The psychology of advertising

344 Pages·2010·7.69 MB·English

by  Bob Michaël Fennis

The Psychology of
Advertising
Advertising is a ubiquitous and powerful force, seducing us into buying wanted and some-
times unwanted products and services, donating to charity (even to causes we have not heard
of before), voting for political candidates (even of questionable reputation), and changing our
health-related lifestyles for better or worse. The impact of advertising is often subtle and
implicit, but sometimes blatant and impossible to overlook.
This book discusses key topics from the fields of social and consumer psychology.
Important questions are addressed in the volume, such as:
• What impact does advertising have on consumer behaviour? What causes this impact?
• What are the psychological processes responsible for the effectiveness of advertising?
• How do consumers make sense of advertising messages?
• What messages ‘get across’ and when and why?
This is the first book to offer a comprehensive and state-of-the-art overview of the psycho-
logical findings on the impact of advertising, and to discuss this research in the context of
recent developments in the fields of social and consumer psychology. It presents and dis-
cusses results of both classic and contemporary studies in an engaging style that avoids
highly technical language.
The authors have included a glossary of frequently used concepts which assists stu-
dent comprehension, making it a unique and invaluable volume for advanced undergraduate
and graduate students as well as researchers and lecturers in social psychology, marketing
and communications. It is also a useful resource for professionals.
Bob M. Fennis works as a Professor in Consumer Behaviour at the Department of Marketing
at Groningen University. His research interests include persuasion, social influence processes
and the dynamics of ‘automatic’ consumer behaviour. His research focuses on such issues as
the effectiveness of marketing and selling techniques, advertising effects, and nonconscious
influences on consumer goal pursuit and purchase behaviour.
Wolfgang Stroebe is Professor of Social Psychology at Utrecht University. He is a former
president of the European Association of Social Psychology, a fellow of numerous psycho-
logical societies (e.g. BPS, APS) and co-editor (with Miles Hewstone) of the European Review
of Social Psychology. One of his major research interests is strategies of attitude and
behaviour change, and he has published widely on this topic.

