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Summary Book: The Psychology of Advertising 2nd Edition
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Chapter 1: Preparing the stage for advertisingAdvertising any form of paid communication by an identified sponsor, aimed to inform
and/or persuade target audiences about an organization, product, service or idea.
Marketing the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating,
delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and
society at large.
Modern day advertising and its beginnings
Ads don’t create consumer needs, but it can channel those needs by reshaping them into
wants for specific products that promise to satisfy those needs. A side effect was the
growing importance of a consumer brand the label with which to designate an individual
product and differentiate it from competitors; Unique Selling Proposition (USP) a
summary statement used to meaningfully differentiate the brand from the competition.
History:
o Outdoor media evolved to the well-known billboards that are eye-catching icons.
o Newspapers/magazines reach about a billion people per day through display and
classified ads. Market shares have decreased due to the tv/internet, but it still
remains popular. Especially for (special interest) magazine ads can be targeted to
a consumer segment that share common interests, values, or lifestyles.
o Tv, radio and the internet tv (the biggest)/radio are de largest mass media. The
internet seems to be a complementary rather than a substitute medium it will
coexist with traditional mass media.
Informational/argument-based appeal (reason-why approach) straightforwardly
informing about the product, price, and where it can be bought (‘hard-sell’ approach). A less
aggressive is the emotional/affect-based appeal aims to influence consumer’s
feelings/emotions rather than his thoughts. The hard-sell and soft-sell appeals coexist.
The functions of advertising
Advertising has a place in society both on an aggregate and individual level:
o Aggregate (societal) level:
1. they facilitate competition among firms for consumer attention, preferences,
choice, and financial resources.
2. they are the prime (perhaps it only means that companies have to inform
consumers about new and existing products by ads)
3. they are the key source of funding for mass media (they would not exist
without)
4. the ad industry is an important employer
o Individual level ads can inform and persuade:
Informing creating/influencing non-evaluative consumer responses like
knowledge/beliefs. It is mostly used to communicate something new and
potentially relevant, but it’s not only for new products, this depends on:
Product type more frequently used for durable goods (products that
can be used repeatedly), than for non-durable goods (food)
Development of the country more used in developed countries
, The most frequent communicated types of info; performance, availability,
components/attributes, price, quality and special offers. Also, the product life
cycle plays a role, where products proceed through:
Introduction inform, create brand awareness, induce product trail.
Growth build market share, vis-à-vis competition by improving the
product or develop brand extensions and communicate that
Maturity creating brand loyalty, maintaining top-of-mind
awareness
Decline convey new and additional uses for products
For more complex new products, ads may provide the means to educate the
consumers. For existing products, the info appeal is used when there are
problems associated with the product (MacDonald’s and the rumour their
burgers where made from worms: MacDonald’s try to dismissed the rumour
by
intensifying ads saying they used a 100% beef, but because of association
consumers made with MacDonald’s, the worms where prompt in their minds
when encountering the brand, so it was key to activated other more harmless
concepts in the mind of the consumer in relation to their brand and they
accomplice that by letting consumers fill in a survey that made the consumer
make other associations with the brand).
Persuading generating/changing an evaluative (valences) response, in which
the advertised brand is viewed as more favourable, before compared to
competitors. When info appeals backfire or are ineffective in changing
misconceptions, advertisers resort to persuasion appeals. The persuasion
function is important because it should result in buying and using the product
and therefor the info function is always flanked by a persuasion strategies in
the PLC to increase the odds of responding positively to the product. When
focusing on persuasion, ads primarily seek to influence (changing) beliefs and
evaluative responses (feelings, preferences and attitudes) via exposure to
, communication. Advertisers can use two strategies to achieve the goal of
persuasion:
1. Alpha directly increasing the attractiveness of the offer/message to
increase the tendency to move toward the advocated position, and
influence approach motivation. They use strong/compelling arguments
that justify accepting the message position, or communication scarcity.
2. Omega reducing consumers reluctance to accept the position they
persuade because they reduce/minimize the tendency to move away
from the position, and influence avoidance motivation. They reduce
resistance by directly counter arguing consumer concerns; distracting to
interfere with concerns regarding the message position; reframing so it
does not appear to be a blatant persuasive attack; or us negative
emotions.
