Summary of The Psychology of Advertising by Fennis and Stroebe - 2nd edition

How is the stage of advertising prepared? - Chapter 1

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.

What does modern day advertising and its beginnings entail?

Advertising doesn’t create needs, but channels needs by reshaping them into wants. A side effect is the growing importance of a brand; this is the label with which to designate an individual product and differentiate it from competitors. Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is a summary statement used to meaningfully differentiate the brand from the competition. This is the key challenge in building brands.

Newspapers and magazines are among the main advertising media. Advertisers reach about a billion people per day through display and classified ads. Market shares have decreased due to television and internet, but magazines are still popular when targeting audiences with special interests; consumer segments that share common interests, values, or lifestyles.

Informational/argument-based appeal means straightforwardly informing consumers about the product, its price, and where it can be bought. This approach is also called the ‘reason-why approach’. A less aggressive approach, emotional/affect-based appeal, aims to influence the consumer’s feelings/emotions rather than his or her thoughts. These appeals coexist.

What do advertising and its functions entail?

Advertising has a place in society both on an aggregate and individual level. On an aggregate level it facilitates competition among firms for consumer attention, preferences, choice, and consumer resources. It also is the primary means by which companies have to inform consumers about products. In addition, it is a key source of funding for major mass media and it creates many jobs.

On an individual level, advertising can inform and persuade the individual consumer. With informing, the emphasis is on creating/influencing non-evaluative consumer responses like knowledge or beliefs. When persuading, the focus is on generating/changing an evaluative (valenced) response, in which the advertised brand is viewed as more favorable than before compared to competitors.

Sometimes informational appeals are called for, for example to communicate something new and potentially relevant about a product, service or idea. These appeals are used more frequently for durable goods (products that can be used repeatedly, e.g. a freezer), than for non-durable goods (e.g. food). They are also more often used in developed countries than in developing ones. The most frequent communications are about performance, availability, components/attributes, price, quality and special offers.

The product life cycle (PLC) has four stages:

1. Introduction stage: create brand awareness and induce product trial.

2. Growth stage: build market share, improve the product, or develop brand extensions and communicate those.

3. Maturity stage: consolidate/strengthen market share and shift of focus to creating consumer brand loyalty and maintaining top-of-mind awareness.

4. Decline stage: use informational appeals to convey new/additional uses.

For more complex new products/services, advertising may provide a means to ‘educate’ the consumer about the way they work. For existing products, informational appeals are also used when there are problems with the product. Communicating a product recall means informing consumers that they need to return their product for repair of refunding (e.g. safety implications). Advertising may also have a corrective function, which is used when consumers have misconceptions of the product or when its reputation is bad.

Informing consumers may sometimes backfire or be ineffective in changing misconceptions. In that case, you need persuasive appeals. These are intended to change consumer responses (e.g. McDonald’s stating that their burger were made of 100% pure beef after the rumor that they used worms to produce their foods). The function of advertising is to aid in the marketing or products and services, and the key function of marketing is to facilitate the exchange of value between manufacturers and consumers. It is the persuasion brought by advertising that should result in buying/using the product. In all PLC stages persuasion strategies will flank information appeals in order to increase the odds of consumers responding positively to the product.

Advertisers can use two strategies to achieve the goal of persuasion:

1. Alpha strategies: By directly increasing the attractiveness of the offer or the message these strategies serve to increase the tendency to move toward the advocated position, and influence a consumer’s approach motivation.

2. Omega strategies: By reducing consumer reluctance to accept the position these strategies can persuade because they reduce/minimize the tendency to move away from the position, and influence a consumer’s avoidance motivation.

Alpha strategies include the use of strong, compelling arguments that justify accepting the message position, or communication scarcity. Omega strategies reduce resistance by directly counter arguing consumer concerns; distracting consumers to interfere with their concerns regarding the message position; reframing the message so that it does not appear to be a blatant persuasive attack; or using negative emotions.

What are the contemporary perspectives on the effectiveness of advertising?

• The naive approach states that advertising simply must be effective because it is so omnipresent and expenditures are vast and ever increasing.

• The economic approach correlates advertising expenditures with changes in sales volume in order to address the effects.

• The media approach suggests that effectiveness is conceptualized in terms of the number of individuals in a target population who have been exposed to a message, thereby looking at the ‘reach’ of the message. The problem is that it cannot inform on the impact of the exposure.

• The creative approach states that a message is effective to the extent that is it well-made and creative.

• The psychological approach – the perspective adopted by this book – aims at identifying advertising effects at the individual level. Specific advertising stimuli are related to specific and individual consumer responses. It also seeks to articulate the intrapersonal, interpersonal, or group-level psychological processes that are responsible for the relationship between ad stimuli and consumer responses.

What are the consumer responses to advertising on an individual level?

Cognitive consumer responses are beliefs and thoughts about brands, products, and services that consumer generate in response to advertising. They include brand awareness, recall and recognition, but also associations, attitudes and preferences.

Affective responses are various more or less transient emotions and moods that can occur as a function of an exposure. They differ in valence and intensity, for example; warmth, irritation, fear, pride.

Behavioral responses reflects the intention and actual behavior in response to advertising, like buying the product, choosing a brand, product trial, brand switching, and discarding a product.

Assessing advertising effects on consumer responses

Relationships can be correlational or causal.

A correlation is an observed change in one variable is associated with a change in the other (increase-increase is a positive correlation; increase-decrease is a negative correlation. Zero correlation means no relationship). Correlation is a necessary, but insufficient condition for causality. To infer that A causes B, three conditions must be met:

1. The antecedent A must precede the consequence B;

2. Changes in A must be associated with changes B;

3. No other explanation for the change in B must be present than the change in A.

An experiment is particularly suited to establish causality. It involves manipulating one or more antecedents (independent variable) and assessing their impact on the consequence (dependent variable).

Random assignment ensures that the effects can be reliably attributed to the independent variables. In case two or more variables are manipulated within the same design, we speak of a factorial experiment.

Mediation analysis attempts to identify the intermediary psychological processes that are responsible for the effect of an independent on the dependent variable. There is mediation if:

• The independent variable A has an impact on the assumed mediator C;

• The variations in C significantly account for variation in the dependent variable B;

• The controlling for C significantly reduces or eliminates the impact of A on B.

A moderator is an individual difference that strengthens or changes the direction of the effect of the independent on the dependent variable. The effect of A on B is different for various levels of C.

Advertising effects can be best understood as joint or interaction effects between situational and person variables. An advertising message may have a larger impact on one consumer group than on another, or the direction of the effect may differ. Situational variables are external, environmental variables that act as independent/moderator variables that affect some consumer outcome (e.g. the promotional mix). Person variables are internal dimensions to a specific individual which typically act as moderators (e.g. consumer involvement or knowledge). Individual difference variables include personality traits like need for recognition and need for cognitive closure.

What does advertising and its variables in source and message entail?

Sources of advertising messages can be individuals, organizations or brands behind the product or service. A direct source is a spokesperson delivering a message or demonstrating a product. An indirect source is only associated with the product/service.

Source credibility

Credibility includes the dimensions of source expertise and trustworthiness. It mainly influences message processing and persuasion when recipients are not very motivated to process the message. Trustworthiness can be conveyed by stressing that the message source does not have a vested interest in delivering the message.

Source attractiveness

Many products are sold by appealing to sexual attraction and beauty. Attractiveness frequently functions as a halo: what is beautiful is good. The attractiveness halo-effect can easily extend beyond the model itself to positively affect the products with which he/she is associated.

Argument quality and message structure

Two extensively studies message variables are argument quality and message structure. Argument quality refers to what is communicated about the product. An argument is strong when a desirable product attribute is highlighted, coupled with the certainty that it will be delivered with the product.

Message structure refers to how product information is communicated. Presenting arguments first may increase consumer attention and processing intensity, while presenting them last may benefit them because they are most recently activated in memory. Other relevant message variables are message sidedness and argument-based versus affect-based appeals.

Message sidedness

A one-sided message is classic, biased ad with arguments supporting a conclusion favorable to the advertised brand. Two-sided advertisements include both positive and negative, or supporting and counterarguments. One-sided messages are more persuasive when recipients are favorably disposed to the message issue, while two-sided messages are more effective when the issue is unfamiliar/unfavorable to consumers.

Argument-based and affect-based appeals

Argument-based advertisements appeal to reason and use arguments, while affect-based advertisements use emotions and feelings. Experiential products lend themselves well to affect-based appeals. These appeals are also useful in low-involvement purchases. Fear-arousing communications try to scare the consumer into action by referring to risks that the consumer can either prevent or reduce by (not) buying the product. Risks can be:

• Physical: risk of bodily harm;

• Social: risk of being socially rejected;

• Performance: risk that competitive products will not perform as expected;

• Financial: risk of losing a lot of money/spending too much on an inferior product;

• Opportunity: the risk of missing an opportunity because of short supply.

What do advertising and its context entail?

Source and message variables are the first class in advertising. Second class of situational variables that may affect consumer responses are the communication tools that make up the promotional mix. This includes direct marketing, interactive marketing, sales promotion, PR, and personal selling. Integrated Marketing Communication refers to coordinating the elements in the promotion mix to create synergy between them. Advertising can no longer be viewed as invariably non-personal communication, but manifests itself in hybrid forms, including elements from other tools in the promotion mix.

Direct marketing

In direct marketing the firm directly and individually communicates with a potential customer, with the objective of generating a behavioral response. It includes database management, telemarketing, and direct response advertising. Word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing takes place when a product user tries to convince others to try the product as well.

In event marketing, events are used to get in touch with potential customers, often through sponsorship. Direct mail is a personalized form where consumers are typically addressed by their names.

Interactive marketing

In interactive marketing one uses the potential of the internet for marketing products and services. Advantages of the internet are that it is fast, that consumers can control timing and pacing of information, and that consumers may have more control of content than with traditional media. However, perceived social presence is lower online.

Sales promotion

Sales promotion is focused on generating an immediate behavioral response from the consumer. It is a form of ‘action communication’. It uses price-cuts and other forms of temporary incentives to generate sales on an ad hoc basis. Its five basic functions are: (1) to increase market size by directly stimulating sales; (2) to reward loyal customers; (3) to make existing customers more loyal; (4) to stimulate trial by new customers; and (5) to support other communications tools.

Negative effects may occur as sales promotion actions by competitors result in ever-increasing promotion costs for similar sales revenues. Sales promotions may affect the reference price and make consumers reject the offer when the promotion has ended. Price becomes the most salient product attribute in the consumer’s mind, corroding perceptions based on other features.

Public relations

Public relations (PR) refers to a communication instrument that is used to promote favorable perceptions about the organization as a whole. It includes sponsoring of events, communication with media gatekeepers, political stakeholders, pressure groups, government bodies and internal employees. It is a form of communication creating a mutual understanding between organizations and their publics. There are two types of PR: financial PR and marketing PR. Financial PR is aimed at informing and persuading the financial audiences with are essential for the long-term money-raising potential of the company, such as shareholders and investors. Marketing PR refers to the promotion of new products and services through free publicity.

Personal setting

Personal selling is a two-way, face-to-face form of communication to inform and persuade prospective buyers with the aim of yielding a behavioral response from them. An agent tries to foster compliance from a target.

Persuasion involves changing consumer beliefs and evaluative responses, while compliance is focused solely on overt behavior and compliance following a request. A key advantage is it has a higher overall impact on buyer behavior than many of the other tools, since a sales person can probe symptoms of consumer resistance and try to break through them. The product can be demonstrated and there can be negotiated on the sales terms. There is no waste in reaching audience members that are not part of the target group. Personal selling is relatively expensive and has a limited reach and frequency. There is also a high risk of message inconsistency.

What are the classic and contemporary approaches to conceptualizing the effectiveness of advertising?

Two approaches to conceptualize the impact of advertising: the modeling approach and the behavioral approach. The modeling approach focuses on the aggregate level; entire markets/market segments are the primary unit of measurement. The behavioral paradigm focuses on individual consumer responses as a function of specific advertising input variables (variables as independent variables, and consumer responses as dependent variables). The level of specificity is high in the behavioral paradigm such that the effects of individual ad characteristics on specific individual consumer responses are assessed by employing experimental research methods.

Sales-response models

Sales-response models aim to relate advertising inputs such as expenditures to aggregated output measures like sales and market share, in order to gain insight in the aggregated advertising effects as a function of aggregated advertising input. Two basic shapes are the concave sales-response model and the S-shaped model. According to the concave sales-response model sales follow the law of diminishing returns: the incremental impact of advertising on sales diminishes with increasing the communication budget. Once the entire population of non-buyers has been reached, additional ad expenditures will not add much in terms of impact. The

S-shaped model states that initial impact of advertising as a function of communication budget is low. After this phase, sales will start to increase exponentially with increasing expenditures, up to a saturation point where the impact of advertising will level off. After this phase, added investments may even lead to adverse results.

Disadvantages of an aggregate level of analysis are that advertising may not be the only causal factor, variables may interact, and factors outside the realm of the company may be responsible for aggregated effects. Response modeling is based on input-output representations without regard for the underlying processes that are responsible for the occurrence of a relationship between advertising input and sales output. Sales output is a behavioral measure and thus a behavioral approach is needed to complement the modeling approach in understanding advertising effects.

Early models of individual responses to advertising: hierarchy-of-effects models

Hierarchy-of-effects models propose several intermediate steps instead of assuming a direct link between ad message and consumer response. It is assumed that some form of consumer learning takes place following exposure to advertising.

There are three learning stages:

1. Cognitive stage: in this stage consumers engage in directing conscious attention to the target ad and thinking about its content.

2. Affective stage: here thinking gives way to emotional responses and the formation of attitudes or preferences associated with the advertised brand takes place.

3. Conative stage: includes behavior that might arise from exposure to advertising, including (re)purchase and (re)use.

The oldest hierarchy known is the AIDA model (1898). This model proposes that advertising reaches its impact on consumer behavior through the sequence of Attention (cognitive stage), Interest, Desire (affective stage), and Action (conative stage). The two basic functions of advertising are to inform and to persuade. Several modifications to this model have been proposed:

• AIDCA: Attention, Interest, Desire, Conviction, Action.

• AIETA: Awareness, Interest, Evaluation, Trial, Adoption.

• AKLPCP: Awareness, Knowledge, Liking, Preference, Conviction, Purchase.

None of the models provide a valid description of how advertising works. Other weaknesses are that in many situations the model will not hold because the fixed sequence of processes presupposes a high level of consumer involvement, while this is rather an exception than the rule.

The FCB grid proposes that advertising can be modeled along two key variables: the extent of thinking versus feeling and the extent of consumer involvement (low versus high). This can best be put in a planning grid with four cells. Each cell represents a combination of the extent of consumer thought and consumer involvement. All products and brands can be places in one of these four cells, based on their functional or emotional needs. They will also vary in the extent of involvement, since the personal relevance of these products will vary for each consumer. Finally, each quadrant also differs in sequence including the three components – think, feel and do – which are thought to account for the consumer decision-making process and the processing of advertisement about these products.

The FCB grid suffers from the same shortcoming as the previous mentioned models. The Rossiter et al. planning grid is a variant of the FCB grid. In this model high and low involvement product types are crossed with two classes of consumer motives. Positive motivations are transformational motivations and include sensory gratification, intellectual stimulation, and social approval (a consumer who craves milk because he likes the taste). Negative purchase motivations are informational motives and include problem removal, problem avoidance and normal depletion (a consumer who notices he has run out of milk and wants to buy a new bottle).

A weakness of both the FCB grid and the Rossiter et al. grid is that they link certain levels of involvement and motivation to certain products, and thus disregard the possibility that the same product may function in a different role for different individuals. Involvement and motivation refer to person variables, not to invariant attributes of a product/advertising stimulus.

Different from other models is DAGMAR, which is more explicit with regard to the specific communication objectives that advertising may have in each stage. It highlights a basic distinction in evaluative versus non-evaluative consumer responses to advertising.

Non-evaluative responses are: (1) creating category need; (2) brand awareness; and (3) increasing brand knowledge and comprehension.

Evaluative responses are: (1) brand attitude; (2) purchase intention; (3) purchase facilitation; (4) purchase; (5) satisfaction; and (6) brand loyalty
However, DAGMAR holds the same problem as the other models: there is no evidence that advertising affects the consumer in the sequence posited by the model.

