the effects of role playing.

Function

Attitudes have different functions:

• An adjustment function and utilitarian function: providing avoidance/approach techniques.

• An ego defensive function: protecting the self-concept.

• A value expressive function: conveying one’s personal attitudes.

• A knowledge function: organizing and interpreting knowledge.

This overlaps with why people acquire goods: utilitarian goals, self-expression (signaling status), identity building goals and hedonic goals (feeling good about yourself).

Lecture 4: How it really works

Advertising is not so much a theory, but a meaningful business and a great profession. The Dutch Association of Advertising agencies (VEA) is about advocacy, promotion and talent development. The VEA believes that creativity the motor of progress is.

A bit of history

Rosser Reeves was the inventor of the U.S.P. and a pioneer in television advertising, amongst other things. Het created commercials for Anacin (a kind of aspirin). In 1940 consisted of radio spots that presented the product as new and different. TV advertising has the advantage of the visual medium an thus works better in 1956. Anacin also used this. These commercials increased the sales of Anacin with 200%.

Unique selling proposition means that a unique claim is made for a product and this is repeated. An example of this is that Anacin is used against ‘the hammer in the head’ (a headache). This is repeated and associated with Anacin. The claims made in the commercials had to be altered, because they weren’t entirely true (Anacin eases tension, recommended by doctors). The introduction of Anacin Arthritis Pain Formula caused the creation of other specialized analgesic products.

David Ogilvy focuses on the consumer, instead of the product, around 1950. He came up with something creative to advertise a particular kind of shirt (Hathaway campaign). He did a photo shoot with the shirt in combination with an eyepatch. He did this so the ad wouldn’t be a simple example of a well-dressed man with a boring background. The eyepatch caused ‘story appeal’, which means that a person begins to wonder about the ad. This made Hathaway and Ogilvy himself instantly famous.

Bill Bernbach’s opinion was that logic and over-analysis can immobilize and sterilize an idea. He started a campaign for the VW Beetle, which was ugly and associated with Hitler. The idea was: “Think small”, because the car was so small. The ad is about how slow the car is, which is confusing, and then states that although it’s an slow car, it is among the most advanced. This is called a straw man situation: comparing the Beetle to an ideal car and then convince you that it’s a good thing. It’s not fast, it’s smart. Everyone can identify with this and find it desirable.

According to Jean-Marie Dru, disruption is good, because it challenges conventions, it shakes up the marketplace and it has the ability to create a new future.

Brands

The difference is the way we experience the physical product. How brands grow is a book, which is a new standard work for science-based marketing.

The seven principles of growth are:

• Massclusivity: light users are the key to success. These are more important than heavy buyers, because there are more light users. Heavy buyers also tend to buy anyway. A focus on everyone is a guarantee for success. Very few people are loyal to one brand. People are loyal switchers. They switch between brands in their evoked set. Light buyers seem to be more loyal then heavy buyers. Heavy buyers buy more different brands. They tend to have more knowledge about the category and are more willing to try.

• Easy to buy: the product is physically and mentally available.

• Building memory structures: bigger brands have broader memory structures, because they use existing structures and they build new ones. Effective advertising doesn’t contain persuasive USP’s, but focuses on building memory structures.

• Getting noticed.

• Creating distinctive communication assets, like Coca Cola does with Santa and Happiness.

• Staying competitive.

• Being consistent.

Seven immutable principles of Power Brands are:

• Massclusivity: exclusivity for you.

• Imcompatible worlds

• Conflict: all brands solve a conflict (an unwanted situation VS a wanted situation). Brans that solve conflict, are relevant and successful. If you have a body, you’re an athlete (Nike). The mission of the brand should be to show desires.

• Magical mission: it’s not about what you do, but about what you mean to the customer. Creative insight from Dove is: “You are more beautiful than you think”. Creative insight of the NS is: “People don’t like NS, but they do like traveling by train”. Creative insight of KPN is: “Technology gives us a new freedom, which we didn’t have before”. The basis is magical mission, is one-word-proposition. This means that people are reminded of the brand by one word (Beer? – Heineken).

