How Advertising Works

In order to design and implement effective marketing communications, managers must develop a solid understanding of consumer behavior in general, and consumers interpretation of and response to advertising in particular. Consequently, this note presents a useful perspective on understanding how advertising works from a consumer point of view. Many marketing and consumer behavior researchers devote substantial research to the study of advertising. Advertising in 2005.Therefore, anyone involved in the study or practice of business will benefit from a thorough understanding of key concepts associated with advertising. Within this note, exploration of how advertising works will be pursued by first establishing a preliminary understanding of what advertising is and why companies choose to advertise. The ELM will be examined within an advertising context. Subsequently, subliminal advertising will be considered. Lastly, issues related to measurement of advertising effectiveness will be discussed. What is advertising? Advertising means different things to different people. Why do we advertise? How do consumers react to advertising efforts? Three principal models have traditionally been proposed to illustrate how consumers respond to advertising efforts: 1. The AIDA model 2. The hierarchy-of-effects model 3. The innovation-adoption model These models are compared in Exhibit 2, using a classification of stages based on cognition, affect and behavior. According to the AIDA model, the consumer is viewed as passing through four stages. The process starts with the ad attracting the consumers attention and finally ends when the consumers interest, translated into desire, results in action when the consumer makes a purchase. Similar to the AIDA model, the hierarchy-of-effects model also represents steps through which the consumer progresses. The innovation-adoption model, originally advanced to explain the process of innovation adoption, posits that consumers must advance through five consecutive stages prior to adoption. It could be possible that consumers flow back and forth between stages before progressing to the next stage. A consumer who is in a good mood will likely evaluate a product (or ad) more favorably than a consumer who is not in a good mood. Within the consumer behavior literature, emotion has steadily gained much research attention since both researchers and practitioners realize its potentially significant impact on advertising. Advertising is about persuasion the active attempt to change attitudes. The ELM highlights two important concepts: the consumers thought process (how much thinking goes into making decisions based on persuasion) and the consumers involvement with the topic or decision in other words, the likelihood that the decision will affect the persons life.12 Specifically, the ELM suggests that we form attitudes along a continuum ranging from high elaboration to low elaboration. At the high end of the continuum, we process information along the central route to attitude change (i.e. persuasion), but at the low end of the elaboration continuum, we process information through the peripheral route. The central route, through which logical, reasoned persuasion flows, requires much evidence and reasoning. Ads must first capture the targets conscious awareness; in other words, the ads must break through the clutter. Ads must then hold the targets attention while information is conveyed either explicitly or implicitly to affect beliefs and subsequent behavior. The online retailer Pet Comfort Products uses imaginative

photography. A frequently used, cognitively focused appeal the factual appeal presents the promise and benefits in a straightforward, no-nonsense way.13 Appealing to the rational buying motives of consumers, this technique uses a heres what the product does approach. The peripheral route, which includes emotional persuasion, relies on simple, peripheral cues, such as celebrity endorsements, music, visuals and sex. Conversely, when motivation or the ability to elaborate on a claim or message increases, peripheral cues lose their impact. Advertisers make extensive use of peripheral cues in formulating creative strategy. In the following sections, various frequently used peripheral cues will be highlighted, including cues based on emotion, and cues that use music, sex and celebrity endorsers. Relative to emotion, logic works to persuade by relying on objective evidence to convince a viewer that a particular argument is reality. Thus, the viewer invests consideration of the evidence and arguments during the advertisers persuasion attempts. The advertiser uses various stimuli that are likely to elicit desired emotions. The advertiser can arouse the emotion in several ways: while showing (versus arguing about) various product features, by using stimuli to emphasize a point of view or by using stimuli that are only tangentially related to the product. Emotional appeals are usually more effective than rational appeals for products with more feeling attributes (i.e. preference- based goods that appeal to consumers taste, style or design), especially when the consumer is highly involved with the product. Conversely, a rational appeal might be more effective for products that are high in thinking attributes (i.e. goods whose purchase is based on reason), especially when the consumer is highly involved with the product. Music can be a powerful advertising and promotional tool. It can grab attention, establish a mood or arouse emotions. The ELM suggests that the effect of music is likely to be strongest when consumers are using the peripheral route of persuasion. Sexual appeals have become increasingly popular, particularly in some product categories. The attention-getting capability of an ad can be increased, especially among male audiences, by featuring an attractive, sexy or nude female.23 The attractiveness of the model and the models appropriateness to the advertised product command attention.24 In some ads for Calvin Kleins Generally, celebrity endorsers are more effective (than non-famous endorsers) when consumers involvement with the purchase decision is low. Advertisers also run the risk of overexposure for the celebrity, especially for those celebrities who endorse numerous products. How can the advertiser who seeks to compel the consumer to purchase a desired product or service use this information to the best advantage? Advertisers can affect a consumers motivation or ability to process information and/or arguments by either encouraging or discouraging careful examination of the ad.25 Also, if the advertiser believes that members of the target market have particular skills, motivations, interests or susceptibility to emotion, consideration of these factors influence the design and development of a particular ad. 1. Briefly presented visual stimuli 3. Embedded or hidden imagery or words (often sexually oriented) in print ads or product label. The second approach suggests that subliminal sexual stimuli work to arouse unconscious sexual motivations, representing the underlying premise of sexual embedded messages in some print advertising. Some evidence suggests that subliminal stimuli may influence affective reactions; however, as already mentioned, evidence that subliminal stimulation can influence consumption motives or actions is lacking. The various ways that advertising effectiveness is measured The stages of consumer action are founded on the AIDA model, which is used as a framework to