Problems with all the hierarchy-of-effects models mentioned above:

• They are only concerned with the effects of advertising ad discrete media messages, whereas in reality, effects often come about in interaction with various other marketing factors;

• They represent a simplistic view of human behavior and response processes, with advertising as the stimulus and overt consumer behavior as the ultimate response without any regard for underlying processes and moderating conditions;

• They are inflexible, since they assume that all ads have the same specific effects;

• Especially the models that related specific effects with ways to measure them (DAGMAR) suggest that the postulated sequence of effects is valid, since its constituent components can be measured.

Consumer behavior and psychology in general are too complex to be captured in a single model.

Cognitive response approach

The cognitive response model shares with the various hierarchy-of-effects model the assumption that learning takes place in response to exposure to a persuasive message. However, it emphasizes the mediating role of idiosyncratic thoughts/cognitive responses that people generate when being exposed. Once a receiver is exposed to a persuasive message, he may actively add to and elaborate upon message content. Cognitive responding may lead to persuasion, active resistance, or a neutral, unchanged position. Major shortcoming: its failure to account for the processes that occur when ability and/or motivation are low, other than that the extent and valence of thoughts are less consequential for persuasion.

Dual process models

According to the dual process approach, information processing, judgment and decision-making must be viewed on a continuum. At one end of this continuum, information processing is characterized by controlled, slow, explicit, conscious, and analytic, bottom-up processing and judgment. People spend time scrutinizing the advertising message and construct meaning, beliefs, attitudes, judgment, and behavioral decisions. This mode of processing is engaged when the issue in a message is highly involving for the consumer. The quality of information becomes an important determinant of persuasion. Strong, compelling arguments evoke mostly favorable thoughts which will increase persuasion.

On the other end of the continuum, information processing involves relatively automatic, fast, impulsive, top-down processing and judgment. Consumers use prior knowledge, simple decision rules (heuristics), stereotypes and other quick guidelines to effortlessly and mindlessly arrive at a decision.

Attitudes formed/changed this way are less persistent, do not predict behavior very well, and are vulnerable to counter-persuasion. Intermediate forms are highly likely. Both modes complement each other and may even interact.

Unconscious processes in consumer behavior

• Activating a concept in consumer memory (priming) can directly affect overt behavior without the participant being consciously aware that the activation procedure has any influence on the subsequent behavioral response. Subliminal priming occurs when people are not even consciously aware of the stimulus, but still show even complex behavior as a function of the stimulus that is largely involuntary and automatic. Because of the low-involvement nature of most advertising, implicit processes are the rule rather than the exception when it comes to understanding the psychology of advertising.

How is information from advertising acquired and processed by consumers? - Chapter 2

Consumer psychology concerns itself with the psychological antecedents, processes and consequences involved in the acquisition, use and disposal of products and services by consumers. Social cognition focuses on the way cognitive and affective processes are affected by, and influence, social behavior. Consumers acquire, represent and encode advertising information in four stages:

1. Preattentive analysis: general, non-goal directed, ‘surveillance’ of the environment.

2. Focal attention: after noticing a stimulus, it is brought into conscious awareness where it is identified and categorized.

3. Comprehension: the process of forming inferences pertaining to the semantic meaning of the stimulus.

4. Elaborative reasoning: the process by which the semantically represented stimulus is related to previously stored knowledge that allows for simple/complex inferences.

Automatic, non-conscious processes are more influential during stage 1 and 2. Reflective, conscious processes play an important role during stage 3 and 4. Involvement determines the allocation of resources needed for (non)focal attention, thereby influencing how consumers proceed through the stages. Outcome-relevant involvement reflects the extent to which the acquisition and use of a product is deemed to have personal consequences for the consumer. This is determined by factors like price and consumer goals.

What does preattentive analysis entail?

Information acquisition frequently involves only little higher-order cognitive activity (a consumer may only glance a second at an ad) and is often automatic and non-conscious. This type of preattentive processing results in storage of information in implicit memory. Implicit memory effects occur when the consumer has been exposed to a stimulus previously and involve information processing that is fast, parallel and effortless. Explicit memory refers to a person’s conscious recollection of facts/events.

Feature analysis and semantic analysis

Preattentive processing mainly relies on feature analysis, which is a quick analysis of the environment for basic familiarity and significance.

It implies that the memory trace produced through exposure to an advertisement only contains information on the perceptual features/design of the ad and not on its meaning. Product choice is only affected by an ad if the product looks identical to the ad. Otherwise it won’t be recognized and thus there is no future influence.

Preattentive processing can also include conceptual processing, resulting in a semantic analysis; analyzing the advertised product, capturing its meaning (what is it and what does it do?).
An advantage of preattentive processing is that an advertisement can influence future choice, even if the consumer is presented at the point of choice with a representation of the product that is perceptually different from the product in the ad.

Matching activation

Hemispheric lateralization implies that our brain hemispheres have evolved specialized processing units for specific types of information. Picture processing involves higher activation levels of the right hemisphere since that hemisphere is tailored towards more holistic, impressionistic processing. Picture advertisements should be placed in the left visual field. Text advertisements should be placed on the right.

The matching activation hypothesis assumes that when one hemisphere is activated by the information that accommodates the processing style of that particular hemisphere, the other one is encouraged to elaborate on secondary material. Thus when advertisements are not consciously attended to, but happen to be placed in such a position that they can be easily processed by the unused hemisphere, such exposure may result in increased conscious processing.

Preattentive analysis can also result in instant and non-conscious generation of emotions, in particular negative ones. When an urgency signal is induced unconsciously, fear and anxiety are the result, presumably prompting the organism to take immediate action to reduce the threat. Offering a remedy to remove the threat, e.g. buying the product, is then important for advertising effectiveness.

Preattentive processing and hedonic fluency

Hedonic fluency is the subjective ease with which a stimulus can be perceived and processed. This fluency can be based on perceptual or conceptual fluency.

Perceptual fluency reflects the ease with which the physical features such as modality, shape or brightness can be processed.

Conceptual fluency, on the other hand, reflects the ease with which the semantic meaning of an object comes to the consumer’s mind and thus reflects the processing of meaning.

Stimuli that have been encountered before, have been stored in memory and are more easily processed (familiarity). This is an important contributing factor to the ease of processing. When an ad is encountered incidentally, a subsequent conscious exposure produces hedonic fluency as a result of the previous exposure. This results in a positive affect which is mis-attributed to the focal ad, producing more favorable consumer responses.

(Non)focal consumer attention can be directed outward toward ads and brands presented in the consumer’s environment, or inward toward product-related information already stored in memory. Hedonic fluency may play a role in both types of processes.

Exposure to sequences of unrelated ads may affect consumer judgment as a function of the compatibility of the goals that the ads activate. If the goal of the target ad and the prime ad are compatible, the target ad produces more favorable evaluations than when the goals mismatch. This effect occurs because the goal activated by the priming ad increases the ease of processing of the target ad, if that ad serves the same self-regulatory goals as the priming ad.

This goal fluency results in positive affect that is mis-attributed to the focal ad and brand resulting in more favorable evaluations and intentions.

Inward directed attention can also cause fluency effects.

Simply measuring behavioral intentions seems to increase the likelihood of people actually performing that behavior. This is also known as the question-behaviour effect. Asking about some behavior renders the attitude toward that behavior more accessible and when that attitude is positive, the behavior becomes more likely. Another explanation for this is that it is the result of response fluency. Asking questions about behavior increases the hedonic fluency of the response to the questions, making perceptions at the time when the behavior might be performed more easily, positively affecting the likelihood of that behavior.

What does focal attention entail?

Conscious information processing involves focal attention, and is facilitated when consumer involvement turns from low to moderate. Because short-term (working) memory has a limited capacity, consumers select only a few stimuli to pay attention to. Therefore special features are needed that make stimuli stand out. Three classes of stimuli featured attract involuntary consumer attention, are salience, vividness and novelty.

Salience

Salience refers to the extent to which a stimulus is noticeably different from its environment. Ways to emphasize this difference are using humor or changing the camera angle used to focus on the target product. According to the figure-ground principle figural stimuli become focal whereas non-figural stimuli become non-focal. It captures the process by which stimuli can grab attention and everything else fades into the background. Salience effects are moderated by the extent to which individuals are motivated to process information: they should be at a maximum when processing motivation is low and vice versa.

Vividness

Vivid stimuli are emotionally interesting, concrete and image-provoking, and proximate in a sensory temporal or spatial way. Vividness can be a function of characteristics of the perceiver, or of the advertising stimulus itself. Concrete and image-provoking information in ads may be perceived and processed differently, depending on the extent to which the perceiver has a high or low intrinsic tendency to engage in visual imagery. High visualizers are more sensitive to vivid executional elements in advertising.

Novelty

A key factor driving a consumer perception of newness (novelty) is the extent to which product information is unfamiliar and dis-confirms existing consumer expectancies. Surprise mobilizes cognitive resources that are used to resolve the inconsistency between what was expected and what is actually encountered. Unexpected information results in extended causal reasoning, counter-factual thinking, and cognitive elaboration.

According to the expectancy dis-confirmation model consumers form expectancies about product performance before buying a product. These are in large part shaped by advertising. After purchase, they compare the actual product with their expectations. Advertisers are confronted with the dilemma between selling more due to unrealistic promising while disappointing customers and selling less but being honest to them.

Categorization

Categorization is the process by which incoming information is classified, that is, labeled as belonging to one or more categories based on a comparative assessment of features of the category and the incoming information.

The success of brand extensions depends largely on whether consumers categorize them as congruent with the parent brand or its associations.
The representativeness heuristic reflects the extent to which two stimuli are deemed to belong to the same overall category based on shared similarities. This might be used to predict whether consumers categorize a new product as a true innovation or perceive it as similar to existing products.

Another view is that moderate dissimilarity may benefit a brand extension because people sometimes take pleasure in solving moderate incongruities. The associated pleasure may be transferred to the focal brand which is then evaluated better.

Typicality and the pioneering advantage

Categorization effects also exist on individual products. The extent to which a product is prototypical for a category influences product liking (prototypical products are often liked better than less prototypical ones). However, prototypicality may not serve the brand in terms of advertising salience, where communicating contrast between the focal brand and competitors is pivotal. Pioneering advantage reflects the pioneering of a novel category and becoming the most prototypical representative of that category. The pioneer decides on what attributes competitors are judged, and competitors are judged on those attributes only after the pioneer, creating a winning situation for the pioneer.

Assimilation and contrast

In assimilation objects are classified as more similar to the parent category than they really are when the object and category are perceived as more congruent. Contrast implies a reverse phenomenon. The perception of attributes of the object can change in the direction of features of the parent category when assimilation occurs. Assimilation occurs when information is made salient, which can be included in the parent category.

As the perception of the category member can change when it is viewed in context of the parent category, so too can the perception of the parent category when viewed in context of a new member. This happens with brand extensions. The extent to which the new product affects the associations and beliefs of the parent category, again depends on the similarity of the new product to the parent category.

Impression formation and impression correction

A specific type of categorization occurs when not just products or brands are categorized, but also product or brand users as a function of associations related to a parent brand category. Aaker suggests that brands can have different personalities like people. The brand personality scale consists of 5 dimensions: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness.
In stimulus-based impression formation salient stimulus information guides the impression formation process (e.g. inferences consumers make about someone who wears expensive clothes or who is sitting at the terrace of a golf club versus someone wearing cheap clothes and going to a cheap restaurant).

Memory-based consumer impression formation, on the other hand, is about assessing how firms can overcome the impact of negative versus positive initial consumer impressions about a brand. Impressions based on negative initial information are less amenable than those based on positive information. However, presenting new, or updating information influences the chances of correcting the initial impressions. Comparative information motivates recall of previous information and careful processing of the new information. When the initial impression was negative, a comparative format would motivate increased weighting of this negative information, compared to a non-comparative format resulting in less positive adjusted impressions than when no comparisons were made in the new information.

In what way is comprehension an important factor for persuasion?

After preattentive analysis and focal attention, the process of acquiring, representing and encoding information from advertising also entails a phase of comprehension. This is essential for achieving persuasion and should be an important factor in advertising effectiveness. Because comprehension is such an important factor for persuasion, mis-comprehension could pose a problem. However, this isn’t always the case. As a matter of fact, it sometimes even serves the goal of persuasion, partly because of the truth effect, that is, people’s tendency to initially uncritically accept information, even when certain elements are not fully comprehended.

Seeing is believing

Believing a message appears to be the default, low effort response and critically reappraising a conclusion is a second step not taken automatically. When processing resources are limited, believing becomes the default option and rejection the correction response. It is harder to reject than to accept an advertising claim, even when we know or are informed that the claim is false. In a cluttered media environment where information is constantly competing for our attention, conditions arise that resemble interruption condition: consumers tend to make decisions quickly and as effortlessly as possible and when distracted by too many competing messages they are less able to engage in the extra effort needed for disbelieving claims that have initially been accepted even though they were false.

Repetition increases familiarity, which in turn increases believability. Even repeatedly highlighting that a claim is false may not undo the truth effect. This may be due to the sleeper effect: repetition increases familiarity for the claim itself, fostering the perception that it is true, whereas it decreases memory for the original context of the claim (the message that the claim is false).

Mis-comprehension and misleading advertising claims

Pragmatic inferences are simple assumptions about statements that are literally true, but figuratively false. A slogan like “Heineken may the best beer in the world” is literally true, because the word ‘may’ means ‘perhaps’ and so they don’t bring it as a fact. This nuance is often lost during information processing by the consumer, who tends to equate ‘may’ with ‘usually’ or ‘is’.

Ad slogans also sometimes omit comparison information, with consumers frequently providing the missing information without being fully aware that they are doing so often in the direction desired by marketers. For example, the slogan “Dentists advise brand X toothpaste” suggests consensus by using a plural form. However, it doesn’t say how many dentists..

Juxtaposition is another means that facilitates certain (sometimes false) inferences. For example, “Be cool, buy brand X”. This suggests a causal relationship, while there actually is none.

Affirmation of the consequent also hinges on reversing cause and effect. For example, “If you can see it, you can make it”. This implies that consumers can build anything they can imagine.

What is meant by elaborative reasoning?

The previous examples of mis-comprehension fall halfway between comprehension and elaborative reasoning. The truth effect may be the result of processes that are largely outside conscious consumer awareness, and some of the inferences that consumers make on the basis of sometimes misleading advertising claims as well. Inferences made during the final stage of elaborative reasoning require full consciousness. Hence, elaborative consumer reasoning is facilitated when consumer involvement is high. Elaborative reasoning is about thinking and thinking can vary along at least three dimensions: the extent of thinking, the valence of thinking and the object of thinking. The present overview will focus on the object of thinking. Types of thought that have been studied in the consumer domain are item-specific versus relational thoughts, thoughts evoked by salient consumer goals, thoughts about the self and meta-cognitive thoughts.

Self-schema and elaborative reasoning

A self-schema is a cognitive generalization about the self that is comprised of a more or less comprehensive set of traits, values and beliefs that exerts a powerful influence on information processing. It is a key source for inference making. Product information contained in advertising that is congruent with a salient self-schema motivates consumers to process the information in more detail.

Information processing with regard to the self increases the extent of elaborative reasoning, for example when processing strong arguments with regard to the self, although these effects can be offset when processing motivation is reduced or when information processing reaches a satiation point and irritation sets in. A salient self-schema can bias information processing in line with the schema, frequently in order to protect or enhance the self.

Elaborative reasoning can result in either increased or decreased persuasion as a result of the quality of the argumentation in the ad the consumer is exposed to. Then the train of thought might move the consumer away from the advocated position.

Consumer meta-cognition

A specific type of elaborative reasoning occurs when the object of consumer thoughts is not the product, ad or brand, but the thoughts themselves. Reflecting on your own inner states, and infer something from that process is called meta-cognition. Consumers thinking about the motives of marketers and the mis-attribution of hedonic fluency, can be considered meta-cognitive experiences, since these are judgments that are based on how they perceive information and the extent and direction to which they think about their own judgment and evaluation processes and those of others.

People’s beliefs about their own mental states and the mental states, strategies, of others as these pertain directly to the social domain of marketplace interactions is also referred to as ‘marketplace meta-cognition.

Ease of retrieval is the apparent ease with which product and brand related information can be retrieved from memory. It is a form of hedonic fluency. Information that is easy to retrieve may positively affect product attitudes because people may conclude that what they can easily remember must be correct.

So when a consumer is asked to think of 10 reasons why he should buy a BMW and finds this difficult, his attitude towards BMW is less favorable than when he only has to come up with one reason, which is easier. Meta-cognition is often influential in consumer judgment because consumers appear to consider these inferences as diagnostic and trustworthy.