• USP

• Storytelling

• Imagination

Processes

Agency works in a cirkel and leads to jobs: brief (project manager) > strategy (mediadirector) > creative idea (creative director) > production (producer) and back again. It’s not about internet, it’s about being there at the right place on the right time. It’s about surprise, intrigue and relevance, about co-making communication and about the vanishing of borders. The borders between client, ad agency, medium and consumer vanish.

Digital technology will and won’t change the game. It will, because it creates an incredible amount of opportunities to get in touch with the target audience. It won’t, because it will still be about creating this big idea, where technology will help us innovate. In the end, it’s about neurons, not neutrons. Ad agencies become creative agencies through creative solutions.

Lecture 5: Advertising and Attitude Change

Theories of persuasion

Who says what to whom with what effect?

McGuire’s information processing model includes different stages in processing of persuasive messages. Persuasions attempts can have different effects at different stages.

Exposure or presentation > attention or awareness > comprehension or understanding > acceptance (yielding or agreeing) > retention > action (behavior in line with the message).

This is an hierarchical model with three assumptions:

• You have to go through all the steps before behaving a certain way.

• Systematic processing is required.

• Learning of the message is essential for persuasion.

All of these have been countered with evidence, so we need a new model.

The cognitive response model has an active listener, instead of a passive one. Thoughts generated by the message are important for persuasion. Listeners relate the message they see with the information they already have. Mainly favorable thoughts about the message cause intended change and mainly unfavorable thought about the message cause unintended change or no change.

The thought listing technique includes listing thoughts during a presentation. Afterwards these are categorized on relevance and favorability. An index is created, which has an influence on attitudes.

Exposure > cognitive (thoughts about the product, source and execution of the ad) > attitudes (brand attitudes and attitudes towards the ad) > purchase intention.

Argument strength influences thoughts. Strong arguments cause a favorable thoughts, which causes intended change. Weak arguments cause unfavorable thoughts, which cause unintended change or no change at all. But this isn’t always the case, like with distraction, so we need a new model.

The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and the heuristic systematic model (HSM) are examples of dual process models. In the ELM there is a distinction between the central route (thinking hard about information) and the peripheral route (paying attention to unimportant information). In the HSM there is a distinction between systematic processing (which resembles the central route in the ELM) and heuristic processing (which resembles the peripheral route in the ELM). There are differences, but the most important point here is that both models include a critical processing route and a superficial route.

Message > high motivation and high ability > deep processing > lasting change.

Message > low motivation or low ability > superficial processing > temporary change. In this case, heuristics are more important.

How deep someone processes something, can be tested by measuring with thought listing or varying argument strength. If in the second case, there is no effect, a person has processed this superficially. People sometimes use both systems (deep and superficial processing). Mood influences which system people use. If someone is sad, they tend to think more critically and when someone is happy, they tend to process more superficially and they are also more likely to take risks. Sometimes messages can be seen as an argument or heuristic. This also make measuring difficult. One has to pay attention to timing and source with advertising, like putting an ad in the paper, which will be read in the morning. People tend to process information from the paper use the central route and they have more attention at the beginning of the day.

People use central or systematic processing, with strong arguments. People use peripheral or heuristic processing when provided with good heuristics. People use these two types of processing, depending on ability and motivation. These can be influenced by an ad.

Ability

Knowledge, distraction or time pressure and repetition predict ability. When a person has a lot of knowledge about something and this is combined with strong arguments, strong attitude change is most likely. This also goes for no knowledge in combination with a long message. If people are distracted, they have a low processing intention and so they use heuristics. Watching two screens is multitasking and this means that people pay less attention to both screens. People do tend to go to a website in an ad more, which they just watched on the television, when they have a second screen, like a tablet. So a second screen is useful, when people can do something with the ad.

