When the Product is Complex, Does the Advertisement's Conclusion Matter?

This study was made for two purposes. The first was to replicate the study of Sawyer and Howard (1991), which found that the effects of persuasion in open-ended advertisements were greater than those of closed-ended advertisements when the audience was involved in processing the ads. The second was to examine a potential boundary condition of these findings based on complexity of the product featured in the advertisement and the audience's ability to process the information. An experiment using 211 student subjects replicated the results of Sawyer and Howard when the same low-complexity product was featured in the target advertisement. However, the results of the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and logistic regression (LOGIT) analyses on four measures of persuasion (attitude toward the brand, effort, purchase intention, and choice) showed that the effects Sawyer and Howard found for their relatively simple product (razor) did not hold for a complex product (CD player) except for purchase intention. Further examination of the role of the subject's ability to process the complex product advertisement showed little difference from the over-all group in the complex product condition.

[1]  Alan G. Sawyer,et al.  Effects of Omitting Conclusions in Advertisements to Involved and Uninvolved Audiences , 1991 .

[2]  Douglas Olsen.  Observations: the sounds of silence: functions and use of silence in television advertising , 1994 .

[3]  C. F. Kao,et al.  The efficient assessment of need for cognition. , 1984, Journal of personality assessment.

[4]  Deborah J. MacInnis,et al.  Focal and emotional integration: Constructs, measures, and preliminary evidence , 1993 .

[5]  F. Kardes,et al.  Spontaneous Inference Processes in Advertising: The Effects of Conclusion Omission and Involvement on Persuasion , 1988 .

[6]  Gary Alan Fine,et al.  Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 17. , 1976 .

[7]  J. Cacioppo,et al.  Attitudes and Persuasion: Classic and Contemporary Approaches , 1981 .

[8]  Bernard J. Jaworski,et al.  Enhancing and Measuring Consumers’ Motivation, Opportunity, and Ability to Process Brand Information from Ads , 1991 .

[9]  Junyean Moon,et al.  Consumer Use of Available Information for Making Inferences about Missing Information , 1997 .

[10]  D. Thistlethwaite,et al.  The effects of directive and nondirective communication procedures on attitudes. , 1955, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[11]  C I HOVLAND,et al.  An experimental comparison of conclusion-drawing by the communicator and by the audience. , 1952, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[12]  Laura A. Peracchio,et al.  How Ambiguous Cropped Objects in Ad Photos Can Affect Product Evaluations , 1994 .

[13]  Bernard J. Jaworski,et al.  Information Processing from Advertisements: Toward an Integrative Framework , 1989 .

[14]  J. Cacioppo,et al.  Central and Peripheral Routes to Advertising Effectiveness: The Moderating Role of Involvement , 1983 .

[15]  Richard W. Olshavsky,et al.  Conditions and Consequences of Spontaneous Inference Generation: A Concurrent Protocol Approach , 1995 .

[16]  John T. Cacioppo,et al.  The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion , 1986, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.

[17]  Gita Venkataramani Johar,et al.  Consumer Involvement and Deception from Implied Advertising Claims , 1995 .

[18]  B. J. Fine.  Conclusion-drawing, communicator credibility, and anxiety as factors in opinion change. , 1957, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[19]  Frank R. Kardes,et al.  Spontaneous Inference Processes in Advertising , 1992 .