Self-validation reflects the subjective confidence consumers have in their thoughts and evaluations in response to persuasive messages. Increasing consumer confidence in positive thoughts and high credible sources enhance advertisement effectiveness and vice versa.

What is the effect of advertising on memories of consumers? - Chapter 3

What does human memory entail?

Human memory is a system that not only allows us to record, store and retrieve the information we acquire, but influences the way this information is perceived, stored and encoded as well. Encoding refers to the processes involved in getting the information into the system by transforming an external stimulus into an internal representation, which allows us to retain it in the cognitive system. Storage involves information retention over time, which can be short term or relatively permanent. You can also be able to retrieve this information from your memory, or forget it. Retrieval refers to the processes that enable us to find the information which is stored in our memory, while forgetting refers to the processes that keep us from finding it.

The model of Atkinson and Shiffrin

The Atkinson and Shiffrin model consists of three parts: sensory memory, working/short-term memory, and long-term memory. Information is first held briefly in the sensory memory, then a selection is transferred to the short-term memory, and afterwards an even smaller selection is stored in the long-term memory.

Sensory memory stores should be considered part of the perception process, because the stored information is not yet encoded, but stored in the sensory modality in which it has been perceived.

In the working memory, input from the different sensory memories is integrated with information from long-term memory to be briefly held in conscious awareness and manipulated. New information can only access when old information is moved out. Verbal rehearsal lengthens the period of time for which information stays in the short-term store and at the same time builds up the trace in the long-term memory. When rehearsing information and paying attention to the information, the likelihood of storage in the long-term memory increases.

Long-term memory stores nearly unlimited amounts of information for an unlimited period of time. The model of Atkinson and Shiffrin proposes that information that has entered the processing system through modality-specific sensory stores and which has gone through the short-term of working memory, needs to be encoded semantically before entering the long-term memory.

According to Baddeley there is major evidence for the multi-systems view of memory, namely:

• Speed of retrieval: retrieval from short-term memory is faster than from long-term memory.

• Capacity: short-term memory is more limited; it can only hold 5-7 pieces of unrelated information.

• Serial position effects: items presented at the beginning (primacy) and at the end (recency) of a list are recalled earlier and more often than items in the middle. Primacy items can be rehearsed and stored in the long-term memory, while the last items still reside within the short-term memory.

• Memory code: long-term memory relies mainly on semantic codes, while short-term memory uses acoustic/phonological coding.

• Neuropsychology: patients who suffer from amnesia may have perfect short- or long-term memories while the long- or short-term memory is impaired.

Although evidence supports the conception of short-term and long-term memory as separate systems, these findings are inconsistent with the assumption that information can only reach the long-term memory by passing through short-term memory. In addition, people sometimes do not remember objects clearly even though they are likely to have seen those thousands of times. This seems to be inconsistent with the assumption that information that is frequently rehearsed is likely to be stored in long-term memory. Two approaches to resolve these inconsistencies are (1) to abandon the idea of different memory systems, and (2) to reformulate the distinction between short-term and long-term memory.

Levels of processing

The levels of processing approach assumes that items are remembered better the more we pay attention to them and the more deeply they are processed.

The models of working memory of Baddeley and Hitch

Baddeley and Hitch replaced the model of working memory as a unitary system by a multi-component working memory model. A controlling attentional system, the central executive, which has no storage capacity of its own, supervises and coordinates a number of subsystems. Two subsystems are the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad.

The phonological loop is responsible for the short-term storage and manipulation of speck-based information. It consists of a phonological store that briefly holds sounds and an articulatory rehearsal system that uses sub-vocal inner speech. Unless speech-based/sound information is sub-vocally rehearsed, it will become irretrievable within 2 seconds. Articulatory rehearsal process also translates written material into phonological code to allow storage in the loop.

The visuo-spatial sketchpad is responsible for the short-term storage and manipulation of visual information. It can operate at the same time as the phonological loop, e.g. explaining someone the way to a nearby street and at the same time visualizing the route to that street.

The central executive allocates attention and coordinates the two subsystems. Its main task is planning sequences of activities. It cannot store information, so there is an episodic buffer, which is a place where information from long-term memory and the subsystems of working memory can be temporarily stored, integrated and manipulated. This is where the consumer consideration set – the number of brands from a given product category that a consumer is actively choosing from at a given occasion – can be found.

Forms of long-term memory

The most important distinction of components of the long-term memory is between forms of conscious and non-conscious memory. Conscious forms are declarative, explicit, or recollective. Non-conscious forms has been referred to as implicit memory.

Declarative or explicit memory is characterized by a person’s conscious recollection of facts or events. Subcategories are episodic and semantic memory.

Episodic memory refers to a memory about a specific event that occurred at a particular place and time. For example, do you remember whether you have ever been to Paris?

Semantic memory refers to the mental thesaurus, organized knowledge a person possesses about words and other verbal symbols, their meaning and referents, about relations among them, and about rules, formulas, and algorithms. For example, do you know what the capital of France is?

Free recall tests are the standard tests of explicit memory. Respondents who previously learned a list of words, are asked to recall as many of them possible. In recognition tests respondents are presented with a list with words they learned before, and some that have not presented before.

Implicit memory effects occur when previous experiences facilitate our performance of subsequent tasks without us remembering the previous experience or being aware of its influence on our performance. In measures of implicit memory – such as word stem completion tests, word fragment identification tests, perceptual identification tests, lexical decision tasks and category instance generation – instructions refer only to the task at hand and make no reference to prior experiences. In word stem completion tests participants are presented with the first letters of each, earlier presented and asked to present the first word coming to mind, word: e.g. com____ for computer. In word fragment identification tests participants are presented with a few letters of the word and asked to name a word that fits: e.g. c_mp_t_r.

In perceptual identification tests participants who are previously presented with a list of words, are presented with another list, comprised of the same and new words, for 35 seconds. They will recall more old than new words. In lexical decision tasks participants are either presented with words or non-word letter strings and are asked to decide as quickly as possible whether the presented item was a word or not.

Category instance generation are more conceptual measures of implicit memory, where participants who have previously learned a list of words containing among others a set of animals, are asked to recall the animals.

Incidental ad exposure should result in implicit memory, whereas the content of ads to which we pay attention should be stored in explicit memory is reminiscent of the levels of processing assumption.

Priming is the most widely used research strategy to demonstrate distinction between explicit and implicit memory. It refers to the phenomenon that exposure to an object or a word in one context increases the accessibility of the mental representation of that object/word in a person’s mind.

As a result, the activated concept exerts for some time unintended influence on the individual’s responses in subsequent unrelated contexts without the individual being aware of this influence. This conception of priming implies the existence of concepts within memory that represent familiar objects/words. When the object/word is presented, this representation will be activated/primed.

Priming is considerably reduced or even absent when the target material is in presented auditory form or when participants study pictorial equivalents of words. Priming cannot only increase the accessibility of single concrete lexical memory location corresponding to the stimulus word, but can activate abstract trait concepts too. Example: when you present respondents with negative terms and then ask them to perceive someone’s behavior, they will tend to be more negative than when they have been presented with positive terms upfront.

One of the most important findings of research on priming that illustrates the distinction between explicit and implicit memory is the differential impact of manipulations of processing depth on explicit and implicit memory measures. These findings showed that a person is less likely to remember a word if he/she has only seen it once than if he/she had to think of the word itself. What was surprising, was that the opposite was true for implicit memory; here performance was best when the word had been presented without a context and worst when it had been generated by participants themselves. Research has also shown that priming can not only increase the accessibility of single concrete lexical memory location corresponding to the stimulus word, but can also activate abstract trait concepts.

In supraliminal priming someone is exposed to the priming stimuli as part of a conscious task and is aware of the stimulus, but not its influence. If a researcher really wants to be certain that participants are unaware of the connection between priming stimuli and subsequent task, they can use subliminal priming. In this case the stimuli are presented at such a brief exposure that participants remain unaware that any stimulus has been presented. To ensure that the prime stimulus does not linger on in the short-term memory and thus be recognized despite the brief exposure, presentation of the priming stimulus is immediately followed by a letter string, a so-called post mask. The finding that subliminal presentation of words or pictures can prime mental representations of words of objects in a person’s mind raises the possibility that such procedures could be used effectively in advertising.

Knowledge structures in long-term memory

To be stored in long-term memory, our perceptions of stimuli and events need to be interpreted and encoded into some form of cognitive representation. We succeed in the encoding task by relating the stimulus to previous knowledge, by recognizing that the stimulus belongs to a particular category (e.g. a product category like cars). Once we have assigned an object to a category, we make inferences about its functions, which go far beyond our perception. According to the classical view categories should be represented as a set of defining features,that apply to all category members. However, most natural categories can’t be defined in terms of such features. Therefore a prototype view of category representation has become accepted. According to this view, people abstract category prototypes from their experience with different category members and then classify exemplars on the basis of their similarity to the prototype. To be able to interpret and encode our perceptions of the world around us, we use scripts, which are abstract knowledge structures that describe standardized sequences of events and the interrelationship between different categories. For example, knowing that the waiter in a restaurant is the one who serves food and who you can ask for the bill, while relying on the restaurant script to derive these predictions.

Associative network models conceive of mental representations of each isolated piece of knowledge as a discrete node connected to other nodes by links of various types. Each concept/attribute is represented by a node. When looking at our knowledge about drinks, there will be nodes for soft drinks, juices, beers, etc. but also for attributes like sweet, tasty, etc. When a node is activated because it is actively though about, the activation of nodes spreads to other nodes via the links. If an individual is primed with the word ‘sweet’, the activation would spread to all the concepts connected to this feature. The more activated a node is, the more likely it will burst into awareness, be recalled, or be applied to incoming information.

What does advertising and its implications entail?

The role of memory in judgments: on the ineffectiveness of traditional measures of advertising effectiveness

One of the standard strategies to measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign is to contact consumers who were exposed to the ad and ask them what they remember about the ad or the advertised product (recall test). They can also be shown the advertisements and asked whether the recognize it (recognition test).

It is false to assume that people’s product judgments should be related to their recollection of the evidence on which those judgments are presumably based. Using only recall or recognition measures might result in an underestimation of the impact of a campaign on memory because exposure to advertisements can impact on implicit memory and these effects may not be detectable with measures of explicit memory. Also, recollection of arguments made in a campaign may be unrelated to consumers’ attitude towards the advertised product, because the targets of advertising campaigns may change their product judgments online, while being exposed to the campaign. Then they might be influenced by arguments, even if they cannot remember them, or they might still remember arguments, even though they considered them invalid.

Incidental exposure is likely to leave a trace on implicit memory. Assessing the impact of a campaign on memory, whether implicit or explicit, is not an adequate measure of the effectiveness of an advertisement campaign. The aim of such campaigns is to change consumer attitude towards the product in order to increase the probability that they will buy it.

Thus, attitude change achieved by a campaign, rather than memory for arguments contained in the advertisements should be the indicator on which an evaluation of campaign effectiveness should be based. The change in attitudes achieved by a communication is often unrelated to the arguments that are remembered.

Memory-based versus online judgments

In many situations, we are presented with information, which motivates us to form our judgment at the time we are taking in the information. People integrate the information they receive immediately into an overall evaluation. Once the impression has been formed, there is little purpose for them to remember all the traits on which their impression has been based. Similarly, when reading advertisements about brands of a product we are planning to buy, we will probably form an opinion while reading the information. We will not remember all the advantages and disadvantages later on because we were focused on certain attributes. Thus, when we make online judgments, integrating the information while we are exposed to it, our evaluations can be relatively unrelated to the product claims, even though we will still be able to recall them at some later time. If we had no intention of buying the product, but a friend would ask us to advise him, our judgment would be more memory-based.

Studies have shown that there seems to be a lack of relationship between argument recall and product judgment. Carlston gives an dual coding explanation for these findings. According to him individuals store both the original information about the attributes of the products (attribute-based representation) as well as their evaluations based on this elaboration (evaluation-based representation) in separate representations. Each of these may be used independently in subsequent judgments. An evaluation-based representation is retrieved for use in making subsequent global memory-based judgments, whereas an attribute-based representation is retrieved for use in making subsequent discrete memory-based judgments. Since global judgments predict purchase intentions, measures of memory for descriptive information are poor measures of advertising effectiveness.

Memory factors in brand choice: the role of cognitive accessibility

Consumers rarely consider all brands they are aware of, but base their purchase decision on their consideration set, which refers to the set of brands brought to mind in a particular choice situation. The focus is on cognitive accessibility of a brand name as determinant of brand consideration and brand choice.

Purchase situations can encourage more memory-based or more stimulus-based strategies. Buying a car (e.g. choosing to go to a Peugeot dealer) is typically a memory-based decision. Cognitive accessibility influences the composition of the consideration set of car dealers to go to. Shopping in a supermarket with a shopping list is more stimulus-based. Cognitive accessibility will influence the consideration set because highly accessible brands are more familiar.

Priming a brand name increases the cognitive accessibility of that brand name. With totally unfamiliar brand names, priming can increase liking by increasing processing fluency. Priming can also increase the accessibility of closely associated brands and of the product category to which the brand belongs. This is most likely to happen if the brand is prototypical for the product category and if that particular category was previously not highly accessible in the individual’s mind. By reminding people that there is an attractive but non-obvious choice alternative, some are likely to choose this alternative, which they would not have thought of unaided.

The set of brands consumers consider when deciding on a purchase is typically not only smaller than the total number of brands available in the marketplace, but also than the number of brands of which the consumer is aware. Priming that requires a greater degree of conceptual elaboration is more effective for memory-based choices but less effective when choice is stimulus-based. Increasing accessibility of a brand name through priming is likely to influence only the inclusion of a brand in the consideration set rather than the purchase decision. Priming can also influence this decision when (1) individuals have no particular preference for a specific brand; (2) their preferred brand is not available; and (3) an attractive, but less accessible subcategory of a given product category has been primed.

Forgetting the message: advertising clutter and competitive interference

The passage of time is not the only reason why we forget things. Forgetting is also influenced by our experiences in the period between exposure to information and recall, and seems to be accelerated if this period is characterized by exposure to a lot of competing information from the same content domain. Interference theories try to explain this forgetting due to competing information. Retroactive interference is an effect which occurs when interpolated learning interferes with the recall of the original material. Learning nonsense syllables after meaningful adjectives results in much less interference than learning synonyms. Proactive interference occurs when what we have learned earlier interferes with later learning. Advertising clutter refers to the extent to which messages compete for the consumer’s attention.

Several factors should moderate the impact of competitive interference on memory:

• The processing goal of the recipient of the ad information seems to be a factor: if recipients read or view the ad with the goal of potentially purchasing the advertised product, they are likely to process the information more thoroughly than if they look at the ad without any specific interest in the brand that is being advertised.

• Another factor is brand familiarity, which reflects the consumer’s level of (in)direct experience with the product: recipients will have an established knowledge structure for familiar brands. New information will be strongly linked to the brand name.

• With unfamiliar brands, recipients are less likely to link the information to the brand name and more likely to link it to the product category.

• In order to combat interference due to advertising clutter, marketers use retrieval cues, ad repetition or place the ad in an advantageous position within the block of advertisements.

Can advertising distort memory?

Advertising presented after experiencing a product can distort consumers’ memory of their experience. People experience what they expect to experience, at least with products that are not easily evaluated. The effect of advertisements shown afterwards reflects a distortion of individuals’ memories of their evaluation, involving some form of selective retrieval, with possibly a reinterpretation of the retrieved evidence in the light of the ad claims. Post-experience memory distortions are more likely to occur for (rather ambiguous) experience and credence product attributes than for search attributes. People who are familiar with a product and confident in their ability to judge the quality of that product, are unlikely to be susceptible to the distorting influence of advertising messages.

How do consumers develop judgements and feelings about products? - Chapter 4

How can attitude be described as a matter of contention?

Attitudes are thought to be great determinants of (consumer) behavior.

Defining the concept

Attitudes are evaluative responses, directed towards some attitude object and are based on three classes of information: cognitive, affective/emotional, and behavioral. Attitude objects may be abstract (e.g. materialism) or concrete (e.g. Audi) and may be individuals (David Beckham) or categories (candy). One might infer one’s brand attitude from the frequency with which one has recently used the brand. Attitudes can derive from three general classes of information or experiences and the basis for any attitude can vary. An attitude towards an object can be based on cognitive information about the aspects that characterize the object, which can derive from someone’s own direct experience of the attitude object or from communications about the object (e.g. advertisements). Attitudes can also be based on affective or emotional reactions that the attitude object evokes. Finally, attitudes can be based on behavioral information.

