Advertising Exposure, Memory and Choice

Andrew A. Mitchell

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134757053
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Consumer Behaviour
• Index: Business

Theoretical research on advertising effects at the individual level has focused almost entirely on the effects of advertising exposure on attitudes and the mediators of attitude formation and change. This focus implicitly assumes attitudes are a good predictor of behavior, which they generally are not, and downplays the role of memory, in that, there is generally a considerable amount of time between advertising exposure and purchase decisions in most marketing situations. Recently, a number of researchers have developed conceptual models which provide an explicit link between two separate events -- advertising exposure and purchase behavior -- with memory providing the link between these events. Originally presented at the eighth annual Advertising and Consumer Psychology Conference held in Toronto, some chapters in this volume present recent research on the role of inferences in advertising situations, the effects of exposure to multiple advertisements, message receptivity, drama advertisements and the use of EEG in measuring advertising effectiveness. Contributions focus on research examining the effects of advertising exposure on consumer information processing and decision making. This book will be of interest to consumer psychologists and professionals in advertising and marketing.

I

ADVERTISING EXPOSURE AND CHOICE

1	Memory Retrieval Factors and Advertising Effectiveness

Kevin Lane Keller
Stanford University, California

Of all the elements in the marketing mix, advertising may have the longest delayed effect on sales. Often, a substantial amount of time passes from the time consumers are first exposed to advertising about a specific brand to when they can actually purchase the product. Although most advertising campaigns do not include explicit assumptions about consumer memory performance, it is often implicitly assumed that advertising affects consumers in some way, which may later be manifested in recall and recognition performance that influence brand evaluations and choice. Consequently, the role of memory processes in advertising is of great interest to practitioners and theoreticians alike.

What factors increase the likelihood that consumers’ advertising experiences influence their brand evaluations? How can memory performance for communication effects from advertising exposure be improved? Much theorizing about consumer memory for advertising has considered the effect of memory encoding processes (e.g., Greenwald & Leavitt, 1984; Kisielius & Sternthal, 1986); and how ad information is stored in memory (Olson, 1978). A broader view of memory, however, has been stressed by several researchers (e.g., Baker & Lutz, 1987; Burke & Srull, 1988; Hutchinson & Moore, 1984; Keller, 1987; Lynch & Srull, 1982; Mitchell, 1982). The work of these researchers has emphasized three additional points about memory structures and processes in advertising.

1. Many different types of information can be stored in memory as a result of exposure to a target ad and may exhibit different memory properties.

2. The amount and nature of information for other advertised brands in memory can produce interference effects, decreasing the accessibility of target ad information from memory during any later brand evaluations.

3. The amount and nature of externally available information can act as a retrieval cue, increasing the accessibility of target ad information from memory during any later brand evaluations.

Together, these last two points suggest that recall of target ad information is highest when many strongly related external cues are evident and few competing associations exist in memory.

Although this chapter considers all three issues, as well as issues related to memory encoding processes, the primary emphasis is on examining how memory retrieval processes contribute to advertising effectiveness; for example, how communication effects stored during ad exposure are accessed during brand evaluations. Recently, consumer behavior researchers have recognized the importance of considering retrieval processes in memory-based judgments (Alba & Hutchinson, 1987; Baker & Lutz, 1987; Biehal & Chakravarti, 1986; Feldman & Lynch, 1988; Friestad & Thorson, 1990; Keller, 1987, 1991a, 1991b). Toward this goal, this chapter makes a number of points. One of the main points is to show how some general principles that have been useful in conceptualizing encoding processes can also be used to conceptualize retrieval processes. These conceptual frameworks are then employed to identify factors at advertising exposure and the point-of-purchase, which affect advertising recall, and to suggest appropriate strategies to improve recall of communication effects when consumers make their brand evaluations.

