Consumer Marketing
Summary of all papers
MSC Marketing
Academic Year: 2021 -2022 period 1
VU Amsterdam School of Business and Economics
Tutor: Jiska Eelen
Table of content
Elsen, Pieters, Wedel (2016): Thin slice impressions: How advertising evaluation depends on
exposure duration..............................................................................................................................3
Verhellen et al. (2015) The short- and long-term impact of brand placement in an advertiser-
funded tv program on viewers’ attitudes towards the sponsor brand and its main competitor........6
Castaño et al. (2008): Managing consumer uncertainty in the adoption of new products: temporal
distance and mental stimulation............................................................................................................9
Ma et al. (2014): Consumer adoption of new products: independent versus interdependent self-
perspective...........................................................................................................................................14
Goodman & Irmak (2013): having versus consuming: failure to estimate usage frequency makes
consumers prefer multifeatured products...........................................................................................18
Diehl & Poynor (2010) Great expectations?! Assortment size, Expectations and Satisfaction.............23
Palmeira & Srivastava (2013) Free offer does not equal cheap product: a selective accessibility
account on the valuation of free offers................................................................................................26
Shampanier et al. (2007): zero as a special price: the true value of free products...............................33
,Watson et al. (2015): Building, measuring, and profiting from customer loyalty.................................37
Eelen et al. (2017): The differential impact of brand loyalty on traditional and online WOM: the
moderating role of self-brand connection and the desire to help the brand.......................................42
Kristofferson et al. (2014): the nature of slacktivism: How the social observability of an initial act of
token support affects subsequent prosocial action..............................................................................49
Whilans et al.(2017): Buying time promotes happiness.......................................................................55
Barasch et al. (2017): How the intention to share can undermine enjoyment: photo-taking goals and
evaluation of experiences.....................................................................................................................58
,Elsen, Pieters, Wedel (2016): Thin slice impressions: How advertising
evaluation depends on exposure duration
Abstract: three controlled experiments, one of which is a field experiment, with exposure duration
ranging from very brief (100ms) to very long (30 sec), show that advertising evaluation depends on
the duration of ad exposure and on how ads convey which product and brand they promote. The
experiments show that upfront ads (instantly conveying), are evaluated positively after brief and long
duration. Mystery ads, which suspend conveying what they promote, are evaluated negatively after
brief exposure but positively after longer exposure. False front ads, which initially covey another
identity, are evaluated positively after brief exposure but negatively after longer exposure. A feeling
of knowing what the ad promotes, accounts for these ad-type effect on evaluation.
Intro and theory
Consumer see several thousands of marketing messages every day. Consumers very carefully choose
which ads to pay attention to. We do this based on thin slices of information. It is important for
management to understand the influence these thin slice inferences can have on the effectiveness of
an ad. People often rapidly, perhaps automatically, categorize the stimuli in their environment, such
as when they identify an ad, and what it promotes. They need longer exposure to process the details
of the ad’s message. Knowing an ad’s indemnity is functional for consumers because it helps them
determine whether the ad is personally relevant and thus, whether it requires more attention from
them.
Advertisements are designed to convey their basic identity in different ways, depending on their
similarity to other ads in the same category and their similarity to ads in other categories. The
authors distinguish between three ad identification types:
1. Upfront: typical ads for the category they advertise. They are similar to other ads in the same
category and dissimilar from ads in other categories. These immediately convey their identity
and are congruent with strong pre-existing schemas and memory templates we have about
ads in this category. Think a Paco Roban banner or advertisement video.
2. Mystery: not typical for their own category that they advertise. They are also dissimilar to
ads from other ad categories. They contain indirect or delayed signals of their true identity
which prevents consumers from immediately matching the ad with pre-existing ad schema’s
and memories. These ads have the “aha” moment.
3. False front: dissimilar for their own category but similar to ads from a different category.
False front ads make use of mimicry to initially convey a different message then their true
one: they hide behind the “front” of another category. They require customer to make a
“schema switch”
Whereas details about the ad message may dominate information processing after a long exposure,
ad identification is paramount when consumers rely on thin slices of information after a brief
exposure. Evidence accumulation is faster when the stimulus is similar to prototypes or exemplars of
the category that consumers hold in their memory. People experience a feeling of knowing the
identity of the stimulus when the evidence crosses a threshold. Consumers rely on subjective
knowledge because it comes to mind quickly and is often diagnostic for objective knowledge with
accumulates much more slowly.
, After brief exposures, the feeling and accuracy of knowing the true indemnity of upfront messages is
already high. Longer exposure help confirm that the initial feeling of knowing the identity was
correct. Therefore, the authors predict that the subjective knowledge about the identity of an
upfront ad is high after both brief and long exposures
For mystery ads, the feeling and accuracy of knowing the true identity of mystery ads is low. Longer
exposure help create the “aha” moment. The authors predict that at first the subjective knowledge is
low, but high after longer exposure.
For false front ads, the subjective knowledge is initially high, as this is caused by a feeling of knowing
the identity of the ad. After longer exposure, the true identity becomes known, which creates
disconfirmation. This lowers the product evaluation. People tend to dislike disconfirmation.
The authors predict that the feeling of knowing an ad’s identity, rather than the accuracy of that
feeling, is responsible for the effects of ad identification types on ad evaluation. It is reasonable to
expect that this mediating effect is strongest after brief exposures, when only thin slices about the
ad’s identity are available, and that it wanes after longer exposure, when thicker slices about the
specific ad message becomes available.
Experiment 1: 4 (exposure duration: 100 msec, 2 sec, 5
sec, 30 sec) x 3 (identification types: upfront, mystery,
false front) between-subjects design. The first
experiment provides support the idea that advertising
evaluation critically depend on exposure duration. For
upfront ads: the add attitude was initially the highest
and became slightly lower as the duration increased.
Mystery ads at first had the lowest ad attitude, but as
the duration time increased, it the ad attitude also
increased. False front ads had a reasonably high ad
attitude at first, but this decreased as the duration
increased.
Experiment 2: 4 (exposure duration: 100 msec, 500 msec, 2 sec, 10 sec) x 3 (ad identification:
upfront, mystery, false front) between subject design. This study provides evidence that the feeling
rather than the accuracy of knowing what the ad promotes mediates the effect of the identification
of the ad on ad evaluation. It also further researches the effect of the identification by assessing ad
and brand attitude. This experiment also examines shorter slices of information and rules out the
possibility that the findings from experiment 1 were due to the difference between the advertised
brands. This experiment showed the same results as the previous experiment and that is was also
applicable for brand attitudes. They also showed that the identification for the upfront ad was the
highest and remained the highest after a longer duration. This was also the case for the identification
of the product and the brand. Surprisingly, this time at max duration, the ad and brand attitude of
the mystery ad exceeded that of the upfront ad. This can be due to the lower final duration
compared to the first experiment. Also, ad attitude increase more then brand attitude.