The major points of contention are (1) whether attitudes should be defined as a predisposition to evaluate an attitude object in a particular way or as the evaluative response itself, and (2) whether attitudes are stable or context dependent. The most influential definition of attitude is that it is a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of (dis)favor. This predisposition to evaluate is expressed by cognitive, affective or behavioral evaluative responses. Cognitive evaluative responses consist of the beliefs people hold about the attitude object. Affective evaluative responses consist of the feelings, moods and emotions people experience when confronted with the attitude object. Behavioral evaluative responses consist the intention to act or the overt actions people perform in relation to an attitude object.

Implicit and explicit attitudes: challenging the unity of the attitude concept

Implicit attitudes are evaluations of which the individual is typically not aware and which influence (re)actions over which the individual has little to no control.

Explicit attitudes, on the other hand, are evaluations of which the individual is consciously aware and which can be expressed using self-report measures.

An instrument that is said to assess implicit attitudes is the affective priming method. This procedure presents individuals on each trial with a prime followed by positive or negative adjectives. Then they are asked to decide as fast as possible whether the adjective was positive or negative. The time it takes people to make this judgment is the dependent measure. The basic assumption is that the attitude prime automatically activates an evaluative response and that this response will in turn either facilitate or inhibit the evaluative response to the next stimulus (the adjective). Whether the evaluative response will inhibit or facilitate the subsequent response depends on whether the prime and target are evaluatively different or similar.

Implicit attitudes can also be assessed by the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which also uses response latencies to infer implicit attitudes. It assesses the strength of an association between two concepts with positive and negative evaluations, and is often used to assess stereotypes. The response delays are derived from the participants’ use of two response keys, which have been assigned a dual meaning. The underlying assumption is that if a person holds a negative attitude towards minorities, his/her response time will be shorter when minority words share the same key with negative words than with positive words. This assumption has often been supported by research.

Modern advertising faces a discrepancy between explicit and implicit consumer responses.

Not many consumers are willing to admit that they are often heavily influenced by advertising in their shopping behavior and thus, scales designed to tap the persuasive influence of advertising often reveal a skeptic and resistant consumer. More implicit measures are needed to reveal advertising’s impact on consumer perceptions and behavior. Wilson et al. explained this by suggesting that persuasive advocacies (like advertising) or new experiences might result in the creation of a new, second attitude without replacing the old one. Dual attitudes are defined as different evaluations of the same attitude object, one on an automatic, implicit level, and one on a controlled, explicit level. For example, people who often went to McDonald’s in their childhood (positive attitude) now never go anymore because they found out it is unhealthy (negative attitude).

Are attitudes stable or context-dependent?

There is empirical evidence for both stability and malleability of attitudes. Attitudes can change with changing context and can be placed on a continuum of strength. This ranges from issues which are novel or irrelevant (weak), to issues which are familiar and important (strong). Through heavy advertising, initially unfamiliar brands can become highly accessible in consumers’ minds.

Implications for the definition of the attitude concept

There are problems concerning the dispositional definitions of the attitude concept. The authors of this book favor. the definition suggested by Zanna and Rempel. They see attitudes as ‘the categorization of a stimulus object along an evaluative dimension’ (p. 135).

What is the strength of attitude?

Attitude strength links aspects of attitude structure and attitude function. Stronger attitudes are characterized by:

• Higher stability over time;

• Greater impact on behavior;

• Greater influence on information processing;

• Greater resistance to persuasion.

Determinants of attitude strength are accessibility, importance, knowledge, certainty, ambivalence, and evaluative-cognitive consistency.

Accessibility

Cognitive accessibility refers to how easily or quickly the attitude can be retrieved from memory. The faster the attitude can be retrieved from memory, the stronger the association between the representation of the attitude object and the evaluation. Regarding brand attitudes, accessibility of a brand is also know as brand awareness; the ease with which consumers can recall or recognize the brand. Highly accessible attitudes are more predictive of behavior than attitudes of low accessibility. They are also more resistant to social influence.

Attitude importance

Attitude importance is usually measured by asking people how important an attitude object is to them personally, how deeply they care about it, and how concerned they are about it. Since attitude importance reflects the degree of caring and concern about an attitude issue, you would expect that people would also be motivated to want to know more about important issues. However, knowledge about an attitude seems to be only moderately positively related to its importance. Individuals with a lot of knowledge should be better able to evaluate the validity of arguments about that issue than individuals with little knowledge. Therefore well-informed persons should be more influenced by strong arguments, while uninformed people are more influenced by heuristic cues.

Attitude certainty

Attitude certainty refers to the confidence individuals have in the validity or correctness of their own attitude. It is possible to hold a neutral attitude with a high degree of certainty. Attitude certainty is positively correlated with extremity and importance.

Ambivalence

Attitudinal ambivalence involves a state in which an individual gives an attitude object equivalently strong positive or negative evaluation, i.e. both likes and dislikes the object. Strategies to assess this are measuring ambivalence as an experienced state or as structural ambivalence (calculated from evaluations). Attitudinal ambivalence seems to be related to several attributes that are characteristic of attitude strength. Attitude objects associated with greater structural ambivalence are less cognitively accessible than attitude objects associated with less ambivalence. Ambivalent attitudes are less predictive of behavior and less resistant to social influence than non-ambivalent attitudes. There is also a lot of evidence that ambivalent attitudes are less resistant to social influence than non-ambivalent attitudes. Finally, ambivalent attitudes have been found to be positively related to processing motivation.

The previous discussion of ambivalence is limited to ambivalence in established attitudes. This kind of ambivalence is likely to differ from the ambivalence evoked by exposure to evaluatively inconsistent information during the formation of a new attitude; an issue particularly relevant for the consumer domain, because of the high amount of evaluatively inconsistent information. Our knowledge about ambivalence so far suggests that attitudes formed on the basis of ambivalent information would be less predictive of behavior than attitudes that are formed on the basis of consistent information. However, dual process theories of attitude change – which suggest that attitudes formed on the basis of elaborate processing are more predictive of behavior than attitudes based on superficial processing – would predict the opposite. Because the integration of inconsistent information is more difficult than that of consistent information, you could expect participants who are presented with evaluatively inconsistent information to engage in deeper processing to form an overall evaluation. If this is the case, you would expect that attitudes formed from evaluatively inconsistent information should be better predictors of behavior than attitudes based on consistent information. Although some research supports this theory, these findings were limited to situations where individuals both feel a need to form an overall evaluation and succeed in integrating the evaluatively inconsistent information into an overall evaluation, because all the details were cognitively accessible. Another study showed that when participants are unable to integrate the inconsistent information, the pattern reversed.

Evaluative-cognitive consistency

Evaluative-cognitive consistency refers to the consistency between people’s attitudes towards an attitude object and the evaluative implications of their beliefs about the object. More consistent attitudes are more resistant to social influence than attitudes of low consistency.

Attitude strength and the context dependence of attitudinal judgements

Attitude strength is suggested to be the moderating variable responsible for the conflicting evidence on the context stability of attitudes. A lot of studies support this assumption.

What does the formation of attitude consist of?

Attitudes derive from cognitive, evaluative/affective and behavioral information. Two criteria will be used to distinguish between processes of attitude formation and attitude change. Attitude formation is involved when the issue or object is new and unfamiliar. It is based on low effort cognitive processes that require little cognitive elaboration such as evaluative conditioning or heuristic processing. These processes will be discussed in this section.

The formation of cognitively based evaluative responses

Beliefs about an attitude object are based on information individuals have gathered about the object. They can derive this information indirectly, or from personal experience. Brand-quality, country, and price-quality heuristics may also be used to predict quality.

Attitudes based on direct experience versus memory

Direct experience results in more information than indirect experience, and attitudes based on direct experience are held with more confidence, are more stable over time, are more accessible in memory, and are more predictive of future behavior.
In their studies,

Fazio et al. proposed that attitudes derived from direct experience are more accessible in memory than attitudes based on indirect experience are responsible for their greater impact on behavior. This view was challenged by

Doll and Ajzen. According to them it is the greater temporal stability of experience-based attitudes rather than their accessibility that is responsible for the difference in attitudes. The more a person’s expectations prove to be consistent with the actual experience, the better the attitude will predict actual behavior. Greater attitude accessibility and stability are independently responsible for the fact that experience-based attitudes are better predictors of behavior than attitudes based on indirect experience. Therefore it is important to use marketing tools that promote direct experience (e.g. free samples) in addition to classic advertising.

If there is a dramatic change in context, the advantage of experience-based attitudes may be lost. Also the expertise and the trustworthiness of the source of the information has an influence on the impact of direct and indirect experience.

Using heuristics to form attitudes

People often rely on heuristics to form attitudes, based on their own experience, culture, or on advertisements. There has been a lot of research on the influence of stereotypes – beliefs about the attributes of members of an outgroup – on attitudes towards members of that group (prejudice).

The most often used heuristic cues in consumer behavior are brand names, country of origin and price. Brand image refers to the beliefs, feelings, and evaluations triggered by a brand name. Brand images are strongly influenced by advertising and are considered to be the consumer equivalent to stereotypes in intergroup relations. The impact a brand image has on someone’s judgement of, or behavior towards a product of a certain brand is referred to as brand equity; the equivalent of prejudice. Where prejudice is considered bad, brand equity is considered good. A brand associated with high quality can improve product ratings.

The country of origin of a product is another heuristic people can use to judge a product. It is especially important in buying food, because consumers believe that ethnic food products are likely to be better if they come from the country from which the food originated. As for the price-quality heuristic, people expect that expensive is good. In the service industry, duration is an important heuristic: higher quality is inferred when service duration increases, especially in relation to price (when the duration:price ratio increases).

The formation of evaluative responses based on affective or emotional experience

Three pathways to the acquisition of evaluative responses based on affective or emotional experience are:

1. Mere exposure;

2. Initially neutral stimuli can acquire positive valence through repeated exposure;

3. Classical/evaluative conditioning: by means of association with events that already have positive or negative valence;

4. Affect as information: individuals may use the affect evoked by the stimulus or the stimulus context as information about this object.

Mere exposure

Mere exposure on attitudes towards unfamiliar and novel stimuli become more positive with increasing frequency of exposure; also referred to as mere exposure effects. This phenomenon has been used to explain advertising ‘wear-in’, that is, the observation that an advertisement’s impact only increases after an ‘incubation period’ of several exposures where effects are absent/minimal. The current most widely accepted explanation for the ‘exposure effect’ suggests that the frequency of exposure increases perceptual fluency, or the ease with which information is processed. Repeated exposure results in a representation of the stimulus in memory. When the stimulus is encountered again, this representation will make it easier to encode and process the stimulus. The increased ease of processing is pleasant and positively affects the evaluation of the stimulus (hedonic fluency).

Classical and evaluative conditioning

Through classical conditioning a neutral stimulus that is initially incapable of eliciting a particular response (conditioned stimulus, CS), gradually acquires the ability to do so through repeated association with a stimulus that already evokes this response (unconditioned stimulus, US). Strategies based on this conditioning are used in advertising. Products are displayed in pleasing contexts with little relation to the product function, or linked to supermodels for example. It is assumed that the positive mood resulting from a pleasing context will be transferred to the product.

These evaluative conditioning effects can result from different processes. First, it can result from mis-attribution, that is, when the evaluation triggered by the US is mistakenly attributed to the CS. Then the CS acquires the valence that was originally associated with the US. There is no awareness of the association between the CS and US. Another process by which evaluative conditioning might occur an influence brand attitudes, is that it helps to form an association between a brand name and the affect inducing concepts. Repeatedly pairing the brand with the same positively valued US, will forge a strong link between the brand and the US. Exposure to the brand will then activate the representation of the US in memory. This process involves inferential belief-formation resulting from a mis-attribution of some aspect of the meaning of the US to the CS.
Evaluative conditioning seem to influences both explicit and implicit attitudes. However, research suggests that this kind of conditioning doesn’t affect explicit attitudes towards familiar brands for which consumers hold strong attitudes. It does seem to influence implicit attitudes towards familiar brands, but only for individuals who have no strong preference for either brand. This finding can possibly be explained by the fact that even individuals who have no strong preference for either brand are likely to have formed a set of beliefs about the attributes of these brands, and that these beliefs will have influences attitudes assessed with explicit measures. In contrast, they won’t have influenced implicit measures that reflect people’s automatic affective response to a brand; one that will have been changed through evaluative conditioning.

Affect-as-information

According to the effect-as-information hypothesis, feelings may sometimes influence evaluations through feeling-based inferences rather than through repeated association with the stimulus. Individuals infer their attitude from their present mood state.

The formation of evaluations based on behavioral information

Besides behavior as a direct experience, there are two other ways evaluations can be influenced by past behavior, namely self-perception and reinforcement. New and unfamiliar brands may particularly benefit from self-perception processes brought about by the direct experience marketing tools mentioned before. Example: people expressing more positive attitudes towards being religious after completing questionnaires designed to increase the salience of pro-religious behavior. Studies of the effects of reinforcement have shown that when the interviewer responds with ‘good’ every time a participant agrees with a positive attitude statement, the participant will end up showing a more positive attitude towards the issue than one who has been reinforced with negative direction.

What does the structure of attitude entail?

Attitudes are evaluations of an object which are based on cognitive, affective, and behavioral information. Not all attitudes have both strong cognitive, affective and behavioral components. They might have only one or two. Now we will focus on the relationship between beliefs about an attitude object and the evaluation of this object. Attitude structure affects the durability of attitudes, their stability, their resistance to influence and their impact on behavior.

Expectancy-value models

Expectancy-value models conceptualize beliefs as the sum of the expected values attributed to the attitude object. Beliefs consist of an expectancy component and a value component. The

Expectancy component reflects the individual’s confidence that the attitude object possesses the attributes they associate with it. The value component reflects the value a consumer attaches to the characteristics of an object. Expectancy-value models state that multiplication of the valuation of each attribute with the subjective probability with which it is perceived as linked to the object, can predict attitudes. The expectancy-value model can be expressed as follows:

A₀ = Σⁿ_i=1 Expectancy x Value

Rosenberg was the first to propose an expectancy-value model of attitudes. He suggested that someone’s attitude towards a certain attitude object is a function of the extent to which someone perceived the attitude object as a means to the achievement of important values or goals. The more instrumental an attitude object is perceived to be in helping the attainment of positive values or goals and blocking the attainment of negative values or goals, the more positively the consumer will evaluate the object. Since this model wasn’t very useful in predicting attitudes towards brands, Fishbein developed the approach into a general theory of attitude. His model can be summarized as follows:

A₀ = Σⁿ_i=1 b_ie_i

Are beliefs the cause of attitudes?

Rosenberg and Fishbein differed in that Fishbein’s model is essentially an information integration theory, whereas Rosenberg’s model is a consistency theory. Fishbein assumes that people’s attitudes towards a brand are completely determined by the information they possess about the product attributes, or the beliefs that are salient at the time the express their attitude (information integration theory). Rosenberg, on the other hand, makes the assumption that individuals try to achieve consistency between their evaluations and their beliefs.

Both models predict that changing people’s beliefs results in attitude change, but only Rosenberg makes the additional prediction that changing people’s evaluation of the attitude object should result in changes in their beliefs about the object.

Attitudes towards the advertisement and the dual mediation hypothesis

The Dual Mediation Hypothesis of advertisements states that the attitude towards advertisements influences brand attitudes through two pathways: indirectly via brand cognitions, and directly via evaluative conditioning. Exposure to the advertisement elicits the expectations that use of the brand will have a number of positive consequences. This positive affect is transferred to the brand through processes of evaluative conditioning. The liking for the advertisement will ‘rub off’ on the product.

What are the functions of attitudes and what are attitude objects?

Categorization and attitude formation are the basic processes that enable consumer to bring order into the chaos of an overload of stimuli.

Attitude functions: why people hold attitudes

Katz developed the most influential exposition of a functional theory and distinguished four functions of attitudes:

1. Adjustment function: Attitudes help us to maximize our rewards and minimize penalties in interactions with our environment.

2. Value-expressive function: Attitudes reflect values that are central to someone’s self-concept and expressing these attitudes might help someone to maintain relationships with important groups.

3. Ego-defense function: Attitudes can help us protect our self-esteem by avoiding acknowledgement that we and our environment aren’t always perfect.

