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The Effect of Emotions On The Memory Of TV Commercials
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Tsiotsou, Rodoula H. |
| Copyright Year | 2007 |
| Abstract | The study investigated the effects of program-induced emotions (pleasure and arousal) on the memory of TV commercials. Moreover, the direct and indirect effects of prior experience with sports and involvement with sports on emotions and memory of the commercials were studied. A televised basketball game was used for studying the above relationships. The results of the study indicated that there was not any relationship between emotions and ad memory. However, there were strong relationships between arousal and pleasure, involvement with sports and arousal, and involvement with sports and pleasure. Further research with larger sample size and different populations are recommended for a better exploration of the topic. Introduction In today's competitive economic environment, advertisers use every available means to make their products known to the consumers. One of these means is sporting events. Sport is characterized by high levels of involvement and such involvement has created increased interest in advertisements. Alliance with selected sports may assist commercial enterprises in differentiating themselves and their products from competitors (McCarville & Copeland, 1994). In 1971, television broadcast 800 hours of sports but the desire for more sports increased telecasts of sports in 1992 to 1,800 hours in the U.S. (Eitzen & Sage, 1993). Television networks pay money for the rights to broadcast a league’s game (professional or collegiate) in the hopes of obtaining their money back, plus a profit, by selling advertising time. Companies currently spend around $4 billion annually on sports advertising. By the turn of the century, analysts predict that companies will spend $13.8 billion per year on advertising (Fennel, 1990). Ads have different forms in sport events shown on TV: commercials interrupt the events or ads are shown on the screen during the event next to the score cards or score reviews. Advertising’s dominating role is demonstrated in the game modifications. In order to enhance profitability, the television industry has been able to manipulate the structure and process of televised sports. Examples of rule changes that permit more commercials are official time-outs at the end of each quarter, television time-outs, 2-minute warning in football, 20-second time-out in basketball, and the intended play-off system in all professional sports. Since a large amount of money is spent in advertising during televised sport events, it is essential to explore its effectiveness. Although advertising has been widely used in televised sport events, very limited research exists on its impact on sport consumers and on subsequent consumer decisions. Previous research on advertising has focused either on spectators (Turco, 1992) or on television viewers (Newell & Henderson 1994; Pavelchak, Antil & Munch, 1988) of sport events. Results from a study of spectators revealed that exposure to corporate names and logos at sport events does increase product awareness and may subsequently lead to product consumption (Turco, 1992). Another study showed that 70 percent of stadium spectators recalled scoreboard advertising; of the responses from football stadia, 77 percent identified the existing stadium advertising while among the basketball spectators, 62 percent were accurate (Stotlar & Johnson, 1989). The purpose of this study was to explore how involvement and prior experience with sports influence ad memory (measured by ad recall, recognition, and main idea of the ad) in an effort to improve advertising practices and strategies of televised sports. The primary questions this study attempted to answer were: how arousal and pleasure induced while watching a sport event affect advertising 2 memory? Are involvement and prior experience with sports related to emotions induced during a televised sport event? To assess the above questions relevant marketing literature on emotions, involvement and experience is reviewed in the next sections in order to provide a theoretical framework for the study and identify research hypotheses. Emotions The role of emotions induced by a television program in relation to advertising effectiveness is not clear in the marketing literature. Some studies have shown that positive/negative emotions affect positively/negatively the processing and memory of the advertising. (Isen, 1984; Mayer, 1986; Goldberg & Gorn, 1987). Goldberg and Gorn (1987) found that consumers evaluated advertisements based on the emotions induced by a television program. Commercials were perceived as more effective when viewed in the context of a happy program rather than a sad program. Similar results were found by other researchers such as Park and McClung (1986) and Soldow and Principe (1981). There are contradicted opinions regarding the role of emotions in advertising effectiveness. Some scholars have suggested that viewers’ interest in commercials decreases when they are highly