Repetition is wise when an ad is new, because people tend to have more ability to process, but after a while, it becomes annoying. The three hit theory describes three phases: curiosity, recognition (is the ad relevant for me?) and reminder (do I want to take action?). It takes a while for people to reach stage 2, but this depends on the brand, the idea an whether the message is new. If the message is new, more exposure is needed. Ability can be increased by increasing knowledge or skills. This is important for difficult products.

Motivation

Motivation is goal directed arousal. There are individual differences. Some people have a high need for cognition or a high need for closure. Motivation is greater in everyone though, when something is seen as personally relevant. This happens when that something relates to values, goals and needs or when people are prone to considerable risk. High relevance in combination with a strong argument (without a celebrity) causes the strongest change. This also goes for low relevance in combination with weak arguments, but with a celebrity.

Fear appeals are things of high threat, like lungs filled with tar for smokers. This makes people react faster, both when testing smokers and non-smokers. Attentional disengagement means that people pay attention to a place without a fear appeal. Smokers tend do this more (looking away), when faced with the tar filled lungs. They tend to actively ignore it, so fear appeals do and don’t work. Self-efficacy is important. This is whether a person believes they can succeed.

The protection motivation theory: perceived severity + vulnerability > threat + coping < perceived response efficacy + self-efficacy. Threat and coping lead to intention, which leads to behavior.

The extended parallel process model: fear appeal > low threat > no response needed.

Fear appeal > high threat > low efficacy > fear control processes, like denial.

Fear appeal > high threat > high efficacy > danger control processes, like changing, which is the goal.

Fear appeal can backfire or work with increase perceived risk and self-efficacy, like when the ad offers a way out. Tar filled lungs > stop smoking.

Message strategies

The strategy is to overcome resistance to persuasion. Two problems with this are that people don’t pay that much attention to ads and they resist to persuasion. This can be overcome with humor, sex, two-sides ads and product placement.

Humor is often used in low involvement products and is unrelated to the brand. Humor draws attention, increases positive affect and message liking, but it’s not a predictor of behavior, because it can distract from the message. Humor reduces counter arguing, brand recall and product recall, especially if humor isn’t relevant.

Implicit measures can measure whether humor can influence product choice by implicit attitudes, through evaluative conditioning. Humor causes more positive feelings about the brand, more positive implicit brand attitudes, lower brand recognition and higher product choice. The humor paradox means that consumers forget the product (low recall), but still want to have it (high product choice). Humor may stimulate a safe environment, which reduces the need for defensive reactions to fear appeals.

Fear increase can cause a decrease in persuasion, when humor is absent. With humor, there is more persuasion. This is mediated by defensive responses. This is also confirmed with other outcome measures. Humor appeals can have desirable effects and undesirable effects. This depends on goal, type of humor and audience. Humor can be a potential solution to the defensive reactions to fear appeals.

Sex helps though sexual suggestiveness, involves situations that portray sexual themes and romance or nudity and partial nudity. Sex appeals attract attention and evoke an emotional response that can affect mood, but this isn’t always positive. It can trigger embarrassment or disgust and sex can also distract from the message. This means that people remember less arguments. The sexual content should be consistent (relevant to) with the product service. Men and women vary in responsiveness to sexual marketing messages. Men respond more positively than women to partially dressed women. When sex is too obvious or inappropriate for the product, there are no differences between men and women. With no cognitive load, men and women react negatively to in the face sex, but with cognitive load, men react more positive. Sex appeals can have desirable and undesirable effects. This depends on type of sex (relevant or not) and audience (men or women and type of processing.

Two-sides ads can use the straw man. These are also called honest ads. The negative aspect is already solved in the ad, so counter arguing is not necessary. The ad does have to have at least more positive arguments than negative ones to have a positive effect. The rule is 2 out of 5 arguments are negative. Important attributes should not be criticized.