4. Knowledge function: Attitudes provide frames of reference for understanding the world around us.

Consumer goals and the functions of consumer goods

Katz’ theory doesn’t make a clear distinction between the function of holding a certain attitude and the function the attitude object itself serves. The functional theory of consumer goods discussed here focuses exclusively on the function consumer goods and the goals consumer pursue in purchasing a certain product serve.

The relationship between attitudes, goals and intentions

Before explaining the functional theory of consumer goods, it is important to have some concept of goals and the relationship between goals, attitudes and intentions. Goals are cognitive representations of desired end-states. These end-states have to be desirable, as well as attainable. In addition, the end-state has to be perceived as an improvement over the present state (positively discrepant). When these three criteria are met and a goal is adopted, an intension is formed to reach that goal.

Goals also vary in abstractness, with values being the most abstract goals. The number of potential means that could be used to reach a goal defines the level of abstractness.

Because people often pursue multiple goals, it is useful to distinguish between focal goals – goals that are actively pursued and of which one is consciously aware – and background goals – goals that might also influence goal pursuit, but of which one isn’t necessarily explicitly aware.

Why people acquire goods

People buy goods in order to achieve a particular goal. They make choices based on the expectation that these choices will be the best means to reach that goal. These goals serve a utilitarian function: we evaluate these products in terms of their performance, reliability and quality. Other times we pursue self-expression goals. These goals convey meaning through which people communicate something about themselves to others. For example, by buying designer cloths. It is suspected that for people who buy luxury and designer goods, a major goal is to communicate or signal their elevated economic status, which has been termed conspicuous consumption. However, recent research suggests that not the rich, but people who want to appear rich seem to engage in conspicuous consumption.

The self-monitoring scale is an individual difference measure that distinguishes people for whom image aspects of a product are particularly important. People high on self-monitoring tend to be more concerned about the image they project to others than people low on self-monitoring.
Besides buying goods for a utilitarian reason or to express their identity, people also buy goods because owning these goods helps them to be the kind of person they want to be. That is, products often serve an identity-building function.

Further, an individual’s decisions regarding a certain purchase are also influenced by intrinsic (hedonic) goals. These refer to the pleasure possession and consumption or use of a good evokes.

The functional approach assumes that persuasive messages are likely to have the greatest impact if the argument matches the function the consumer good is expected to serve.

A lot of brands serve multiple goals, most often utilitarian and self-expression. When advertisers try to praise brands or products that can fulfill both goals, they usually try to emphasize both goals in the same advertisement/commercial.

When are consumers persuaded and are their attitudes changed? - Chapter 5

This chapter presents theories of persuasion, or any change in beliefs and attitudes that results from exposure to a communication.

What is the Yale Reinforcement Approach?

The Yale Reinforcement Approach assumes that exposure to a persuasive communication which successfully induces the individual to accept a new opinion forms a learning experience in which a new verbal habit is acquired. Receivers of a persuasive message will only accept the recommended attitudinal response if the incentives associated with this response are greater than those associated with their current position.

Lasswell suggested you must know who says what to whom with what effect in order to understand persuasion. According to Hovland et al. the impact of communicator credibility, communication features, individual differences in susceptibility to persuasion and the extent to which attitude change is maintained over time on attitudes could be mediated by three different processes: (1) attention to the communication content, (2) comprehension of the message, or (3) acceptance of the conclusions that are advocated by the communication. Hovland et al. tested their theoretical approach.

In their studies on source effect – the impact of the source of a communication on persuasion – showed that attribution of a communication to either a prestigious or a non-prestigious source influences the target’s evaluation of the communication. Their studies on the impact of fear-arousing communication on the acceptance of a recommendation that would reduce the threat showed that the weakest appeal was most effective in changing attitudes and behavior. They explained their findings using the term ‘defensive avoidance’ and argued that a strong fear appeal is so threatening that it is more effective for receivers to reduce fear by rejecting the appeal as alarmist rather than accepting the recommendation. However, later studies show that recipients’ willingness to accept a recommendation increases when the fear appeal increases in strength.

What does the information processing model of McGuire entail?

McGuire’s information processing model proposes that there are different stages involved in the processing of persuasive communications, and that determinants of persuasion can have different impacts at the next five different stages of persuasion: (1) attention, (2) comprehension, (3) acceptance, (4) retention, and (5) behavior.

The receiver must go through each of these stages for the communication to have an ultimate persuasive impact. Each stage depends on the occurrence of the previous one. It is assumed that a consumer has to go through every stage systematically in order to be persuaded. There are, however, many ways by which messages can have an influence, even without having been carefully processed. Processing becomes more important when the product becomes more complex and expensive. A stage model may therefore be more applicable in such situations.

McGuire also suggests that determinants of persuasion can have different effects at different stages of the persuasion process. He uses only the reception and the acceptance of the message as stages for this. The more intelligent a person is, the more likely it is that he understands the message. However, he is then also more likely to be critical and therefore less likely to accept everything he hears/reads.

What is the cognitive response model?

The cognitive response model stresses the importance of the thoughts individuals generate (and rehearse and learn) in response to a persuasive communication (i.e. cognitive responses). The passive listener (McGuire model) is replaced by an active thinker who engages in a silent discussion with the communicator and argues for or against the arguments contained in a communication.

Listeners are active participants who relate the communication to their personal knowledge by elaborating the message arguments and considering information that is not contained in the communication to generate thoughts for or against the arguments presented. The cognitive responses to these arguments determine the impact of persuasive communication on attitudes.

There are two major contributions by the Ohio State Group that turned the cognitive response approach into a testable theory, the first one being the development of the thought-listening technique, which asks subjects to list all their thoughts or ideas while listening to the communication. Relevant thoughts are categorized into those who are favorable and those who are unfavorable to the communication. An index is used to assess the extent to which cognitive responses mediate the impact of the communication on attitudes. The second major contribution involves a theoretical one, namely the extension of the concept of cognitive responses to include positive cognitive responses.

If you think about a persuasive communication and scrutinize the arguments contained in the message, you will discover inconsistencies and therefore be reluctant to accept the recommendation. In case of strong and well-reasoned arguments, thinking about them might reduce our reluctance to change our minds. Therefore the concept op positive cognitive responses is included in the cognitive response approach. Thinking about strong and well-reasoned arguments is thought to produce favorable thoughts, which in turn enhance persuasion. Persuasion depends on both the extent to which recipients engage in message relevant thoughts, and the favorableness of those thoughts.

Increasing message-relevant thinking should increase persuasion for strongly argued messages that mainly elicit favorable thoughts. For weakly argued messages that elicit mainly unfavorable thoughts, increasing message relevant thinking should decrease persuasion or even result in (negative) change away from the advocated position (‘boomerang effect’):

This extended version of the cognitive response model can also explain research inconsistencies regarding distraction and attitude change. According to this model, distracting someone reduces the persuasive impact of a (well-argued) communication, even if comprehension isn’t impaired. Research findings have shown that increased distraction does increase attitude change for weakly argued messages but decreases change for strongly argued messages. Both the increase and decrease in persuasion can be mediated by thought disruption, in that disruption seems to impair someone’s ability to produce counterarguments for a weak message, but appears to reduce the number of favorable arguments for a strong message.

What are the dual process theories of persuasion?

Dual process theories of persuasion are an extension of the cognitive response model.

In contrast to the cognitive response model – which assumes that attitude change is always mediated by argument relevant thinking, even if the extent to which recipients think about arguments may be minimal – dual process models acknowledge that recipients may sometimes take short cuts and accept/reject the position recommended by the communicator without thinking about message arguments. These theories also specify the factors determining the intensity of message processing and thus the conditions under which attitude change will be mediated by message-relevant thinking.

There are two dual process theories of persuasion; the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), and the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM), which will be integrated into one theoretical framework.

Dual process theories distinguish two routes to persuasion, which form the endpoints on a continuum of processing intensity: (1) the central route to persuasion, which is taken when recipients carefully and thoughtfully consider the arguments presented in support of a position (systematic processing), and (2) the peripheral route to persuasion, which reflects the fact that people often change their attitudes without thinking about the arguments contained in a communication but for example because of a recommendation or because the issue is not important to them.

The ELM subsumes the whole range of mechanisms which cause persuasion in the absence of argument scrutiny under the peripheral route, while the HSM only considers one low effort process, namely heuristic processing, which refers to the use of simple decision rules in deciding on whether to accept or reject a persuasive communication. The HSM position is adopted and heuristic processing is considered to be the low effort endpoint of the continuum of processing intensity.

Dual process theories distinguish between two types of qualitatively different information which recipients use when trying to decide whether to accept/reject the communication: (1) the arguments contained in the communication, and (2) heuristic cues. The intensity of processing is determined by recipients’ processing ability and motivation. When recipients are unmotivated/unable to engage in systematic processing, they use heuristic cues. When they are motivated and able, they will engage in argument scrutiny. Heuristic cues are easier to process, while message arguments provide more reliable information.

The most recent assumption (multiple-role assumption) is that both heuristic and systematic processing can co-occur in case systematic processing of arguments causes someone to be unable to arrive at a clear-cut conclusion (for example, because the given arguments are ambiguous). Persuasion can also be affected by variables in multiple ways, depending on the extent to which a message is processed systematically. For example, not only can mood influence someone’s attitudes as a heuristic cue (‘how do I feel about it’ heuristic), but also someone’s motivation to closely examine arguments and to think about the content of a message (multiple-role assumption).

Another example for the multiple-role assumption: depending on the level of processing motivation, the attributes of the endorser of a product can be used as a heuristic cue to influence attitudes towards a product, but they can also serve as an argument.

It is assumed that processing is guided by the wish to form an accurate view on a certain communicated issue (‘accuracy motive’). However, since people aren’t always unbiased listeners, the dual process framework has been extended to incorporate two other processing motives or goals, namely a defense motive and an impression motive. People have a defense motive in that they may have a strong preference for a particular position.

For example, we prefer to see ourselves as smart instead of dumb. The impression motivate refers to the desire to express attitudes that are socially acceptable. Both motives can be heuristic as well as systematic. Under defense motivation, people will use heuristics selectively to support their preferred position or, when processing systematically, attend more to arguments supporting their position than to opposing ones. Impression-motivated heuristic processing involves the use of simple rules to guide one’s selection of socially acceptable attitude positions. In systematic processing the same goal is reached through evaluating the available evidence in terms of their social acceptability.

How is the intensity of processing assessed?

The thought-listing technique can be used to assess the extent to which attitude change is based on systematic processing. If attitude change is due to systematic processing, then recipients should have generated some thoughts favorable to the position advocated by the communicator, and the relative (un)favorableness of these thoughts should be correlated with the amount of attitude change.

Also a favorableness index should act as a mediator of the impact of the manipulated variables on attitude change with systematic but not under heuristic processing.

An even more powerful tool for assessing the extent of systematic processing is provided by the manipulation of argument quality. The combination of an argument quality manipulation and thought-listening is expected to provide a valid tool for diagnosing the extent to which people engage in systematic processing of the arguments a communication contains.

Processing ability, processing intensity and attitude change

Unless a person has knowledge of the product class in which he/she wants to buy something, being intelligent or having a classic education will be of little use.

The impact of working knowledge on processing ability

The amount of working knowledge an individual possesses in a certain area is the most important personal factor influencing processing ability. People without a lot of knowledge will be less able to critically evaluate the incoming information from an advertisement than more knowledgeable people. A low processing intensity message length acts as heuristic cue with longer messages considered more valid than shorter ones.

The most knowledgeable people are influenced by the arguments contained in a message, while the least knowledgeable are influenced by the heuristic cue of the message length. If arguments do not allow to draw clear conclusions, people will rely on heuristic cues even under high processing intensity.

The impact of distraction on processing ability

Distraction is probably the most powerful environmental factor that can influence an individual’s ability to process information. The impact of distraction on the extent to which people are influenced by a persuasive communication depends on the quality of the arguments presented. Distraction increases attitude change with weak arguments and decreases vice versa.

The impact of message repetition on processing ability

Repetition of arguments provides recipients with opportunity to think about and elaborate the message. With strong arguments, greater elaboration results in an increase of favorable thoughts and a decrease of counterarguments, leading to increased acceptance of the message. When message repetition further increases, people get bored, which motivates them to attack the argumentation.

If the positive impact of a small number of repetitions is due to the fact that repetitions provide increased opportunity to favorably elaborate the strong arguments, then repetition results in an immediate decrease of attitude with weak arguments. A lowering of processing motivation results in a decrease in recipients’ willingness to elaborate message arguments. Then boredom sets in earlier at a smaller number of repetitions. Marketers and advertisers therefore vary their advertisements to try to avoid this tedium. This variation can be cosmetic or substantial. In case of cosmetic variation non-substantive features of an advertisement that are not essential in evaluating the product are altered in order to avoid/delay boredom.

Substantive variation involves a change in message content, e.g. in the type of arguments made in order to avoid/delay boredom.

Once processing intensity increases, cosmetic variation will be ineffective and only substantive variation will reduce boredom/tedium.

The previous mentioned assumptions and predictions are based on the assumption that even under low product relevance some semantic processing of message arguments occurs. However, people often look at ads without really processing the text message. Research on the effect of repetition and shallow and deep processing on attitudes has shown that with deep processing, attitude change followed the familiar curvilinear pattern (increase of favorable thoughts after the first few repetitions, but then a decrease in favorable thoughts after 10 repetitions). However, in case of shallow processing there doesn’t seem to be a downturn. A possible explanation for this is that the frequency of exposure to advertisements is likely to increase perceptual fluency, which results in greater liking.

Processing motivation, processing intensity and attitude change

Personal relevance refers to the importance of an outcome for the individual, and is considered to be the major variable that affects processing motivation. Most people are, for example, not interested in refrigerator ads, until they need one. So the need to make a purchase decision is one factor influencing processing motivation in the area of consumer behavior. Other factors are effort and time investment. When motivation to process information about products is low (for example, when buying a toothbrush), people often rely on repetitive, routine or habitual choices. Since these purchase decisions don’t involve a lot of risk (i.e. minimal financial costs of making a poor decision and having to replace a poor product by a better one), they are of low personal relevance. People put more effort in their decision making process by gathering and carefully processing a great deal of information if goods are infrequently bought and expensive. These purchases are of high personal relevance and involve a great deal of risk.

Some refuse to gain knowledge about the product because of lack of time or incapability of understanding the information and just buy the product recommended in the store. Others critically read advertisements and test reports, and based on those, develop favorable attitudes towards a product or brand. Only when recipients of information are motivated, does argument quality influence the amount of attitude change.

Source expertise seems to influence attitudes only under low involvement conditions, with more attitude change when arguments are attributed to a high status source.

In case there is a celebrity endorser in an ad, low involved consumers use the status of this endorser as a heuristic cue, while highly involved consumers still focus on argument quality. Physical attractiveness of the endorser is assumed to work for both low involved consumers (heuristic cue) and highly involved consumers (as visual evidence for the effectiveness; an argument) of the product.

This assumption was theoretically elaborated by the concept of source congruity;, which reflects the match between cognitively accessible endorser associations and attributes associated with the brand. This becomes important under high processing intensity. Source congruity not only applies to physical attractiveness, but also to other attributes of a source, such as sturdiness.

Advertisements for products like hygiene products and medication often point out that they protect consumers from unpleasant health impairment. First they warn them of some threat, then they recommended how consumers can protect themselves against it (i.e. by buying the advertised product). This is based on the assumption that the more you scare people about possible harm, the more they will be willing to buy something that prevents it.

Research on fear-arousing communication was initially guided by the drive-reduction model of the Yale program. This model assumed that higher fear should result in more persuasion, but only if the recommended action is perceived as effective in averting danger.

Since some of the empirical evidence was inconsistent with the drive-reduction model of fear appeals, Leventhal developed a parallel response model, in which he stated that a threat is cognitively evaluated and this appraisal can give rise to two parallel/independent responses: danger control and fear control. Danger control refers to the decision to act as well as actions taken to reduce the danger. Fear control involves actions taken to control emotional responses, and strategies to reduce fear. If a recommendation seems effective in averting a threat, individuals will engage in danger control. If it appears ineffective, they will mainly focus on fear control.
There are two problems with the previous mentioned models: (1) there is no empirical evidence for the predicted interaction between threat and response efficacy, and (2) they make no predictions about how cognitive appraisal mediates information processing. In response to these shortcomings, the stage model of processing of fear-arousing communication was developed. This model assumes that the important determinants of the intensity of processing are the perceived severity of a health threat and personal vulnerability. If both are low, individuals will rely on heuristic processing. If the threat is severe, they will systematically process information about the threat, even if they do not feel vulnerable. When both the threat is severe and the individual feels vulnerable, he/she will be motivated to engage in (defensive) systematic processing. The defense motivation will lead to a positive bias in the processing of the recommended action and will heighten the motivation to engage in the protective action regardless of the quality of the argumentation.

