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Consumer Behavior (Summary Articles)
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Article Summaries | Consumer BehaviorWEEK 1
Hutter & Hoffmann – Surprise, surprise. Ambient media as promotion tool for retailers
Abstract
Ambient media evoke surprise with the aim of gaining the attention of consumers who are overexposed to
traditional types of advertising.
Method: This article reports a field experiment entailing the manipulation of three types of ambient media that
create different levels of surprise. The analysis combines observation data for 2,464 passersby, survey data
from 305 respondents, and sales figures for 730 days.
Results: The results show that surprising ambient media draw attention, promote positive attitudes toward the
ad, and stimulate word of mouth. Most importantly, ambient media increase purchase intention and sales
revenue. The model is stable across several conditions, such as time of day or weather conditions. Follow-up
studies further reveal that surprise elicits positive effects via two processes; the amplification of accompanying
evaluations and the interplay of attention and incongruence resolution.
Implications: The paper provides guidance for retailers wishing to design surprising ambient media that
improve consumer attitudes and profitability.
Introduction
It is necessary to investigate new advertising forms for retailers, since the average consumer is overexposed to
conventional attempts at persuasion. Many people also feel constrained in their freedom to make
independent consumption decisions. To reduce this psychological reactance, they avoid being exposed to and
influenced by advertisements.
To overcome the attention dilemma, new creative forms of advertising have evolved. In particular, surprising
consumers is a smart way to gain attention. Surprised individuals inter- rupt their ongoing activity and focus
on the surprise-evoking event.
Ambient media explicitly intend to surprise consumers by placing advertisements at unusual locations in the
direct social environment of the target group, where consumers do not expect them.
Ambient media = “Placement of advertising in unusual and unexpected places (location) often with
unconventional methods (execution) and being first or only ad execution to do so (temporal)”. Low costs
and large number of targets reached! So fast growing marketing instrument.
Extent research indicates that this “non-traditional out-of home” media is able to raise attention, because it
surprises consumers by confronting them with incongruous stimuli against a familiar environment.
Surprise evokes reaction at different levels:
- Psychological level: Increases arousal
- Behavioral level: Facial expressions
- Behavioral level: surprised individuals interrupt their ongoing activities and focus their attention on
the surprising stimulus! More aware of the stimulus, coginitive processing is deeper and the
memory retention is better!
Treatment:
, Conclusion
Ambient media are able to raise consumer attention and to intensify information processing in order to resolve
incongruence, which leads to a positive Aad (attitudes toward the ad) and down-stream variables.
This article highlights the role of surprise evoked by ambient media for building these effects. The findings
extend prior knowledge in several respects.
1) We demonstrate that surprising ambient media are indeed able to attract attention and that
participants focus on surprising ambient media more intensely.
2) We propose and confirm a cognitive process model of the flow of effects.
3) We identified that consumer experience moderates the effect of surprise on Aad.
4) We provide evidence that surprising ambient media significantly increase sales figures.
Triangulation resolves the dilemma that there is usually no single method for holistically investigating complex
phenomena. The present study comprises a multi-method approach with three different lenses:
- Observation data
- Sales figures
- Questionnaire data
The questionnaire data shed light on the process by which surprising ads stimulate purchase intention.
However, the examination provides no information about whether ambient media trigger attention as a
precondition to initiate the cognitive process and whether ambient media lead to real purchases as the final
step of the process. Therefore, we gathered observation data and sales figures. Observation data reveals that
ambient media are able to interrupt passersby’s activity. As expected, the combination of two schema-
discrepant elements (directionality and dimensionality (3D)) is most effective in raising and holding attention.
Follow-up study B confirms that directionality and dimensionality jointly account for the surprise effect.
The cognitive process:
,The emotion of surprise strengthens consumer attitudes toward an ad.
Follow-up study A demonstrates that two effects foster Aad:
- First, surprise raises attention and resolving the incongruent element of the surprising ambient media
evokes positive affect, which is then transferred to a positive Aad.
- Second, surprise is additionally an amplifier for consumers’ accompanying evaluation of the ad (such
as creativity). While surprise has no valence, it raises attention which intensifies good or bad ad
evaluations.