involved with a program (Park & McClung, 1986). Bello, Pitts, and Etzel (1983) believe that commercials interrupting highly involved programs negatively affect information processing. Taking the opposite view, Krugman (1983) posits that when consumers are interested in a program this interest is carried over to the commercials that interrupt it. Two theoretical frameworks have attempted to explain the relationship between program-induced emotional reactions and memory (ad recall), the processing efficiency and the intensity theory. Both theories argue that program-induced emotions determine viewers information processing. The processing efficiency principle posits that people process information more efficiently when feeling pleasure than when they experience the opposite emotions. Unpleasant states inhibit learning because they decrease motivation of processing information whereas pleasant emotions facilitate learning by activating well-integrated knowledge structures that influence encoding and as a result ad recall (Isen, 1984). Mathur and Chattopadway (1991) findings support the processing efficiency theory. Their study revealed that a happy program was positively related to recognition whereas a sad program was inversely related to such cognitive responses. Thus, advertising recall is associated with program context. The intensity principle suggests that cognitive responses (ad recall) are related to the level of programinduced emotional reactions. Emotional intensity focuses attention to the stimuli that induce the emotions which increases information processing, facilitates encoding and recall of the stimuli. Emotional intensity should decrease recall for nonemotion-inducing stimuli. Thus, an emotionally involving program should have a negative effect on ad recall (Pavelchak et al., 1988). Based on the intensity principle, Pavelchak, Antil and Munch (1988) investigated the effect Super Bowl XX had on the emotions (pleasure, arousal and polarization) of viewers in three U. S. cities and how these emotional reactions influenced recall for ads shown before and after the game. They found that arousal was related to recall much more strongly than it did to pleasure and that recall of the ad was negatively related to emotional intensity and unrelated to emotional pleasure. A replication of the previous study showed that emotion and arousal did not affect ad recall (Henderson, 1994). Another study measured recall of ads shown during Super Bowl XXV, indicated that the total length of the ad, the number of times the ad was shown, and the position of the ad within the pod were related to ad recall (Newell & Henderson, 1994). Involvement Though some studies have investigated the effect of advertising on televised sports, none of these have investigated the direct and indirect effects of involvement and prior experience with sports on emotions and subsequently on the memory of the commercials. Involvement in the marketing literature has been basically studied in attitude, persuasion, and advertising research (Celsi & Olson, 3 1988; Hawkings & Hoch, 1992; Macinnis & Park 1991; Petty, Cacioppo & Schummann, 1983; and Swasy & Munch, 1985). Involvement in advertising has been examined in terms of either the product advertised, or the media used or the program context (Stewart & Ward, 1994; Park & McClung, 1986; Soldow & Principe, 1981; and Kamen, 1981). This review of literature is focused on involvement with the program context. Involvement with the Program Context Studying individual responses to advertising in the media context has been argued to be more fruitful than focusing on characteristics of the advertising (Stewart & Ward, 1994). People watch a television program in order to fulfill certain needs, rather than to view commercials. However, viewers are exposed to commercials which are part of the program. Thus, there should be a linkage between audience's reaction to the program and its commercials (Park & McClung, 1986). However, the relationship between program involvement and the level of commercial involvement is not clear. It has been suggested that a curvilinear relationship exists between the two constructs where high involvement with the program has a mitigating effect on the involvement level with the commercials. Park and McClung (1986) examined the effect of the audience involvement with TV programs on their involvement with the commercials. The TV programs were distinguished into two types: a) cognitive; where the subject is processing issue-oriented information from the television program; and b) affective; where the subjects identify themselves with the main character in the TV program. The results of their study supported the curvilinear relationship between program involvement and commercial involvement. Soldow and Principe (1981) suggested an inverse relationship between program involvement and commercial effectiveness. They measured commercial effectiveness by unaided brand recall, salesmessage recall, attitude toward the commercia |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://users.uom.gr/~rtsiotsou/pubs/pub19.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