Individual differences in processing motivation

The extent to which people think about message arguments is also affected by individual differences. People seem to vary in their Need for Cognition, or the extent to which individuals engage and enjoy effort-full cognitive activity. Argument quality has a higher impact on attitudes of people who are high rather than low in need for cognition. Another individual difference variable that seems to influence the way in which someone processes information, is his/her need for cognitive closure, which refers to the desire for a definite answer on some topic, any answer as opposed to confusion and ambiguity. This need is thought to reflect both a stable individual difference, as well as a state that can be induced by the situational context, like time pressure.

If heuristic cues are available, people with a high need for closure will form their attitudes based on those. People low on need for closure will rely more on arguments.

Attitude change caused by systematic processing is more persistent than change caused by heuristic processing. High levels of issue-relevant cognitive activity are likely to require frequent accessing of one’s attitude towards the issue targeted by the persuasive attempt. This is supposed to have two effects: (1) it results in better recall of one’s cognitive responses to the message, and (2) it increases the number of linkages between an attitude and the structure of beliefs in which it is embedded, making the structure internally more consistent and more resistant to counterarguments.

Substantive variation in ad repetition does not only contribute to avoiding boredom, but also increases the resistance of individuals against the negative impact of counterarguments.

What is meant by the unimodel?

The unimodel suggests that arguments and heuristic cues are functionally equivalent in constituting two separate content categories of evidence for drawing conclusions from persuasive communications.

Persuasion can be characterized as a singular process of drawing conclusions from available evidence. It doesn’t matter if this evidence if contained in an argument or comes from a heuristic cue. Heuristic cues are as valid as arguments.

How can attention to advertising be attracted?

Consumers often try to avoid advertisements, and even if they are exposed, their awareness of persuasive intent might increase their resistance and decrease the message’s impact. Persuasion knowledge refers to the theories consumers have developed about the motives, strategies and tactics of marketers as well their beliefs in their ability to resist these tactics. The focus will be on the impact of the attribution of intention to persuade. The perception of a communicator’s intention to persuade increases resistance in recipients of a message.

When consumers expect to be exposed to counter attitudinal arguments, they will be motivated to access the reasons that support their own position and use these arguments to counter the persuasive communication. When consumers are only warned about persuasive intent without providing information about the direction of the arguments, they are immediately resistant. Hass and Grady gave an explanation for this effect by suggesting that warning someone that he/she will be exposed to a communication aimed at changing his/her attitude produces psychological reactivity, which is a motivational state that can be triggered by the perceived threat to one’s attitudinal freedom implied by a social influence attempt. This motivates individuals to re-establish their freedom, for example by resisting the influence attempt. So when individuals perceive the intention to persuade, they might get motivated to engage in biased processing of the communication or to simply ignore the message or to disregard it as invalid.

Still, research on the 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 not longer remember the source – has demonstrated there is a chance that once this reactivity subsides, individuals might still remember the arguments and will eventually be persuaded. However, the conditions under which sleeper effect occurs are rarely realized in advertising contexts.

Humor in advertising

People’s tendency to avoid exposure to advertisements can be partly overcome by adding humor, so that people enjoy looking at it. However, just looking is not enough. What is more important to know, is whether humorous advertisements are also effective in persuading consumers. The evidence is mixed. One study even reported a zero correlation for the effect of humor on purchasing behavior. A likely explanation for this lack of effect is that humorous ads distract consumers, which has been demonstrated in several studies. People do seem to remember humorous ads better than non-humorous ads, but remember the type of product advertised with humor less than products advertised non-humorously. Humorous ads seem to impair mainly explicit brand memory, but don’t affect implicit brand memory. There still seems to be an evaluative conditioning effect even when there are no signs of explicit memory for the brand or product. So in this way, adding humor to advertisements might still influence purchasing behavior under certain conditions, namely when the purchase is made without much deliberation (low cognitive control).

All in all, humorous advertisements seem to have three effects: (1) they attract consumer attention; (2) they distract from the part of the message that isn’t related to the humor and impair explicit brand memory; and (3) they evoke positive affect which becomes associated with the brand through evaluative conditioning. As with all research findings, there are several limitations. First, the humor that was used in most of the studies was unrelated to the advertising message. In that way these results only tell us something about the impact humor has on brand memory, but not on recall of an advertising slogan. Second, the impact of humor on explicit attitudes hasn’t been assessed. Even though individuals don’t remember having seen an advertisement (explicit memory), doesn’t necessarily mean that humorous ads don’t improve explicit attitudes towards a brand or product. Third, research on the impact of humorous advertising on consumer behavior has nearly exclusively used brands that were unfamiliar to participants. So it is uncertain whether humor affects attitudes towards established and well known brands. Humorous ads possibly can affect product choice even for familiar brands, but only for consumers who have no strong preference for either brand and are unable or unmotivated to think much about their choice. The final limitation is that almost all of the research studied the effect of humor in the advertising of low cost items. Since consumers won’t be very motivated to put a lot of thought into making choices between low cost items, humorous ads should be rather effective in influencing the purchase of such items.

Sex in advertising

Sex sells. Or does it? Before going into this discussion, let’s first give a better picture of what is meant by sex in advertising. This has been defined as mediated messages that contain sexual imagery with the persuasive purpose of selling branded products. However, what is meant with sexual imagery is elusive. Reichert et al. use two criteria: the extent to which models are undressed and the type of physical contact between the models. Such categorizations are sensitive to cultural historic change.

Why is sex supposed to sell? Sexual imagery might influence the impact of advertisements at two stages: (1) attracting attention, and (2) attending to the message.

There is more evidence available for the assumption that sexual imagery distracts from processing the message content, than that it attends to the message content. Research findings have shown that the presence of sexual imagery not only impairs the recall of the arguments contained in advertisements, but also reduces the amount of message-related and product-related thinking engaged by participants. Although it doesn’t seem to affect brand memory, it does seem to have a positive effect on attitudes towards the ad as well as on purchasing intention. There is also evidence that brand name recall is especially worse when the sexual content of an ad is unrelated to a product.

In a review of the role of sex in advertising research, Reichert concluded that sexual information has a relative advantage of drawing attention to the advertisement. He also concluded that individuals are more likely to encode and ultimately remember sexual images in the advertisement, but that ads that contain sexual content inhibit the encoding of brand names. He further proposed that these effects are moderated by the extent to which the sexual imagery is relevant for the advertised product; individuals are more likely to remember product information when the sexual images are relevant to the product.

But why and how does the use of sexual imagery in ads possibly influence attitudes towards and advertisement and the advertised product? Again, this is explained on the basis of the two routes to persuasion: the central route – where persuasion is based on systematic processing – and the peripheral route – where persuasion is based on other aspects of the message (heuristic cues). The effects of evaluative conditioning are presumed to be under the peripheral route. So it is important to make a distinction between two ways in which sexual imagery can influence attitudes towards an advertised product, namely through sexual images serving as persuasive arguments or through evaluative conditioning. The main requirement for sexual imagery is that it should make the advertised product look attractive and elicit the expectation in viewers that using the product would make them look (or be) equally attractive. These persuasive argument effects are assumed to only work if the sexual imagery is functional or relevant for the advertised product and if the product has a self-expressive or identity-related function. But according to the dual process theories of persuasion, also with goods that serve a purely utilitarian function sexual imagery could influence brand attitudes through evaluative conditioning. The evaluative conditioning effect ought to be independent of the relevance of the sexual imagery for the advertised product. The main requirement here for positive evaluative conditioning to occur is that the stimulus associated with the product’s sexual imagery evokes a positive affective response in viewers. These evoked feelings are significantly related to brand attitudes.

One problem with the use of sexual imagery is that the conditions under which it evokes positive affective responses are complex. Imagery that is mildly sexual usually elicits positive affect, while gratuitous sexual imagery can elicit negative affect. In addition, individuals differ in their attitudes towards sex and sexuality. This moderates attitudes toward an advertisement containing sexual imagery.

Overall, research findings suggest that the use of sexual imagery in advertising helps to draw people’s attention towards an ad. However, at the same time it can impair recall for the product information and the brand name. This distraction effect seems to be stronger if there is no relationship between the sexual content of the ad and the product being advertised. Besides relevance, the findings further suggest that the effect of sex in advertising is moderated by many other factors, such as the gender of the models and viewers, the sexual liberalism of the viewers, the degree of undress and the viewer’s level of involvement in the product.

Two-sided advertisements

Two-sided advertisements mention both positive and negative features of a product. They appear as more honest, and stand out from other advertisements. In the optimal case, only the negative attributes which are trivial or of which the consumer is already aware are mentioned. Hereby serious product deficiencies must be avoided, while admitting utterly trivial deficiencies may be too obvious.

Product placement

Product placement refers to the paid inclusion of branded products or brand identifiers through audio and/or visual means, within mass media programming. For example, James Bond driving a BMW in the movies. Product placement can be categorized according to two dimensions: (1) modality – that is, whether the brand name is only seen or also mentioned – and (2) centrality – the relevance of the product use to the plot. Centrality has been characterized by three levels:

• Background: when the product is shown/mentioned in a scene but not used by any of the main characters;

• More central: the situation where the product is used by one of the main characters but in a way that has no particular relevance to the story;

• Most central: the situation where the product plays a role in the story.

Centrality influences explicit memory, that is products placed prominently in a movie have a larger impact on recall and recognition than products that are placed subtly in the background. Implicit measures are not affected by the level of placement, although centrality does have a significant impact. Attitudes towards the brand used by the main character are more positive than when the brand is only shown in the background. Disliked characters and product placement that is too obvious, lead to negative results.

Sponsorship

Sponsorship is a technique by which a commercial organization financially supports an entity (event, team, person, cause, etc.) in order to associate the organization’s name with this entity in the media and to use it for advertising purposes. In case of program sponsorship the advertiser assumes the total financial responsibility for the production of the program and provides the commercials that are shown. When a company contributes to the costs of an event in order to be allowed to link its brand name to it, we speak of even sponsorship. Advantages can be increased brand awareness, positive feelings and familiarity. When the event is liked, positive associations are transferred to the brand. Congruent sponsorships (e.g. a sports brand sponsoring a soccer event) are better remembered than incongruent ones (e.g. a brewery sponsoring a soccer event).

In what ways does advertising influence buying behavior? - Chapter 6

Although attitudes are important determinants of consumer behavior, there are other things that are important as well, such as social norms and perceived behavioral control.

What is the relationship between attitude and behavior?

Human behavior is guided by social attitudes. In the past, many researchers were not able to find a relationship between measures of verbal attitudes and observations of actual behavior.

Ajzen and Fishbein came with the principle of compatibility and stated that is important when attitudes are related to behavior, not whether. Measures of attitudes are only related to measures of behavior if both constructs are assessed at the same level of generality. A specific action is always performed with respect to a given target in a given context and at a given point in time. One needs to make a behavioral index that aggregates across a representative variety of prejudicial actions, performed in a representative range of contexts, across a representative range of times.

What is the reasoned action approach?

Attitudes towards a certain type of behavior result from the likelihood with which one expects that behavior leads to certain outcomes, with each outcome weighted by the value the individual attaches to that outcome. Attitudes are good predictors of behavior, but behavior is also influenced by social norms and environmental factors constraining the ability to engage in this behavior.

The standard model

Two theories predict behavior intentions and assume that the impact of attitudes/other components on behavior is mediated by the intention to perform that behavior, namely the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB). Both theories predict behavioral intentions. They share the assumption that the impact of attitudes and other components on behavior is mediated by the intention to perform that behavior. TRA states that the intention to perform a specific behavior is determined by a person’s attitude towards that behavior and by subjective norms. These norms combine two components: normative beliefs – your beliefs about how people who are important to you expect you to behave – and motivation to comply – wanting to do what others want you to do.

TPB added the concept of perceived behavioral control as a third component to the theory of reasoned action, because people often lack the ability, resources or willpower to act on their intentions and thus often fail to do so.

According to TPB perceived behavioral control affects behavior indirectly through intentions, but can also have a direct link to behavior, which is not mediated by intentions. Perceived behavioral control has a causal influence on intention. The direct link from perceived behavioral control to behavior is more predictive in nature, since it depends on the accuracy with which an individual perceives behavioral control.

Meta-analyses support the basic assumption of these models, namely that components of these model can predict intentions and that behavior can be well predicted by measures of intention.

Extending the standard model

According to Fishbein and Ajzen their models apply to any behavior and that they had chosen general predictors that would apply to any behavior. Thus, it is possible that the inclusion of specific determinants of intentions that are likely to influence behavior – for example, the identity-related function of a particular behavior – in specific domains can improve predictions. Research findings support the assumption that adding a measure of identity similarity to the assessment of standard TPB variables improves predictions of consumer buying intentions. These findings provide further support for the argument that identity concerns can play a significant role in consumer choice and that it should influence buying behavior mainly for products that can serve identity-related goals, and not utilitarian functions, of consumers.

How can the intention-behaviour gap be narrowed?

Behavioral intentions are characterized by a ‘I intend to do X’ form.

Implementation intentions are more specific goals than behavioral intentions, since these involve the ‘I intend to do X in situation Y’ form.

People may fail to act on their intentions because they simply forget to act when the opportunity arises. Mental representation of context cues becomes activated when the time and context in which the behavior should be performed are specified. The formation of an implementation intention will create/strengthen the association between the situational cues and the response that is needed for obtaining the goal. Then the formation of an implementation intention increases the probability that the action intention will be remembered when the specified situation/context arises.

But how to resist a temptation and inhibit behavior? First you have to identify situations in which the risk of yielding to the temptation is high. Then you have to think of a coping response that can be effective in helping you to resist. Finally you have to cognitively rehearse linking the coping response to the situation. The effectiveness of is type of implementation depends on both remembering the coping strategy at the right time, as well as the effectiveness of the coping strategy in helping someone to resist the temptation.

When actions involve low effort, being reminded at a suitable moment of performing the action is likely to be sufficient enough to make sure that the action will be performed, especially when it is so well-learned and easy to perform that it is automatically enacted in response to a situational cue. However, more difficult behaviors involve longer-term self-control. Someone has to remember the implementation intention each time he/she is confronted with a temptation.

What does advertising and its implications entail?

Several techniques we can use to design strong and effective argumentations:

• Step 1: Decide what exactly you want to influence with the advertisement/commercial. Do you want to improve brand awareness or persuade people to buy a particular product? In the latter case, Fishbein’s and Ajzen’s techniques should be used. It doesn’t make sense to persuade people of a product’s qualities if they are unlikely to buy it because of subjective norms or perceived behavioral control.

• Step 2: Identify the specific beliefs which determine the targeted behavior, since they are likely to strongly influence the purchase decision.

• Step 3: Potential customers must not only be persuaded to buy the product, but also to form an implementation intention, when and where to buy it. Then it is more likely that they will actually make the purchase.

What is the automatic instigation of behavior?

According to TRA and TPB attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control result in the formation of behavioral intention. This is the most direct cause of behavior. Automatic processes are processes that occur without intention, effort or awareness and that do not interfere with other concurrent cognitive processes. One’s social and physical environment can influence behavior without him/her being aware of being influenced.

TRA and TPB also assume that although people are guided by relevant attitudes, subjective norms and control beliefs in forming behavioral intentions, the activation of beliefs can be automatic and unconscious. However, since intentions involve some kind of planning, they are likely to be conscious of the process of intention creation.

Automatic and deliberate influence of attitudes

Implicit attitudes reflect people’s automatic responses, while explicit attitudes reflect cognitively controlled processes. Although attitude measures often converge (come together), under certain conditions they diverge. These conditions exist in the area of prejudice and self-regulation (e.g. liking chocolate, but not eating it because you are on a diet). It is expected that implicit measures predict behavior better when individuals are unmotivated/unable to exert control, and explicit measures vice versa.

Automatic and deliberate influence of social norms

Intention should mediate the influence of subjective norms on behavior (according to TRA and TPB). It has been suggested that social norms might guide behavior when people are being aware of their influence. Norms are if-then rules that state that in certain situations individuals should behave in certain ways (e.g. being quiet in a library).

