The influence of advertising's affective qualities on consumer response

104 Pages·2008·2.19 MB·English

by  Silk, Alvin J

LIBRARY
OFTHE
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE
OF TECHNOLOGY

HD28
.M414 Dewey
MASS.
FEB 6 1974

THE INFLUENCE OF ADVERTISING'S AFFECTIVE QUALITIES
ON CONSUMER RESPONSE*
682-73
Alvin J. Silk** and Terry G. Vavra***
September, 1973
*An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Association for
Consumer Research/American Marketing Association Conference on "Consumer
Information Processing," University of Chicago, November 1, 1972.
The authors are indebted to Stephen Greyser, Michael Ray, and Peter Wright
for helpful comments. The support of the Marketing Science Institute in
the preparation of this paper is also gratefully acknowledged.
**Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
***National Broadcasting Company
This paper will appear as a chapter in G. David Hughes and Michael L. Ray,
eds. Consumer Information Processing. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of
North Carolina Press, forthcoming in 1974.
Dewey
SEP 231975
RECEIVED
JAN 28 1974
M. I.T. LIBRAKIES
4544
ABSTRACT
The subject of "pleasant" and "irritating" advertising has a
long history of controversy involving issues of both management and
public policy. Advertising practitioners and researchers have debated
about the existence and/or the nature of the relationship between
consumers'affective reactions to advertising materials and its effec-
tiveness in altering attitudes or behavior toward the product advertised.
The paper presents a review of viewpoints that have been expressed in
the advertising literatire on the question of how consumers' liking
or disliking of advertising messages is related to the ability of
advertising to achieve its intended commercial purposes. Out of this
emerges what amounts to two different theories about the process and
effects of pleasant and unpleasant advertising. Next, empirical
evidence available from advertising research is examined and found to
be equivocal. A laboratory experiment undertaken to test a series of
hypotheses concerning the effects of "hard" and "soft sell" radio com-
mercials on various hierarchical measures of consumer response is
briefly discussed to illustrate how microtheoretical notions from com-
munications research can be applied in this area.
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