Product placement means the paid inclusion of branded products of brands through audio or visual means, within mass media programming. People often don’t know that they are being influenced with product placement, so there is no need for counter arguing. It can lead to positive attitudes and can influence behavior. It can increase sales. When product placement is done obviously, it can backfire and people resist to persuasion. The person using the product, should fit the product, so it shouldn’t be a disliked character. Sometimes the product placement logo is used as a warning and this can cause backfire, because then people are aware of the influence. They start to resist, because the attention to the sponsored content is increased. This increases critical processing, which cause more negative attitudes.

Lecture 6: How advertising influences buying behavior

Attitude-Intention-Behaviour

Decisions can be made automatic, uncontrolled, effortless, fast, unconscious and heuristic or reflective, controlled, effortfull, slow, conscious and systematic.

The principle of compatibility means that measures of attitudes will only be related to measures of behavior if both constructs are assessed at the same level of generality. General attitudes predict general behavior and specific attitudes predict specific behavior. Attitudes toward safe sex does not predict condom use well, but attitudes toward condom use does predict condom use well.

The theory of planned behavior: behavior is caused by behavioral intention, which is caused by attitudes toward behavior, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. Behavioral beliefs and evaluation of behavioral outcomes influence attitudes toward behavior. Normative beliefs and motivation to comply influence subjective norms. Control beliefs and perceived power influence perceived behavioral control.

The standard model can be extended with anticipated regret and identity similarity. This is the extent to which performing and behavior would be consistent with people’s self-concept and thus serve their self-expression goals. The postcode lottery provides non-players with feedback about what they would have won, had they played the lottery. When one does not play and one’s postcode is drawn, one knows that one would have won, had one played the lottery. This particular feedback is absent in most lotteries. This causes a lot of regret.

Behavioral intention is: I intend to do, while implementation intention is: I intend to do in this situation. By specifying time and situational context in which behavior should be performed, people remember their intention better, when the encounter the situation in which to act. It increases the association between situational cues and the response is instrumental for obtaining the goal.

Aarts, Dijksterhuis and Midden investigated cognitive and behavioral effects of forming implementations intentions. People were asked to attain an new goal by interrupting an mundane behavior. Some people enriched their goal with implementation intentions, while others did not. All participants were told the same location to go to. Half of the people were asked to plan how to spend a coupon and the other half how to collect it. Then they had to do a lexical decision task. The conclusion is that planning leads to more collected coupons, because the people were more likely to be reminded by the situational cues to perform the action. This was about plan to act.

Planning to resist can be done by identifying situations in which the risk of yielding to the target temptation is particularly high. Also, when thinking of a coping response that is likely to be effective in helping to resist the temptation and cognitively rehearsing to link this coping response to the situation. Effectiveness is dependent on remembering the coping response at the right time and whether the response is effective in resisting the temptation.

The goal is to target the main driver of behavior, which can be attitudes. Perceived benefits can be increased and perceived costs can be decreased. Subjective norms could also be the main driver, which can be dealt with by providing desirable social norms. Perceived behavioral control can be dealt with by increasing perceived control.

Automaticity of Behaviour

Automatic processes are processes that occur without intention, effort or awareness and do not interfere with other concurrent cognitive processes. Attitudes, norms, goals and behavior can be primed by the environment and by other people’s social and physical behavior. People aren’t aware of the influence of the prime.

The function of perception is doing. Tucker and Ellis researched automated behavioral tendencies. When we see an object, possible behavioral tendencies are automatically activated. Reaction time for pushing a button is less, when pushing the left button and the object is right and the other way around. People also make less mistakes in this case. Brain areas associated with grasping are activated by an object that you can grasp. Images of food activate brain areas associated with taste.

Perception-Behavior link

The basic premise is that stereotypes about groups are represented in memory and that they include a set of traits, among other things. When stereotypes are activated, all of the traits are activated too. So one should get trait-consistent behavior, when primed with a stereotype. When people are primed with the elderly, they tend to walk slower to the elevator. The priming can be done with scrambled sentence task, in which a person has to unscramble a sentence with prime words, bingo.