describe the key measures of advertising effectiveness. This model is based on the successive stages of consumer response. In the first stage, awareness, the advertising must grab consumer attention. Once the consumer is paying attention to the ad, interest can be generated for the product or service by focusing on the needs of the consumer, and then demonstrating how the attributes of the product or service translate into benefits important to the individual. If the consumers interest is strong enough, this demonstration will translate into a desire for the product or service. To measure the effectiveness of the ads ability to stimulate awareness, the following measures may be considered: recall, unaided recall, aided recall and recognition. Recall refers to a consumers ability to bring to mind some aspect of a previously seen ad. Subjects recall without any clues is called unaided recall, whereas their recall with some help is referred to as aided recall. Consumers may recall a particular ad; however, their recall may not translate to an actual purchase. Hence, the ability of recall to predict sales or other changes in attitude is not clear.33 Recall is an appropriate measure when the advertisers goal is to determine whether consumers are aware of the advertised product or service (or at least aware of its existence). Conceptually related to recall is recognition. Recognition is a consumers claim of being previously exposed to an ad, mainly a measure of attention to an ad. Recognition tests require that subjects indicate whether they have seen the ad before, based on presentation of a visual of the ad. Recall and recognition scores of an ad are positively (but weakly) correlated. Recognition and recall tap different aspects of memory, where recall measures verbal memory and recognition measures visual memory. Emotional ads may be able to capture high scores on recognition, even though they may not do so on recall. To measure the effectiveness of the ads ability to stimulate consumers interest, the following measures may be considered: advertising recall, attitudes, brand equity, positioning and inquiries (via website, store or telephone). Attitudes are important and can be useful indicators of consumers interest in the brand or product. As suggested by the ELM, recent research has shown that both central factors (i.e. the message argument itself) and peripheral factors (e.g. background music in a TV ad) can influence the formation of an attitude toward the ad across various levels of consumer involvement. Furthermore, these attitudes toward the ad can transfer to cognitions and attitudes about the brand and, in turn, have a resultant effect on purchase intention. Brand equity is defined as, the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. Brand equity could be a useful indicator of brand interest generated by the ad. Various measures attempt to measure brand equity; some reflect brand awareness, brand loyalty, perceived quality and brand associations, whereas others reflect an overall assessment of brand equity. Inquiries are efforts by consumers to contact an advertiser. Primarily, they measure the attention that ads received and can yield an understanding of the attention-drawing power of the ad. Usually consumers request information about some advertised brand (often spontaneously) through a website, a store location or by telephone. The effectiveness of an ads ability to stimulate desire for a product or service can be measured by consumers preferences and their intentions to buy. An ads ability to stimulate consumers action and behavior can be measured by trial, purchase or repurchase, market share, and sales growth or share growth. Technology has been of tremendous assistance to advertisers in measuring the effectiveness of advertising. Advertisers are able to maintain huge databases containing invaluable, accurate information on

consumer responses to advertising and other marketing variables. Cable data can record the same households exposures to television ads. Measuring advertising effectiveness can be challenging, given the variety of other factors that can contribute to advertising success. Also, because it is difficult to run controlled studies on sales, factors in the marketing mix could influence the perceived success of advertising. The ability of advertising to affect consumer behavior and sales largely depends on market conditions, as well as the ads creative content. When consumers motivation is low and their ability to process advertising is high, emotional ads might work better than rational ads. However, when motivation is high and ability is low, rational ads may be more effective than an emotionally oriented approach. The consumers mind is not a blank sheet awaiting information and direction from advertising. Consumers are exposed to numerous advertisements for the same product or brand. Also, consumers possess conscious and unconscious brand perceptions caused by a multitude of communicative messages.