The effects of advertising: a psychological perspective
Psychological approach aims at identifying advertising effects at the individual level.
Specific ad stimuli are related to specific and individual consumer responses. Moreover, it
seeks to articulate the intrapersonal, interpersonal, or group-level psychological processes
that are responsible for the relationship between ad stimuli and consumer responses. This
approach implies not only a focus on the individual, it also requires being as explicit as
possible about the types of consumer responses, the types of ad stimuli affecting these
responses and the types of postulated, casual relations between ad stimuli and consumer
responses.
Consumer responses
o Cognitive consumer responses beliefs and thoughts about brands, products, and
services that consumer generate in response to ads; brand awareness, recall and
recognition, associations about products/brands (are sometimes a function of
persuasive info, like arguments), attitude, and brand preferences.
o Affective responses emotions and moods that can occur as a function of ad
exposure and differ in valence and intensity (arousal; warmth, irritation, fear, pride).
o Behavioural responses reflect the intention and actual behaviour in response to
ads; buying, choosing a brand, product trial, brand switching, and discarding a
product.
Assessing advertising effects on consumer responses
Correlation observed change in one variable associated with a change in the other
(increase-increase = positive; increase-decrease = negative; zero = no relationship).
Correlation are important to predict the values on one variable when the values of the other
are known. However, we also want to explain consumer responses in respons to ad stimuli.
To infer that A causes B, three conditions must be met:
1. The antecedent (A) must precede the consequence (B);
2. Changes in the antecedent must be associated with changes in the consequence
(correlation);
3. No other explanation for the change in consequence must be present than the
change in antecedent (the third variable problem)
, Experiment to establish causality manipulating one or more antecedents and assessing
their impact on the consequence. Random assignment to the different conditions ensures
that the effects on the DV can be reliably attributed to the IDV. By assigning randomly we
can be assured that there were no (significant) differences between participants before
manipulation of the IDV. Mediation analysis attempts to identify the intermediary
psychological processes that are responsible for (mediate) the effect of an IDV on the DV.
There is mediation if:
o The independent variable has an impact on the assumed mediator (C);
o Variations in mediator significantly accounted for variation in the DV;
o Controlling for the mediator significantly reduces/eliminates the impact of the IDV on
the DV
In case two or more variables are manipulated within the same design, we speak of a
factorial experiment. In case of moderation, a given main effect (of A on B) is conditional
upon a third variable (C), the moderator. Moderators are individual differences of contextual
variables that affect the strength or even change direction of the effect of the IDV on the DV;
the effect of A on B is different for different levels of C. Moderation would be demonstrated if
the interaction effect between A*C on B were significant. Consumers are not a tabula rasa,
but brings his psychological make-up to the influence setting and this can play an important
role in the impact of ads. Advertising effects can be best understood as joint/interaction
effects between:
o Situational variables are external, environmental variables that act as
independent/ moderator variables that affect some consumer outcome.
o Person variables internal dimensions to a specific individual which typically act as
moderators (e.g. consumer involvement/knowledge). Individual difference variables
include personality traits like need for cognition and need for cognitive closure.
Source and message variables in adverting
Sources of ad messages can be individuals, organizations or brands. A direct source is a
spokesperson delivering a message. An indirect source is only associated with the product.
o Source 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. If
consumers are placed as a bystander in an ad, the influence can be greater, because
they let their guard down and be less critical of the message.
o Source attractiveness Many products are sold by appealing to sexual
attraction/beauty. Attractiveness frequently functions as a halo effect If a
brand/person is judged favourably on one key attribute (attractiveness), it must be
good on others. Hence, people are also perceived as more socially competent, well-
adjusted and intelligent. The attractiveness halo-effect can easily extend beyond the
model itself to positively affect the products with which he/she is associated.
o Argument quality and message structure 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 how product info is communicated.
Presenting arguments first may increase attention and processing intensity (primacy),
while presenting them last may benefit them because they are most recently
activated in memory (recency). Other relevant message variables:
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