The chameleon effect can be researched in the following manor: a person interacts with two confederates in two different sessions, in which they describe photo’s. Confederate one shakes his foot and the second touches his face a lot. The test subject tends to react to this, by copying the behavior. People are like frogs and chameleons, because perception always activates behavioral tendencies.

Automatic norm activation

Norms are knowledge-based beliefs, shaped by social influence and triggered by social cues. They are if-then rules that state that in certain situations individuals should behave according to the social norm. social norms might guide behavior automatically, without individuals being aware of their influence. When people are primed with a library in a lexical decision task, they tend to respond later to silence words. They also pronounce words less loudly. When primed with a restaurant, people tend to display more well-mannered eating behavior.

Automatic goal activation

In the next experiment, the goal-priming manipulation is people completing a word puzzle task with words, that were either related or unrelated to achieving. In the next task it was measured if people continued with a scrabble task, after they were told to stop. People primed with achieving, do continue more often.

In this experiment, the goal-priming manipulation is people doing the scrambled sentence task, with half primed with the importance to achieve and the other half with the importance of helping. It was measured to what extent people helped others with puzzles. The helping prime causes people to help more often.

Cues in the environment lead to consistent behavior: effects of scent and music

In this experiment, people filled out a questionnaire in a small room with a bucket of water and cleaner or without. Then they perform a lexical decision task and a taste test with toast. In a lexical decision task, people have to indicate as quick and accurate as possible whether strings of letters are words or not. A faster reaction time for target words is an indication of accessibility of the concept. This experiment shows that scent activates related concepts and behaviors. If there is a bucket of water and cleaner in the room, people tend to clean their crumbs more after eating the toast. In-store music affects product choice, like French music causes people to buy more French wine. Music also activates related knowledge.

Hidden persuaders: unconscious processes

Vicary claimed to have significant effects due to subliminal advertising, but later admitted that his study was fabricated. Scientist throughout the years who have tried to replicate it, have largely failed, but not all of them. Vicary claimed to have boosted Coca Cola and popcorn sales by priming people with ‘drink Coca Cola’ and ‘eat popcorn’ in a movie. This is the first example of subliminal persuasion, though it’s fake. Dijksterhuis researched this and found that after a drink-related prime, participants tend to drink more.

Aarts et al., researched the impact of needs. In this case, the influence of manipulated thirst (physical need) on cognition and behavior. In this experiment participants eat salt, sweet or no liquorish. This was done to induce thirst. Then drink-related items were made more accessible and thirsty people responded quicker. They also drink more and recall more drink-related items.

The experiment of Vicary was repeated in a way with Lipton Ice. They were subliminally primed with ‘Lipton Ice’ or ‘Npeic Tol’ and were then asked to choose between Spa Red or Lipton Ice. In the thirsty from liquorish and the not thirsty category, people tended to choose Lipton Ice more, but this was stronger in the thirsty category.

The conclusion that can be drawn, is that priming only works when the prime is goal-relevant. More generally, these findings suggest that a subliminal prime of a specific means to accomplish one’s current goal, will positively influence a person’s actual choice, for that particular means. This is so, because it is made highly accessible through the prime.

In the Lipton experiment, habits were also measured. If people have no habit, priming a product brand increases consumption of the brand. If people have a strong habit, priming the habitual brand does not increase consumption, because it is already high. If people have a strong habit for an alternative brand, priming does increase the consumption of the primed brand.

So, research has shown that if the conditions are right, subliminal advertising or other forms of priming can be made to work to promote the brand, to activate related knowledge, to activate behavior and to activate goals.

Perception always activates behavioral tendencies, but people can inhibit these tendencies, so were not lost yet. Limits to automaticity can be researched by priming with helpfulness or with a control prime. People tend to help more with picking up regular pens instead of leaky ones and if they’ve been primed with helpfulness. This also goes for people who aren’t in a hurry and are primed with helpfulness.