The study reveals that if consumers feel surprised, they develop a favorable Aad (attitude towards add) and
then a positive Abr (attitude towards the brand), which in turn fosters purchase intention (PI).
Additionally, follow-up study C demonstrates that surprised consumers use coupons even if the store is far
away.
Note: There is a significantly stronger influence of surprise on Aad within the non-customer subsample than
within the customer subsample. Use surprising ambient media primarily to convert passersby into
customers
Managerial implications
The study demonstrates that actively stimulating surprise can be an effective strategy for solving the
attention dilemma and for gaining new customers. The more ambient media surprises consumers, the more
positive the Aad. Giving non-customers a unique experience may convert them to active promoters of the
company or brand.
The results should encourage advertising agencies to use surprise in an ad, BUT ONLY if customers are able to
associate the ad with the retailer.
Possible to make major impacts at low costs! less expensive activities in the right location can draw and
hold more attention than expensive traditional advertising. However, it should be stressed that the process to
develop surprising ambient media might cause additional costs.
* For the marketing team, developing a concept that is novel and associated with the retailer is more important
than a concept that is merely unconventional for its own sake.
Weakness: Wear-out effects After multiple exposures to the same ambient activity, the consumer will be
less surprised.
Brasel & Gips (2010) – Red bull ‘gives you wings’ or better or worse: A double-edged impact of brand
exposure on consumer performance
The article shows that brand exposure can have double-sided effects on behavior, with brand identity
associations creating both positive and negative effects on objective consumer performance.
Results: Experimental results from a racing game involving functionally identical cars with differently branded
paint jobs show that Red Bull branding creates a U-shaped effect on race performance, as Red Bull's brand
identity of speed, power, and recklessness work both for and against the players.
Even though brands were exposed supraliminally, effects traveled through nonconscious channels. Double-
edged effects of branding on consumer performance could be increasingly important as ambient advertising
and product cobranding become more commonplace.
Introduction
, The assistants knew the cars were identical in performance and differed only in paint jobs, yet they insistently
claimed that the Red Bull car was faster than the others.
Double-edged effect for Red Bull brand exposure: Assistants using the Red Bull car made contact with
participant cars almost twice as often as when they were racing in other branded cars, and races high in car
contact resulted in slower race times. Red Bull's brand identity could create both positive and negative
pressures on consumer performance.
Brand identity plays a large role in priming judgments of product quality and enjoyment of the consumption
process.
Unlike traditional advertising or mere exposure, placing brand information on real-world and virtual objects
that consumers can interact with offers a new potential route of influence within consumer behavior.
- As transformational advertising transfers affect and cultural value into the brand, so exposure to the
brand is inexorably linked with the affective experience portrayed in advertising.
- Placing brands onto objects under consumer control could transfer those cultural values and affect to
the consumer, even if the brand itself is not being used or consumed in a traditional sense.
Games thus represent an opportunity to test brand exposure effects without external goal-setting tasks or
manipulations, capturing natural and internally driven consumer behavior.
Results
Red Bull's personality associations of speed, power, aggressiveness, and recklessness either pushed consumers
to the edge of their ability, leading to very fast races overall, or pushed them beyond their ability, leading to
higher off-track times and slower races overall.
Indeed, Red Bull was the only brand with a significantly uneven race speed distribution, showing a strong U-
shaped effect on race time; Red Bull was most commonly a participant's fastest or slowest car.
Likewise, the complex constellation of cultural meanings and values imbued into a product such as Red Bull
may impact different consumers in different ways based on their current relationships with those meanings
and values.
Our results suggest that brand placement can affect consumer performance beyond traditional marketing
metrics and highlight the need for increased work on brand exposure as brand placement replaces traditional
advertising in marketing campaigns.
Implications
These results extend prior literature on nonconscious brand exposure in three key ways.
- First, this work illustrates how brand exposure can exert double-edged effects on consumer
outcomes; a brand with a strong personality position on certain dimensions can create both positive
and negative effects on relevant consumer performance metrics.
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