Many norms are tied to physical environments and according to Aarts and Dijksterhuis, these environments don’t necessarily have such behavioral implications. People mostly only act on these norms if it is of they are of behavioral relevance to them. For example, people don’t lower their voices when they are just passing by a library, but do so if they intend to visit one and are primed with a picture of a library.

Ads also often appeal to norms, but these appeals are typically quite explicit. More subtle norm primes are used in shopping environments. For example, the aim of Christmas music and decorations in shops in the weeks before Christmas is not only to bring people in a Christmas mood, but also to remind them they have to buy presents for their family.

Automatic and deliberate influence of goals

Goal-directed behavior can be triggered by cues in the environment without an intention having been formed. Theories of conscious goal pursuit and theories of unconscious goal pursuit share the basic assumption that goals are actions/outcomes towards which individuals hold positive attitudes. For it to motivate goal striving, there must be a discrepancy between the actual and desired state, and the consumer must perceive the goal as attainable. Unconscious goals are determined by attitudes, norms and perceived behavioral control to the same extent as conscious ones. Unlike theories of conscious goal pursuit, theories of unconscious goal pursuit assume that goals can be activated and pursued unconsciously, without a person having formed a conscious intention. A lot of studies support this assumption by having demonstrated that priming can activate goals without people being consciously aware of either the prime or the goal. There is also evidence that priming can influence goal enactment.

Furthermore, goal priming has been increasingly studied in the context of research on consumer behavior, where brand images were used to prime goals. Brand images seem to prime specific goals. Brands are both associated with characteristics that relate to the expected qualities of a product, as well as with personality characteristics, also referred to as brand personality.

Not only can primes trigger goals, they can also channel goal-directed behavior in a certain direction.

Goals, habits and behavior

People normally have a choice from various means to reach a certain goal. This poses a challenge to the cognitive resources. For goals to be automatically implemented, the selection of the relevant means to reach it needs to be routine by developing habits. Habits are learned sequences of acts that have become automatic responses to specific cues and are functional in obtaining certain goals. Behavior becomes habitual if it is performed frequently, regularly and under stable conditions. If habitual behaviors are well-learned (like driving and dancing), we speak of goal-dependent automaticity. Starting this behavior involves an intention, but once the process has been initiated, the rest follows automatically. This kind of behavior is hard to change.

Behavior that is performed regularly and under stable conditions is better predicted by past behavior under the same conditions than by intentions. Intentions predict infrequent behavior under varying conditions better.

If habits are cognitively represented as links between goals and actions that are instrumental for reaching these goals, then forming implementation intentions should occur through the same processes as the formation of habits. A mental link between a situational cue and a specific action is created. With habits, the association is learned through repeated behavior, while with implementation intentions, the association is learned through repeated mental simulation of performing the action in that specific situation.

Once a particular choice has become habitual, people are often not interested in alternatives anymore. Because for marketers establishing habits is extremely desirable, they try to instill habits through frequency marketing, that is awarding repeat buying through special benefits. When consumers have developed a particular skill in using a service, store, or product and switching to another would engender extra effort and time. This phenomenon has also been referred to as cognitive lock-in.

Goal conflict and impulse behavior

When internal or external stimuli simultaneously trigger two or more goals that have conflicting behavioral implications, goal conflicts arise. Self-control often leads to goal conflicts. People who try to pursue some long-term goal (e.g. lose weight) are confronted with temptations that they find difficult to resist. The difficulty in this dilemma, is that the certain and immediate short-term versus the future and uncertain long-term rewards. A goal conflict in self-control dilemma often results in impulse buying, that is spontaneous buying without sufficient consideration of the consequences of one’s purchases. This leads to buying things someone really doesn’t need. Goal conflicts result in impulse buying that is characterized by the absence of a pre-shopping intention, but also occurs in violation of such an intention.

It is likely that impulse buying occurs mostly with products that serve hedonic or identity-related functions, rather than utilitarian functions. There is some evidence for this assumption. The most serious form of impulse buying and the result of goal conflict and the breakdown of self-control is the purchase of products that someone was firmly intended not to buy. For example, dieters that go to the supermarket firmly intend not to buy candy, but end up with a bag of chocolates anyway.

What are the hidden persuaders?

Subliminal advertising refers to advertising that uses messages (embedded in a film or television report) that are presented so briefly that viewers remain unaware that they have been exposed to advertising. For example, showing the McDonald’s logo for 0.5 second during a TV show. This kind of advertising is very manipulative and banned from several countries. Also, its effects haven’t been proved significant. The assumption is that subliminal priming will mostly have an effect for brands that are not highly cognitively accessible. For well-known brands that are, for most consumers, highly accessible in their mind, subliminal advertising is unlikely to have an effect.

How is consumer compliance achieved without changing attitudes? - Chapter 7

Because many advertising messages are not aimed at informing or persuading but at seeking the response of compliance with a sales request, a typical playing field for the forces of social influence is direct response advertising (e.g. mail-order catalogues, tel-sales programmes, and sales promotion actions). Also, in-store promotions and point-of-purchase demonstrations can induce a direct consumer response, namely buying the product. Direct response advertising includes all the messages aimed at getting the consumer to directly response by making a purchase/accepting an offer.

Various social influences are employed in such situations. Compliance refers to the overt behavioral acquiescence response when a specific door salesman addresses a consumer in a face-to-face context. It can also be more indirect (e.g. an ad or catalogue that asks for quick response because the offer doesn’t last long). Cialdini et al. have identified six principles of social influence:

• Reciprocity;

• Commitment and consistency;

• Social validation;

• Liking;

• Authority;

• Scarcity;

• Confusion.

What does social influence and compliance entail?

With conventional advertising, consumers are exposed some time before they find themselves in a situation where they can actually buy the product. The tactics used to foster compliance are frequently temporally and spatially close to that situation. The principles of social influence typically function to foster purchase (facilitation), but do not affect any of the other advertising objectives like improving brand awareness. They affect singular behavior and are less effective in influencing longer-term behavior like repeat buying.

Automaticity is the key of compliance techniques; the response must be mindless. Cialdini used the metaphor of a click-whir response, which refers to a fixed action pattern that unfolds more of less invariantly when suitable environmental stimuli are present in the influence context.

‘Click’ is the stimulus that prompts the behavioral response, and ‘whir’ is the actual unfolding of that response. Like automatic responses, click-whir responses are fast, effortless, spontaneous, stable across situations, partly inherited, and frequently triggered by emotions. They are also performed routinely and outside conscious awareness. Their effectiveness relies on the ‘mindlessness’ of the consumer.

A consequence of this mindlessness is that people re-enact scripts – predetermined, stereotyped sequences of action that define a well-known situation – without paying attention to substantive information. These scripts are used by consumers so they don’t have to think how to behave in certain situations. People need action rules that specify the actions that need to be initiated when cues in the environment signal that a certain script is appropriate.

The least effort principle suggests that people only behave in a mindless manner if there is no sufficient reason to invest into mindful behavior. Besides scripts, people also use cognitive heuristics to simplify complex decisions.

Chen and Chaiken state that the notion of least effort translates itself in the sufficiency principle, which refers to the tendency to strike a balance between minimizing cognitive effort and satisfying motivational concerns. Script following and using heuristics are not completely unconscious processes, because they require conscious processing and awareness at some stage (conscious direction of the script to further cues and choosing certain heuristics consciously to base the behavior on).

What is reciprocity?

The principle of reciprocity refers to the motivation to return a favor: we should do to others what they do to us, both positively and negatively.

The door-in-the-face technique

The door-in-the-face (DITF) technique involves a sequence of rejection-then-moderation. A large request is followed by a more moderate target request. The fact that the influence agent makes a concession by slimming down the request, evokes the need to make a concession and to comply. A variation to the DITF technique is the ‘reciprocity-by-proxy’ technique. Here not the target itself, but a third party on behalf of the target is offered a favor. or benefit. For example, when an organization donates to a charity on behalf of its employees and then asks these employees to comply with a request.

That’s-not-all technique

The reciprocity principle also underlies the effectiveness of the That’s-Not-All (TNA) technique, where an initial request is followed by a second request that is made more desirable. Consumers interpret the second request as a favor. and are more willing to comply. There are two forms, namely the reduced cost form and the added value form. In case of the reduced cost form the opening bargain is improved by a decrease in the price of the offer. The added value form uses a fixed price, and instead adds desirable attributes/incentives to the initial offer. The TNA technique mainly works when consumers are in a state of mindlessness.

Beyond reciprocity

In case of small requests, the costs of refusal often outweigh those of compliance. Therefore, it is often not necessary to use a scripted technique but all you have to do is ask. Consumers are also often willing to return a favor. (e.g. a cash request, coupon, etc.). An important function of sampling is inducing such favorable behavior. When consumers accept a free sample, they may feel in debt and thus purchase the product to return the favor. of receiving the sample.

What does commitment and consistency entail?

People have a strong tendency to show congruent and rather coherent responses that is in line with previous behavior. This is referred to as the commitment/consistency principle and comes from both external as well as internal forces. The tendency to engage in repeated acts of purchasing after an initial and unrelated act of buying, is referred to as the shopping momentum effect. Once a person has given in to the temptation to buy, he will continue to do so. This principle is most effective when commitment is actively, publicly, with effort and freely chosen.

Foot-in-the-door technique

The foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique is based on the idea that compliance with an initial, small request increases the likelihood of compliance with a second, larger request, because the initial act of compliance triggers the principle of consistency. To comply with the second request, people often have to do more than just accept the first one, e.g. signing a petition or placing a sign in their yard. It is thus not the act of initial agreement that results in compliance, but how much effort is required to accomplish the first request.

The self-perception theory states that people sometimes infer their attitudes from their over behavior instead of the other way around. More generally, it refers to the self as the origin of consistency needs. The consumer wishes to respond in such a way that his belief system remains consistent. Once he concludes he is ‘the kind of person that accepts these requests’ after the initial one, he is more likely to accept the second one as well.

Low-ball technique

Besides the need to be consistent in their self-concept, people also feel the need to be consistent in their behavior towards other people. When someone makes a request, commitment toward this person can often serve as a powerful force of social influence. An individual can also feel commitment toward the deal or offer that is the object of the influence setting. This latter type of commitment plays an important role in the low-ball technique, which is characterized by soliciting commitment from customers with a particularly seductive offer and then changing the deal for the worse. Commitment sets in when the initial offer is presented. For example, hooking a customer with a car with all kinds of extras, and then saying that there has been made a mistake and that the extras are excluded from the price offered. Because the customer is already hooked, he is likely to still buy the car, although he has to pay much more than he initially assumed.

The commitment principle is most effective when commitment is active, public, effort-full and freely chosen. However, these aren’t characteristic factors for advertising. Since the reception of advertising messages usually involves a passive, private and low-effort process, one could question whether the commitment principle is relevant for marketing and advertising. Direct response advertising and product trials are useful marketing tools that frequently prompt more active and effort-full responding. Not only do these tools a reciprocity response, but also cause a cognitive change: the recipient of a direct response ad or product trial tends to generate cognitions that are supportive of the new behavior. Because of our consistency need, we will generate arguments that support our idea that buying product X was the right thing to do. This same principle may be at work when consumers receive a free sample. In this case the act of actually using the product generates a set of newly formed associations and cognitions. These cognitions are a powerful predictor of future behavior. Product trials through sampling thus trigger both the principle of reciprocity and commitment. Sales promotion actions, such as prize contests, are an additional marketing tool that can have similar effects.

What is meant by social validation?

The social validation principle involves turning an eye to others to assess the merits of some object, issue or offer. It is used to suggest that others like what is presented, which convinces the target consumer that the offer can be trusted to be of value. This is very effective in ambiguous and uncertain situations and with experience (can only be found out during consumption) and credence attributes (difficult/impossible to ascertain, e.g. a professionals advice).

Reference groups

A reference group refers to a person or group of people that significantly influences an individual’s behavior. Communicates standards, norms, beliefs and values that are shared by others and thus can serve as a benchmark. A distinction has been made between primary groups and secondary groups. Primary groups (e.g. friends and family) are more influential than secondary groups (e.g. trade unions) because they are small and enable face-to-face interaction. Marketers also often distinguish between membership groups (the groups one currently belongs to), aspirational groups (groups whose lifestyles, values, or norms one would like to have), and negative reference groups groups to which the target consumers would not like to belong).

Individual differences and social proof

Image-conscious consumers are high self-monitors and are sensitive and responsive to normative social cues. Normative information is more effective on collectivists compared to individualists. Research findings also suggest that commitment/consistency is generally more influential for people who score high on individualism, whereas social proof is most influential for individuals who score high on collectivism.

Motivation and social validation

The ambivalence and uncertainty due to the attributes of the advertised product can be further moderated by psychological make-up of the consumer. Strong accuracy and impression motivations are likely to increase the impact of social proof on beliefs, attitudes, and behavior.

When a consumer has a strong need to hold accurate opinions and values, and has the desire to hold attitudes and display behavior that will satisfy salient social goals, social proof will have a large impact. Likewise, when a consumer wishes to hold attitudes and display behavior that will satisfy social goals, social proof will also have a great impact.

Values of lifestyles

The Values and Life-Style Typology (VALS) claims to identify various groups of consumers along two axes, based on the availability of resources like income and intelligence, and three types of orientation: principle, status and action orientation. Principle-oriented consumers tend to act on the basis of their own beliefs and values and are not very sensitive to group influence. Status-oriented people have a strong impression motivation and therefore act based on others’ beliefs and values. Action-oriented individuals are physically and socially active. Consumers can be classified into one of the following eight segments, based on their VALS-responses:

1. Actualizers: they have the most resources and achieved a balance between the three orientations;

2. Believers: they tend to be principle-oriented;

3. Fulfillers: they tend to be principle-oriented, having more resources at their disposal than believers;

4. Strivers: they aim to impress others;

5. Achievers: they aim to impress others, more successfully than strivers because they have more resources;

6. Experiencers: young, impulsive, sensation-seeking individuals with abundant resources;

7. Makers: action-oriented like experiencers, but with fewer resources, thereby forced to focus energy on attaining self-sufficiency;

8. Strugglers: they tend to be older, lack resources and are focused on survival.

What is meant by liking?

The liking principle states that we are more likely to comply with the requests of someone we like than someone we dislike/feel neutral towards.

Determinants of liking in social influence situations

Various factors influence liking in social influence situations. Familiarity is an important factor: as the target consumer is exposed more frequently to the influence, familiarity increases and a positive attitude (liking) develops. Perhaps the most powerful influence sources are friends and family, because the warm feelings a person has for them are transferred to the product. This is used, for example, when companies ask their current customers to bring in their friends.

Another important factor influencing liking is physical attractiveness. Attractive people are considered not only beautiful, but also honest, kind, intelligent, persuasive and sociable (attractiveness halo). Advertisers and marketers have been using the attractiveness halo for a long time and it has proven effective in selling products. Consumers tend to over-generalize and in this way the halo rubs off on a product that is associated with an attractive model.

A third factor is similarity: people tend to like people who are like them, because they often like themselves. The name-letter effect is an example of the similarity-liking relationship. This effect refers to the liking of and preference for products, streets, and career choice that share the same letters as your own name. In commercials, you often see quite ‘general’ people who are easy to associate with, in order to increase liking. Also simple gestures like a gentle touch or remembering the customer’s name can increase liking.

The fourth factor influencing liking is ingratiation. People tend to like those who flatter them, fuelled by their vanity. If you compliment a potential customer, it is more likely that he will comply with your request.

The fifth, and last factor is bringing good news. When you bring positive news to someone, they are more likely to like you. The reverse is true for negative news.

What is meant by authority?

Authority refers to the power to influence others into behaving in a certain way either through coercion or with the aid of status and position related symbols. It often comes with social dominance, conveyed through titles, clothing, or products like jewellery or expensive cars that impress others and communicate a high status. Brands can have status as well: the mere presence of brands with specific salient attributes is sufficient to affect nonverbal hierarchical behavior, without the brand playing a significant role in the interaction of the people involved. For example, a man driving a Mercedes is considered more competent than one driving a Daihatsu, although the kind of car he is driving may have nothing to do with his area of expertise. Furthermore, women tend to be more prone to respond to status cues in their interaction with men, than men in their interaction with women.

Authority and obedience

The most famous study regarding authority was done by Milgram. Participants had to act as a teacher who was obliged to give his student (an actor) an electronic shock when he answered a question wrongly. Every additional error made, meant a more intense shock. While motivated by the experimenter to go through, most teachers were willing to go to the point where the shock would have been lethal. Under the power/authority of the experimenter, most participants continued, while they had the option to walk out of the experiment. This indicates how strongly authority can affect a person’s behavior.