Lecture 7: Advertising and Social Influence

Influences of Cialdini

The most influential research deals with compliance, so there’s no change in attitudes. The principles of Cialdini work by click-whirr responses, which means that people react mindlessly with scripts and heuristics. Social influence principles are less effective for long term behavior change.

The first principle is social proof

People tend to follow others, especially if those others are similar. People automatically think that if everyone is doing it, it must be good. We do this, because we have a need for approval, which includes the need to belong and the need for correct information. This is especially true when we feel uncertain, like shown by Asch. Goldstein, Griskevicius and Cialdini have shown that people reuse their towel more if an ad says: 75% of the guests who stayed in this room reused their towels.

The second principle: commitment

People like to be consistent and they dislike to be inconsistent. This feels bad, like with cognitive dissonance. Strategies to reduce this, are remaking dissonant cognitions, adding new consonant cognitions and changing behavior. Advertising strategies consist of making people commit to something and making people reduce the dissonance by changing behavior.

• An example of this, is the foot-in-the-door technique. This means that people comply with a small request and then asking for something bigger, but related.

• Low balling consists of compliance with a small request and then the conditions change, so that the initial request becomes more costly. So, a person wants to sell you a car for 200 bucks and when you comply, he says the car is actually 300 and then you still comply, though you wouldn’t have bought the car for 300 if you knew beforehand.

• Social labelling means assigning a label to a person and then asking for something in line with that label. An example is asking a person if they love animals, which is a question people usually say yes to, and then asking for money for an animal fund.

The third principle: reciprocity

People feel in debt, when they get something from others and they want to repay the favor. Tit-for-tat is based on this and it can have long term benefits if people trust each other. An example strategy of this, is the door-in-the-face technique. In this case, a person asks a big request and then a small request, so it looks like you’re both compromising, when just the other person is. The that’s not all technique consists of keep giving positive things. Free samples also cause a feelings of reciprocity.

The fourth principle: liking

People are more easily persuaded by people they like. People are liked when they are similar, familiar, close to us or people who we associate with positive things. The name letter effect means that people like things that start with the same letter as their first name. A Tupperware party uses familiar and close others to persuade people to buy Tupperware. Facebook uses this too. Using people who we associate with positive things, can be done by using well liked celebrities in ads. We also love compliments, even if we’re aware of people sucking up.

The fifth principle: authority

People tend to follow the expert and authority, like shown by Milgram. This effect is moderated by the white coat, which the authority wears. We do this, because authorities are usually right (heuristic) and obeying authorities has an advantage in society. Authorities are often trustworthy and credible. Different sources of authority are showing titles, clothes and trappings (items of symbolic value). Expensive cars show status, so in an experiment, people honk less when expensive cars stand still in front of a green traffic light, in comparison to cheap cars. Celebrities can also be seen as authorities, in combination with liking.

The sixth principle: scarcity

Opportunities seem more valuable when it’s limited. People usually thinks that if something is unique or scarce, it must be good, because they don’t like to lose things. A gain/loss frame means that ads work better, when they only name gains and not the losses, which are implied. Another reason that people resist limitations to freedom, which is called reactance. People value their freedom and when it’s taken away, they want to regain it. Tactics include the limited number technique, the deadline tactic, supply scarcity (not a lot of the product is made) and demand scarcity (something is sold out, because other people want it too). Cialdini calls this contagious competition, because social norms may also be at work.

The next study isn’t in the book, by Herpen, Pieters and Zeelenberg. Research was done on product involvement (with wine) and on whether people had a need for uniqueness. The hypothesis in this study were that scarcity only has an influence on preference when people are involved, that a need for uniqueness goal increases the influence of supply scarcity and that this the influence of demand scarcity decreases

The first hypothesis was confirmed. When people are highly involved, scarcity has the strongest effect. The second hypothesis was also confirmed. When a goal to be unique is active, people prefer the supply scarce wine. The third hypothesis wasn’t confirmed. A need for uniqueness goals doesn’t decrease the influence of demand scarcity. Demand scarcity increases preference, regardless of uniqueness goals. The overall conclusion was that demand scarcity seems most influential. However, scarcity doesn’t have universal effects, but depends on the type of scarcity and individual differences in motivation. It is interesting to see that when people are highly involved, they tend to not process by heuristics and scarcity still had an effect.