The Psychology of
Advertising
Bob M. Fennis and
Wolfgang Stroebe
Published in 2010 This publication has been produced with
by Psychology Press paper manufactured to strict environmental
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA standards and with pulp derived from
sustainable forests.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Psychology Press British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
270 Madison Avenue, New York NY 10016 A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
Psychology Press is an imprint of the Taylor &
Francis Group, an Informa business Library of Congress Cataloging in
Publication Data
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis Fennis, Bob Michaël, 1968–
e-Library, 2010. The psychology of advertising / Bob M. Fennis
and Wolfgang Stroebe.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of
p. cm.
Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of Includes bibliographical references and index.
thousands of eBooks please go to 1. Advertising—Psychological aspects.
www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. 2. Consumers—Attitudes. I. Stroebe,
Wolfgang. II. Title.
© 2010 Psychology Press HF5822.F456 2010
659.101′9—dc22 2009040521
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form ISBN 0-203-85323-7 Master e-book ISBN
or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers. ISBN: 978-0-415-44273-2 (hbk)
C
o
Contents
n
t
e
PREFACE ix
n
1 Setting the stage 1
THE ORIGINS OF MODERN DAY ADVERTISING 2
THE FUNCTIONS OF ADVERTISING 5
t
THE EFFECTS OF ADVERTISING: A PSYCHOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE 10
CONSUMER RESPONSES 12
s
SOURCE AND MESSAGE VARIABLES IN ADVERTISING 15
ADVERTISING IN CONTEXT: INTEGRATED
MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS AND THE
PROMOTIONAL MIX 22
CLASSIC AND CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES OF
CONCEPTUALIZING ADVERTISING EFFECTIVENESS 27
PLAN OF THE BOOK 38
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 39
2 How consumers acquire and
process information from
advertising 41
v
CONTENTS
PREATTENTIVE ANALYSIS 43
FOCAL ATTENTION 51
COMPREHENSION 63
ELABORATIVE REASONING 66
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 70
3 How advertising affects
consumer memory 73
THE STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF HUMAN MEMORY 74
IMPLICATIONS FOR ADVERTISING 90
CAN ADVERTISING DISTORT MEMORY? 106
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 109
4 How consumers form attitudes
towards products 111
WHAT IS AN ATTITUDE? A MATTER OF CONTENTION 112
ARE ATTITUDES STABLE OR CONTEXT-DEPENDENT? 118
HOW DO WE FORM ATTITUDES? 120
HOW ATTITUDES ARE STRUCTURED 133
ATTITUDE FUNCTIONS: WHY PEOPLE HOLD ATTITUDES 136
ATTITUDE STRENGTH 140
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 149
5 How consumers yield to advertising:
Principles of persuasion and
attitude change 153
THE YALE REINFORCEMENT APPROACH 154
THE INFORMATION PROCESSING MODEL OF MCGUIRE 156
THE COGNITIVE RESPONSE MODEL 158
DUAL PROCESS THEORIES OF PERSUASION 160
ASSESSING THE INTENSITY OF PROCESSING 165
PERSUASION BY A SINGLE ROUTE: THE UNIMODEL 182
vi
CONTENTS
LOWERING RESISTANCE TO ADVERTISING 184
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 192
6 How advertising influences buying
behaviour 195
THE ATTITUDE–BEHAVIOUR RELATIONSHIP: A BRIEF HISTORY 196
PREDICTING SPECIFIC BEHAVIOUR: THE REASONED ACTION
APPROACH 198
NARROWING THE INTENTION–BEHAVIOUR GAP: FORMING
IMPLEMENTATION INTENTIONS 202
IMPLICATIONS FOR ADVERTISING 205
BEYOND REASONS AND PLANS: THE AUTOMATIC INSTIGATION OF
BEHAVIOUR 207
IMPLICATIONS FOR ADVERTISING: THE RETURN OF THE HIDDEN
PERSUADERS 220
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 225
7 Beyond persuasion: Achieving consumer
compliance without changing attitudes 229
SOCIAL INFLUENCE AND COMPLIANCE WITHOUT PRESSURE 231
THE PRINCIPLE OF RECIPROCITY 235
THE PRINCIPLE OF COMMITMENT/CONSISTENCY 238
THE PRINCIPLE OF SOCIAL VALIDATION 244
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIKING 248
THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY 252
THE PRINCIPLE OF SCARCITY 256
THE PRINCIPLE OF CONFUSION 258
MINDLESSNESS REVISITED: THE LIMITED-RESOURCE ACCOUNT 261
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 262
NOTES 267
REFERENCES 271
GLOSSARY 303
AUTHOR INDEX 317
SUBJECT INDEX 327
vii

P
r
Preface e
f
a
The idea to write a book which presents a coherent and in-depth
analysis of the psychology of advertising was the result of an c
e-mail exchange between the authors of this book. A few years
back, one of us (Wolfgang Stroebe) was writing a textbook chapter
on attitude and behaviour change and wanted to add some advertis-
ing research to demonstrate the practical use of the social psycho- e
logical theories discussed in this chapter. Since he could not find
any state-of-the-art textbook on the psychology of advertising, he
turned to Bob Fennis, whom he knew as an expert in the area of
consumer and advertising research. Bob mailed back that, surpris-
ingly, there was no state-of-the-art textbook on the psychology of
advertising. Since we both strongly believed that such a book was
needed, we decided to write it ourselves. And here it is.
Originally, we had intended to write a book on the social
psychology of advertising. Since advertisers devise persuasive
communications to convince consumers to buy their products, the
psychology of advertising can rightfully be considered an applica-
tion of social psychology. However, when we began planning the
content of the book, we realized that we had to include chapters on
information acquisition and consumer memory and in writing these
chapters to review research and theories that originated in cogni-
tive rather than social psychology. We therefore decided that social
psychology of advertising would be too narrow a title and scope;
thus we expanded it beyond the original plan and chose to call it
‘The psychology of advertising’.
The book differs in a number of important ways from
older advertising textbooks. First, we included state-of-the-art
research on psychological processes that bear direct relevance for
ix