What is meant by scarcity?

Consumers value goods that are scarce (rare, difficult to obtain, in short supply). Luxury brands often use scarcity as part of their strategy. The scarcity principle is also often used for special, ‘limited’ offers that only last for a set period of time. Its heuristic function is that consumers think that high value objects are harder to obtain than less valuable ones. This influences their behavior under conditions of mindlessness.

Van Herpen, Pieters and Zeelenberg state that scarcity can be either supply driven – where a sense of exclusivity is produced by limited availability – or demand driven – where the popularity of a product results in limited availability. Worchel et al. showed that presenting individuals with few (instead of many) items exerted a powerful influence on desirability.

The scarcity principle is often used in the deadline technique in advertising when ‘now or never’ discounts, limited “exclusive” offers and special editions are promoted. This principle serves an important heuristic function. People tend to think that objects that are of higher value are often harder to obtain than less valuable objects. Because of this, scarcity constitutes an important mental shortcut to infer the value of something.

According to the commodity theory, limiting the product availability should enhance its desirability not because scarcity acts as a heuristic cue, but because increased scarcity instigates a tendency to form more extreme attitudes. This is the result of enhanced thinking about the merits of the product due to scarcity.

In line with dual process theories of persuasion, scarcity thus motivates more extensive systematic/central route processing. It functions as a heuristic cue, it increases the favorableness of attitudes regardless of the arguments’ quality. If it prompts more extensive processing, it will increase persuasion when arguments are strong and compelling, but decrease it when arguments are weak.

The reactivity theory is an alternative theory for the commodity theory. It states that if availability is reduced, we feel that we lose the freedom to choose. This prompts a strong motivation to restore freedom.

What is meant by confusion?

When consumers are slightly confused, they may be more prone to comply with sales requests. This technique is referred to as the disrupt-then-Reframe (DTR) technique, which is characterized by a small ‘twist’/odd element, in a typical scripted request. The ‘disruption’ is followed by a persuasive phrase that concludes the script, the ‘re-frame’ (e.g. “it’s an amazing deal”). This interferes with the consumer’s ability to actively self-regulate his behavior by distracting him. It works because it directly drains his battery of resources (energy) and because it disrupts/derails his trail of negative thoughts (counterarguments). That way it distracts him and hinders his self-regulation. The persuasive message is then used to base the evaluation on.

Example: “Now is your chance to try your luck for 350 cents (disruption/odd element) a week… that’s € 3,50. It’s a bargain (re-frame)!”
Another function the disruption seems to serve, is that is confusion the disruption causes may motivate the need for cognitive closure. The re-frame may provide this closure and in that way increase compliance needs.

What is meant by mindlessness?

The origins of mindlessness (why people fall back on heuristics) are multiple decision moments, or sequential requests. Sequential request techniques like the foot-in-the-door technique trigger the self-regulatory resource depletion; processes involving active self-regulation, require resources that are finite. The active self can thus become depleted (out of energy).

Fennis et al. developed at two-stage model and tested it whether it could account for the effectiveness of sequential request techniques. In the first stage, the initial request or series of requests is presented to the target. Complying with these requests results in self-regulatory resource depletion, thereby producing mindlessness. In the second stage, self-regulatory resource depletion fosters the use of heuristics that encourage yielding to the target request: the target is more likely to comply.

What does advertising in the new millennium look like? - Chapter 8

Internet is a critical platform for advertising. Digital and other forms of interactive advertising has some great advantages over regular advertising. First, communication is more synchronous than is the case in regular advertising. Second, consumers have more control over contact with advertisers and sometimes over web content. Third, the Internet is generally characterized by less social presence than real life. Finally, communication on the Internet is typically more anonymous than in face-to-face settings.

What does online advertising entail?

Goldfarb offers a useful framework for online advertising. He underscores a key difference between online and offline advertising, namely the potential for targeting. The Internet provides the opportunity to identify and reach segments of consumers with specific and shared characteristics (such as shared preferences) and matches the core message of advertising to these characteristics. Because of the technology behind online advertising, this targeting brings lower costs with it than offline advertising. Goldfarb states that there are three forms of targeting:

1. Demographic targeting: Here advertisers use basic demographic data – gender, age group, socio-economic status, lifestyles, values and product and brand use – of websites to tailor the ads so that they are maximally congruent to the target group that visits the website (most basic form).

2. Contextual targeting: Here advertisers try to match their ad with the content of the host website.

3. Behavioural targeting: Here advertisers actively use the log data of individual consumers to base their message on past Internet behaviour by the consumer (most sophisticated form).

Three types of online advertising

Goldfarb divides advertising into three subtypes:

1. Search advertising: the banner ads that accompany search results in search engines, which are shown as a function of specific search words the consumer entered in the search engine. Advertisers most often pay whenever someone clicks on the ad (cost-per-click construction).

2. Classified advertising: the online pendant of classic classified ads also found in magazines and newspapers. They usually appear on websites that don’t feature other media content, such as online jobsites.

3. Display advertising: the online depiction of offers on any kind of website, except for search engines. For example pop-ups, video-ads or advertising on social media.

Research findings have shown that matched and obtrusive ads improve consumer purchase intentions. Surprising is that these two characteristics – matching and obtrusiveness – interacted in a negative way. That is, a matched, obtrusive ad negatively affected these intentions. Possibly consumer respond with reactance because they are aware of the manipulative intent on the part of the advertisers. A specific type of online advertising that possibly evokes such resistant responses more than any other is spam. However, research findings have revealed that while consumers rigorously dislike spam, it sometimes can still be effective in influencing buying behaviour, particularly in older consumers.

How can persuasion be promoted through online advertising?

The fact that advertisers and marketers spend a great amount of money on online advertising suggests that online advertising might appeal to consumers. Not only the impact of spam email, but also the fact that most people regularly engage in online purchasing confirms this.

A critical precursor to online persuasion: online trust

Online trust is the key person variable that directly affects the extent to which someone can be persuaded online to engage in online purchase. Since online transactions work very different from physical transactions, trust is a critical construct. With this in mind, some of the key features of the Internet mentioned earlier – particularly the anonymity and reduced social presence, and possibly also the asynchrony and time leg of Internet communication – work against the establishment of trust.

Building online trust

Schlosser et al. have distinguished between three trust dimensions, namely beliefs about (1) the ability – beliefs about the skills and competencies of a firm, (2) the benevolence – beliefs in a general positive orientation toward the consumer (not just a mere profit making attitude), and (3) the integrity of a company – beliefs that the firm is loyal to moral, professional and legal standards regarding interaction with consumers. Research findings have revealed a professional and has a slick design has the largest impact on trust an ability beliefs, and that ability beliefs directly drive purchase intentions. Security/privacy cues do seem to affect benevolence and integrity beliefs, but this doesn’t seem to influence purchase intentions. These findings suggest that involvement is an important moderator of effects on consumer online persuasion and behaviour, just like it is for consumer offline persuasion and behaviour. Consumers that pursue a specific goal consciously search for information and assess the true merits of an offer.

Online trust and regulatory focus

Other research findings have shown that security related cues do affect consumer risk perception, attitudes and even behavioural intentions. However, this only seems to be the case for consumers with a prevention focus. Higgins developed the Regulatory Focus Theory (RFT), in which he stated that people who have the chronic or acute goal to focus on achieving gains and acquire positive outcomes, have a promotion focus. People that are more motivated by preventing losses and negative outcomes are thought to have a prevention focus. So the ability-related website features could affect consumer online persuasion and behaviour when consumers have a promotion focus, but when consumers have a prevention focus, things might be different. Research findings have supported this theory by showing that benevolence and integrity related safety cues positively affected consumer risk perceptions and increased persuasion, but only among individuals with a prevention focus, and not among those with a promotion focus.

How banner ad placement and content affects online persuasion

Research has shown that banner ad placement plays a role in gaining consumer attention. Pictorial banner ads seem to be most persuasive when they are positioned on the left side of a webpage, whereas textual banner ads seem to be most persuasive when they are right-placed. However, since banner ads often consist of a small surface and are especially characterized by a reduced social presence, they aren’t optimal carriers of information-dense ad messages. One way to overcome this reduces social presence is to make use of the human face – preferably one with an averted gaze – in banner ads.

Conscious vs. unconscious processes in promoting persuasion

Like offline persuasion, online persuasion probably features both conscious, systematic, central processes as more unconscious, heuristic, peripheral processes. The conscious processes are probably more important when consumers are highly involved or have a salient promotion or prevention focus, because high involvement will make a consumer actively browse the web in search of product information and process online advertising in a conscious matter. However, since the Internet is filled with unsolicited commercial messages, it is very likely that unconscious consumer processes also account for a great portion of online persuasive effects, especially given the chronic cognitive load our permanent online connectivity causes. According to the Threated Cognition Theory (TCT), proposed by Salvucci and Taatgen, high levels of cognitive load foster conditions that promote automatic, heuristic processing. TCT states that tasks may require distinct consumer resources (such as vision and working memory), which in spite of all being serial in their operation can operate in parallel. So engaging in multitasking won’t bring any problems and hence no load, as long as the simultaneous tasks involve different resources (for example, chatting with a friend while listening to music). When multitasking does require the same resources this will cause problems. So reading a webpage and at the same time reading an online ad on this same page produces interference, which then produces cognitive load. Since this is the rule rather than the exception, chronic online connectivity may result in a chronic cognitive load, which makes people susceptible to the principle of automaticity (chapter 7) and its tendency for heuristic processing, judgement and decision-making.

Online heuristics

Besides the expertise and beauty heuristic, Internet seems to have its own, unique heuristic, namely the computer=true heuristic, which is characterized by the idea people have that if it comes from a computer it must be true. This heuristic qualifies as an Internet-specific expertise cue and can be used for consumer online persuasion. Two other heuristic principles in the online sphere are liking and social proof (or social validation). Especially social validation appears to play a role in online social influence. The evidence regarding the role of likeability is less clear. Research findings suggest that likeability isn’t effective in fostering compliance in Internet influence settings. This is possibly due to the fact that Internet communication is characterized by a mainly written form with reduced social presence of communication sources. This might counteract the impact of source-related persuasion variables. Another explanation is that not only the construction of online messages, but also their reception and processing is relatively deliberate. The receiver of the message can determine the pace of processing him/herself. This makes the information processing more conscious and deliberate than is the case with externally paced information processing. More research on this subject is needed.

How does persuasion through decision support systems work?

Besides the explicit and blatant persuasion tools discussed earlier in this chapter, there is also a large class of information and persuasion tools – the decision support systems – that are more subtle in nature. These tools use information that is available in a computer-mediated environment to structure, arrange and/or recommend choice alternatives. Decision support systems can both arrange a set of product alternatives in term of predefined attributes (information function), as well as actively suggest the alternative that best fits the costumer’s need (persuasion function). Comparison matrices (information function) and recommendation agents (persuasion function) are two manifestations of such decision support systems. The first allows consumers to compare brands and products and select the one that best fits their need, for example, Google Shopping). The second recommend an alternative based on the consumer’s previous choice, for example the website section saying ‘You might also like’ or ‘Customers who bought this also bought’. Both comparison matrices and recommendation agents have proven to improve decision-making quality, the latter showing a tendency for superior performance. However, under certain conditions recommendations can be seen as obtrusive and may result in feelings of reactance, particularly when consumers already have a prior attitude toward a particular choice option in a set of alternatives and the recommendation is discrepant with this specific attitude. In this case consumers can’t simply follow their own opinion or the recommendation, but they have to resolve the conflict between the two and make a choice. This may eventually result in dissatisfaction regarding whatever decision is made. Research findings have also shown that this effect on feelings of reactance is more noticeable when the recommendation source is considered to be credible and/or expert. The most fascinating consequence research findings have revealed, was on the behavioural level. That is, if a recommendation runs counter to a specific attitude triggers reactance, which then results in an active and hostile drive to restore a sense of freedom of choice, then the recommendation may backfire and consumers in this state may actively resist the recommendation and follow their own gut by choosing the option for which they already had a prior attitude.

Online stereotyping

Searches and offerings become more and more personalized and comparison and recommendation agents will increasingly turn out a constrained set of items. Two potentially disturbing effects of this are: (1) the latitude of any search or recommended result will decrease, and as a consequence (2) consumers will increasingly be exposed to mainly or only those results that match their previous preferences. This may lead to increased stereotyping in judgement and choice and people becoming less open to opinions and preferences other than their own.

What are the effects of being online?

How Google affects consumer memory

Internet can be seen as a transactive memory system, that is, an external reservoir of declarative knowledge that complements our own storage of declarative (and procedural) knowledge in our own memory system. People spend a lot of time searching information via Google or other search engines, particularly when we’re faced with difficult questions. So looking up things in search engines has become relevant to our daily lives. Research findings have shown that search engine names come to mind more easily and as a consequence become more mentally accessible. As a result we almost automatically don’t think for ourselves, but consider the Internet as the prime reservoir for generating knowledge. Other research has revealed that when people don’t think they need to remember something (since they can look up information), they don’t, even when asked to do so. However, when people know information is saved somewhere other than their own mind, they do have improved memory performance for the location where the information is stored. These results suggest that it is very possible that in time our proportion of declarative knowledge will decline, while the proportion of procedural knowledge may increase.

We and our devices

The close connection between people and the online sphere may cause the natural distinction between man and machine to fade. We more and more include these machines and their performances into the self. In support of this notion, research findings have revealed an overlap in the neural representation of one’s hand and one’s own cellphone. On a more psychological level we also tend to ‘own’ knowledge provided by the Internet as if it was our own to begin with.

Implications for advertising: an online ‘truth effect’?

There are several factors that facilitate an online truth effect: (1) the ‘computer=true’ heuristic; (2) the chronic state of cognitive load that typical online behaviour seems to induce; and (3) the access to a transactive memory that is not yet available in our own mind, and so its merits can’t be assessed.

How does persuasion through online interpersonal communication work?

Next to explicit and more subtle online advertising tools, there exists a third class of persuasive and affective messages, namely consumers chatting with each other online about products. Think of blogposts, product review sites and in particular online social networks (OSN) such as Facebook. For most people in Western cultures OSNs have become a part of their daily lives, so much that the online and offline worlds seem to have merged. Looking at Facebook gives the impression that people frequently present themselves and the lives they lead in a better light. So there seems to be a strong tendency for self-enhancement on Facebook. However, research appears to suggest otherwise. Results have suggested that user profiles on Facebook are quite an accurate reflection of someone’s offline self. This could be explained by the factor that people most often become friends offline and only after that online. So if people present themselves in an inaccurate way, most of their friends would immediately notice this discrepancy.
An extension of the ‘beauty/attractiveness-halo’ effect can also be found on OSNs. Research has shown that people are more motivated to become online friends with attractive people. Furthermore, posts on one’s own Facebook page by very attractive people seems to have a positive effect on the perceived attractiveness of the page owner, as compared to posts placed by less or unattractive people.

Company effects of online chatter

Research on the impact of online chatter volume and valence has shown that it is the volume of chatter that has the greatest positive influence on stock performance. Valence seems to have an inconsequential effect on stock performance when reviews are positive, but when negative, reviews do appear to have a negative impact. This impact comes quickly and goes slowly. Research findings have also shown that an increase in regular offline advertising can serve as an effective means of reducing the volume of negative online chatter.

How emotion and online diffusion affect each other

Sometimes content on the web goes ‘viral’, which refers to the spreading of content over the web at an accelerated pace and on a huge (sometimes even global) scale. They role of emotions on online virality seems to be particularly modulated by physiological arousal; high arousal of both positively as well as negatively arousing emotions produces higher virality rates. Less arousing emotions, on the other hand, seem to produce a decrease in virality. Virality depends on active behaviour of recipients of the message: it only gets spread if people are motivated to share the message with others. So achieving online virality would be like winning the lottery for advertisers and marketers. However, since it is very difficult to evoke a high arousing emotional response in a viewer, especially by commercial news or entertainment content, true viral campaigns remain a rarity.

Other research has shown that not only can emotion affect diffusion, but that the opposite is also possible, namely that diffusion can shape online emotions. This evidence comes from a field experiment conducted by Kramer, Guillory and Hancock, who used actual Facebook users as participants. The results show that spreading of emotions in an OSN (in this case Facebook) appears to produce emotional contagion, which refers to people’s tendency to adopt and experience the same emotions as other members within their proximate social group or network.