This chapter is organized into six sections. The first section describes antecedents and consequences of advertising encoding. It is argued that encoding antecedents can be classified in terms of three factors—motivation, ability, and opportunity—and that the actual consequences of encoding processes can be characterized in terms of two dimensions—intensity and direction. The second section defines the different types of communication effects or information stored in memory from ad exposure, termed the ad memory trace, distinguishing between ad representation and ad response elements. The third section deals with the accessibility of communication effects from the ad memory trace and outlines how the conceptual frameworks used to understand encoding and retrieval processes are very similar. That is, retrieval antecedents can also be classified according to motivation, ability, and personality factors, and the actual consequences of retrieval processes can also be characterized along intensity and direction dimensions. The fourth section considers advertising and point-of-purchase interactions, identifying circumstances when weak or strong associations to the brand name in memory may lower the accessibility of communication effects from the ad memory trace. The fifth section reviews some of the basic theory and empirical evidence concerning advertising retrieval cues (Keller 1987, 1991a, 1991b). An ad retrieval cue is a technique that can improve consumer memory performance when the brand name is an ineffective cue to the ad memory trace. The sixth and final section provides a chapter summary and a discussion of managerial implications and future research directions.

ENCODING PROCESSES

Background

To understand how ad information is encoded and stored in memory, it is necessary to first make some assumptions about the structure of memory. A functional distinction is made between short-term memory (STM), the temporary repository of information currently accessible to people, which is limited in capacity, and long-term memory (LTM), a relatively permanent repository of information, which is virtually unlimited in capacity (Bettman, 1979; Horton & Mills, 1984). Long-term memory can be represented according to an associative network memory model (Anderson, 1983; Wyer & Srull, 1986). For example, knowledge in LTM can be represented as a network of nodes and links; nodes are stored concepts or information and links are connecting mechanisms that vary in strength. A spreading activation process determines the extent of retrieval in LTM (Collins & Loftus, 1975; Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1981; Ratcliff & McKoon, 1988). At any point in time, an information node in STM may be a source of activation because it is either encoded external information or retrieved internal information currently being processed. Activation can spread from these nodes to associated nodes in the LTM network of linked nodes. If the amount of activation that spreads to a node exceeds some threshold level, then the information in that node is recalled. The strength of association between the activated nodes and all linked nodes determines this “spreading activation” and which information is retrieved from LTM.

Encoding information in LTM involves memory control processes, that is, the processes monitoring the flow of information in and out of LTM (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968). Some processes are automatic (Hasher & Zacks, 1979) but others are under active control of the individual. Active control processes can determine the organization of information in LTM (Hastie, 1980; Mitchell, 1982; Srull, 1981). Memory control processes (Bettman, 1979; Olson, 1978) include rehearsal (i.e., the allocation of processing effort to keep information active in STM and/or transfer it to LTM), coding (i.e., representing of information in LTM in terms of cognitive symbols such as words or visual images assigned to represent information), and transfer/placement (i.e., the location of information in LTM in terms of the other information to which it is related). Thus, active control processes are important to understand how advertising effects are organized in LTM.

MacInnis and Jaworski (1989) provided a comprehensive model of memory encoding operations in advertising, incorporating a number of prior models. Here, we selectively highlight two key aspects of that conceptualization, which, as will be shown, have significance to retrieval processes: encoding antecedents and encoding consequences.

Encoding Antecedents

Encoding antecedents have been classified according to factors related to a person’s motivation, ability, or opportunity to process ad information (Batra & Ray, 1986a; MacInnis, Moorman, & Jaworski, 1990; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Roberts & Maccoby, 1973; Schmalensee, 1983; Wright, 1981). Motivation to process refers to a person’s willingness or desire to expend mental effort and devote mental resources or capacity to processing information from an ad. Consumer processing goals are one example of this factor. Processing goals influence the type of information in an ad that consumers notice, evaluate, or respond to. For example, consumers may desire to evaluate the advertised brand, perhaps because of enduring involvement with the brand or product category, or a more transitory interest, due to an imminent purchase. As will be discussed, consumers may have other goals; in that case, they would direct their processing effort elsewhere.

Ability to process refers to a person’s mental resources, which are relevant for processing the information in an ad. A consumer’s knowledge structure is one example of a factor that affects the capability to comprehend and receive the intended effects of the ad (Alba & Hutchinson, 1987). Knowledge can be characterized according to its content (e.g., as it relates to the domain of interest), as well as its organization (e.g., in terms of the strength of associations among information nodes in memory). Although closely related, many researchers distinguish ability to process from opportunity to process, which refers to the extent to which external conditions are present in the environment conducive to processing information from an ad. Does the medium allow for self-paced processing of ad information (i.e., print as opposed to broadcast media)? To what extent is the program or editorial context and physical setting free of distractions? For example, time pressure has been shown to affect how consumers process ad information (Houston, Childers, & Heckler, 1987; Moore, Hausknecht, & Thamodran, 1986).