Online advertising

Aspects of online advertising include having more control over contact with ads and over the content of the ads. There is less social presence than in real life and more anonymity. Online advertising gives more possibilities for targeting, like with cookies. This influences online trust. Trust is a willingness to make oneself vulnerable to another in the presence of risk.

Features of online communication do not help with trust, when people feel anonymous, there is less social presence and cues and there is a time lag (asynchrony). Increasing trust can be done by showing that you’re benevolent and that you have integrity. It’s also important to show capability. The third aspect increases feelings of trust the most and also subsequent purchases. But feelings of trust also depend on individual differences, like regulatory focus.

Regulatory focus means that some people have a prevention focus, so they want to minimize losses, and others have a promotion focus, so they want to maximize gains. People with a prevention focus want safety and security cues. People with a promotion focus want to see professionality, which shows capability. A safe bet is to do both: having a professional website and including safety cues.

Being online means multitasking. The threaded cognitions theory says that multitasking is possible, if the tasks use different resources, no interference, but not if they use the same resources. Multitasking increases cognitive load and decrease concentration, so people are more likely to process heuristically. If people see something on a computer, they tend to believe that it’s true more often than something seen on paper, because they process heuristically.

Three types of content which influence persuasion are:

• Explicit online advertising: like banners. These are most effective with a picture on the left and text on the right, according to the matching activation theory.

• More subtle online ads: like decision tools. These can have an information function, like comparison matrices, of a persuasion function, like recommendation agents. The last kind are more influential, but also have a higher chance of reactance.

• Online word of mouth (WOM): like reviews.

WOM may be more important than regular ads. Negative WOM is more influential than positive. This is because of the negativity bias, which means that negative things have a greater effect than positive things. Emotions matter too for WOM. In an experiment with one review, when a reviewer was mad, it is seen as lower in informative value. If the reviewer was happy, it had no effect. Mad reviews lead to less strong negative evaluations, because they see the reviewers as irrational. When the experiment is done with more than one review, mad ones have a negative effect and positive ones a positive effect. Emotions help to increase WOM. Anger, happiness and surprise arouse emotions and this is what you want with an ad. Standing out helps also.

Effects of the online world

Online adds are often targeted and tailored to an individual. The google memory effect means that google is seen as a part of our memory, because when we don’t know things, we can just look them up. When people are told to remember something, they don’t, when they’re also told where they can look it up. We remember less fact, but we do remember where to find them. Neural consequences of the online world are that smart phones are seen as a part of our body and this has several side effects. Online ads offer more opportunities for more active engagement, better targeting and larger reach, but the basic way in which people process and remember information, from attitudes, and become persuaded is still fairly similar. So, we don’t need to change our approach to advertising entirely.

Goals of the entire course

• What is the impact of advertising on consumer behavior and what causes this?

• Which psychological processes make advertising effective?

• How do consumers make sense of advertising messages, which messages get across and why?

• How do new online and digital technologies affect consumer behavior?

Important things covered in the lectures

• The four stages going from unconsciousness to consciousness.

• What do we remember of ads and why does this influence consumer cognition and choices?

• Implicit and explicit attitudes and how to measure these (IAT).

• Wat works well and why? (Tactics)

• How do we change attitudes?

• Does changing attitudes mean changing behaviors and how?

• Social influence and online advertising.

The guest lecture of Cees Wijnobel is included in the exam, but only the theories and such covered, not the advertising examples.

Source

These lecture notes are based on the subject Psychology of Advertising from the year 2015-2016