MODULE 2
Greanwald and Leavitt, 1984: Audience involvement in advertising: four levels
Pre-attention: little or no capacity required (automatic processing)
Focal attention/voluntary attention : little capacity required
Comprehension: modest levels of capacity required
Elaboration: substantial levels of capacity required
Levels of
M PRE-ATTENTION FOCAL ATTENTION COMPREHENSION ELABORATION audience
involvement
Channel selection,
Sensory buffering
E perceptual and Information
and feature syntactic analysis conceptual analysis processing stages
semantic
S analysis
processing
S
Parallel analysis of al Use of perceptual Use of syntactic Linking of propositional Use of existing
A modalities for familiarity knowledge to produce word knowledge to construct code for current input to stored knowledge
G and significance
(screening)
and object category propositional existing systems of
representations representations conceptual knowledge
Audience involvement is the allocation of attentional capacity to a message source, as needed to analyze
the message at one of a series of increasingly abstract representational levels. Low levels use little capacity
and extract information that is used first to determine whether a higher level will be invoked and, if so as
raw material for analysis by the next higher level. Higher levels require greater capacity and result in
increasingly durable cognitive and attitudinal effects.
A distinction between arousal and capacity must also be made: Arousal refers to a state of wakefulness,
general preparation or excitement that facilitates the performance of well-learned responses. Capacity, on
the other hand, is a limited resource that must be used to focus on a specific task and that is needed in
increasing amounts as the cognitive complexity of a task increases.
Arousal and capacity allocation are related to one another, but not directly. It is generally assumed
that, up to moderate levels, arousal facilitates information processing, but that high levels of arousal
interfere with complex cognitive tasks that demand a high level of capacity: this is the Yerkes-Dodson
effect
Enduring (cognitive and attitudinal) effects: These determine the impact of advertising messages on their
audiences. Preattention has no definitely established enduring effects. The three higher levels are
associated with a pattern of increasingly strong effects.
With preattention, stimuli receive extensive immediate analysis that produces little or no lasting
effect
With focal attention, familiar stimuli are perceived categorically as separable, identifiable objects
(figure, rather than background), and unfamiliar stimuli establish sensory memory traces
With comprehension, a message can establish traces at the propositional level of representation.
The highest level of involvement, elaboration, produces substantial freedom of memory and
attitude from the specific details of the original message or its setting.
,Unnava and Burnkrant (1991): Effects of repeating varied ad executions on brand name memory
Design: 2 group design (2 similar ads, 2 different ads)
o Booklet with 30 ads, with target ads at 6th and 16th position
The ad on the 16th place was either exactly the same as the ad on the sixth place, or it was a
slight variation.
Then, they asked people to look at the booklet, and later on they measured recall and attention
o DV: Attention measure: dual task paradigm
RT on second task (tone detection) as a proxy for attention to the ad
Brand recall
Message recall
The basic idea is that when people have two tasks, the attention to the second task goes down because resources and
attention is limited and selective. So, if you give people a tone detection task while they are looking at two booklets,
and reaction times are slower on the second tone detection task, one can assume that more attention is allocated to
the first task: looking at the advertisements
Results:
o Attention: no effects found
Increase in recall that was observed for the variation in the ads was not due to the fact that
people allocated more attention to the ads on the 16th position, it was assumed by researchers
that it was because the advertisement was linked to existing knowledge structures.
o Brand recall: 28% (same) vs. 55% (different)
Brand recall was better when the second ad was a variation of the first ad
o Message recall: 1.53 (same) vs. 2.83 (different)
So, variations in advertising lead to better recall results presumably because they increase the memory process, which
is actually evidence for the variability effect.
, Module 3
Petty, R. E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Schumann, D. (1983). Central and peripheral routes to advertising
effectiveness: The moderating role of involvement. Journal of consumer research, 10(2), 135-146.
Petty, Cacioppo & Schumann: arguments work under “high” processing, cues work under “low” processing
Experimental study:
o Design: 2 involvement (high vs. low) by 2 argument quality (strong vs. weak) by 2 cue
(celebrity vs. non celebrity status)
o N = 160
o Procedure:
Booklet with ads (target ad = razor ad)
DVs: attitudes, recall and recognition
IV’s (manipulations):
Involvement:
o After experiment choice between disposable razors (high inv.) vs.
toothpaste (low inv.)
o Brand of razors would become available in own area (high inv.) vs.
other area (low inv.)
Argument quality:
o “Scientifically designed” (+ 5 strong arguments) vs. “designed for
beauty” (+ 5 weak arguments)
o Cue:
“Professional Athletes Agree: …” (+ picture of 2 well liked
celebs) vs. “Bakersfield, California Agrees: ...” (+ picture of
average citizens)
Results: (Attitudes): Involvement x Cue Results: Involvement x Argument quality
Attitudes towards the razor were more positive when celebrities were used compared to when regular
endorsers were used, but only when involvement was low. When involvement was high, no difference was
observed between the endorser, or between the celeb cue and the regular cue condition.
To the contrary, when involvement was high, strong arguments were more convincing than weak
arguments, but when involvement was low, strong or weak arguments didn’t really make a difference.