Encoding Consequences

Actual encoding processes during ad exposure can be characterized by intensity and direction dimensions (Bettman, 1979; Mitchell, 1981). Processing intensity is defined as the amount of mental resources or capacity devoted to encoding information. Processing intensity is a prime determinant of the strength of associations among information in LTM. The levels or depth of processing view (Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Craik & Tulving, 1975; Lockhart, Craik, & Jacoby, 1976) maintains that more intense or elaborate processing produces more durable memory effects. Processing direction refers to the stimuli or objects that receive these mental resources or capacity. During ad exposure, for example, processing may be directed toward the brand claim or the ad execution information.

A person’s motivation, ability, and opportunity to process will determine the intensity and direction of that processing. For example, one motivational distinction for processing during ad exposure has been made between consumers who have ad evaluation goals and consumers who have brand evaluation goals (Gardner, Mitchell, & Russo, 1985; Keller, 1991a; Park & Young, 1986). Consumers who view an ad with an ad evaluation goal, where they seek the entertainment value of an ad, may be more likely to direct their processing to executional characteristics of an ad. That is, a person may deeply think about, or be emotionally affected by, an ad but may be focusing that attention on some aspect of the ad not directly related to the brand claims, such as the source or spokesperson of the ad (high-intensity and ad-directed processing). Consumers who view an ad with a brand evaluation goal, where they seek information about the advertised brand, however, may be more likely to direct their processing towards product claims, although they may also critically evaluate the ad execution itself (MacKenzie & Lutz, 1989). That is, a person may carefully consider the claims made about a brand while processing an ad, rendering belief judgments as to its believability, and forming or updating an overall brand attitude (high-intensity and brand-directed processing). Besides motivation, ability considerations can also affect processing direction. For example, Lutz, MacKenzie, and Belch (1983) found that consumers with little product knowledge were more likely to use their reactions to the ad execution itself during ad exposure in forming their evaluations of the advertised brand than were consumers with relatively more product knowledge. Evidently, consumers low in knowledge lacked the ability to process the brand claim information in the ad and directed their processing elsewhere. Finally, as may often be the case, a person has almost no motivation or ability to process the ad and barely attends to either the brand claims or executional information (low intensity processing).

AD MEMORY TRACE

The stored representation of an event in memory, referred to as a memory trace, can be conceptualized as a multidimensional collection of elements, features, or attributes (Jones, 1978; Le Voi, Ayton, Jonckheere, McClelland, & Rawes, 1983; Ogilvie, Tulving, Paskowitz, & Jones, 1980; Tulving & Watkins, 1975). Specifically, an ad memory trace is defined as the communication effects stored in memory from ad exposure (Hutchinson & Moore, 1984; Keller, 1987), that is, the change in LTM that results from perceptual and encoding processes during ad exposure. Ideally, ad memory trace would be stored with other knowledge about the advertised brand in memory, affecting beliefs and evaluations associated with the brand. There are two types of communication effects that a person may store as elements in the ad memory trace from processing an ad: (a) a representation of the ad itself, and (b) responses that occurred during ad exposure.

Ad Representation Elements

Encoding the original ad information, like encoding any stimulus, will not produce a literal copy of that information in memory. The representation may contain only a subset of the features of the original information (Wyer & Srull, 1986). Two pieces of information are almost always in any ad—the brand name of the product and its accompanying product category, or class. In general, two other basic types of information in an ad will produce two different types of ad representation elements in the ad memory trace (Kotler, 1988): brand-specific and ad-specific elements. Brand-specific information is defined in terms of the brand positioning expressed by the ad (i.e., the particular goals or objectives of the ad intended by the advertiser), as well as the more general product associations, which ad exposure may reinforce. Thus, they relate to the appeals, claims, or unique selling proposition made about the brand in the ad. In contrast, ad-specific information is defined in terms of the executional information in the ad conveying or communicating the brand positioning (e.g., how the claims are made). That is, they relate to the format, structure, tone, and style of the ad execution.

Ad Response Elements

There are two major types of outcomes from consumer ad processing—affective, or feeling, responses (Silk & Vavra, 1974) and cognitive, or thinking, responses (Greenwald, 1968; Petty, Ostrom, & Brock, 1981;...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Advertising Exposure and Choice
• Part II: Psychological Processes in Persuasion
• Part III: Behavioral Models of Advertising Effects
• Part IV: Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• Author Index
• Subject Index