Journal of Business Research 58 (2005) 1426 1436

Distinguishing between feelings and emotions in understanding

communication effects
Flemming Hansen*
Department of Marketing, Center for Marketing Communication, Copenhagen Business School, Solbjerg Plads 3, C.3, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Received 1 December 2002; received in revised form 1 October 2003; accepted 1 October 2003

Abstract
This article explores measures that may be particularly relevant in connection with peripheral or low-involvement information processing.
For FMCG, peripheral information processing is dominant, but in terms of most measures used in communication research, central
information processing is more efficient. The only exception relates to emotional responses. The more positive and strong effects are
registered following peripheral information processing. This directs the attention towards contemporary neurophysiological research into
memory and emotional processing. In addition to measuring emotional processes in terms of behavioural, glandular and autonomous
responses, it is possible to infer something about underlying emotional dispositions from analyses of questions about feelings.
D 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Emotions; Low-involvement information processing; Peripheral information processing; Communication effects

1. Introduction
In much research concerned with advertising effect, it
being pretesting, posttesting or tracking, cognitive modelling of consumer behaviour has dominated the choice of
measures and the models proposed. Awareness preceding
interest, information search and evaluation has been
assumed to be a fundamental sequence in the consumers
information processing. Attention leading to brand perception, preferences, purchase intention and eventually buying
behaviour are the elements in this assumed chain of events.
At the same time, creative advertisers have presented
campaigns relying upon irony, emotions, postmodern
perception of human values, surprise and provocation. Not
only have such campaigns frequently won creative awards,
but in many instances, their sales effect has also been well
documented.
In parallel with presentations of the traditional, primarily
cognitive-based model of thinkings influence on the way in

* Tel.: +45 3815 2134; fax: +45 3815 2101.

E-mail address: fh.marktg@cbs.dk.
0148-2963/$ - see front matter D 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2003.10.012

which advertising works as communication, occasional

findings have been presented, suggesting very different
aspects of the communication process. Some, mostly
theoretically oriented consumer behaviour researchers, have
given thought to alternative ways of looking at the
advertising communication process. Low involvement
(Krugman, 1968; Zaichkowsky, 1985) and attitudes towards
the ad (A-ad; Mitchell and Olson, 1981; MacKenzie and
Lutz, 1982; Lutz, 1985) have been fundamental concepts,
and a distinction between central and peripheral information
processing has emphasised the multifaceted nature of
advertising information processing (Petty et al., 1983).
In more recent years, neuropsychologists, brain researchers and other behavioural scientists have strongly emphasised the importance of emotional response (Damasio, 2000;
Le Doux, 1998). In this research, a distinction has emerged
between feelings and emotions. Basically, emotions are
thought of as very primitive, extremely fast, unconscious
mechanisms controlling the individual responses to a wide
variety of situations ranging from serious threats (for
instance, from an approaching car) to trivial decisionmaking tasks (for instance, choosing a coffee brand in the
supermarket; Heath, 2001; Franzen and Bouwman, 2001).

F. Hansen / Journal of Business Research 58 (2005) 14261436

Feelings, on the contrary, are those conscious and cognitive

perceptions we use to describe our more primitive noncognitive emotional control of what we do. We may talk
about feelings of sadness, jealousy, happiness, etc. Such
feelings are much more detailed in nature than emotions and
they can be described verbally in more or less precise terms
by the individual experiencing such feelings. In the paper,
we shall review some of the findings relating to emotions as
well as to feelings and look into the possibilities of gaining
insight about emotional response potentials from measurements of feelings.

2. Alternative information processing and other ways of

handling incoming information
Cognitive psychology has dominated the consumer
behaviour researchers study of information and information
processing since the middle of the century. Early contributions are Hovland et al. (1953), Rogers (1962/1995), Hansen
(1976), Fishbein (1966), McGuire (1976) and Bettman
(1979). Fig. 1 summarizes some of the major models of this
kind. The classical AIDA formulation goes back to the end
of the 19th century and is explicitly formulated by Copeland
(1925). The hierarchy of effects model is most convincingly
presented by McGuire (1976) or W7rneryd (1959). The
Defined Advertising Goal for Measured Advertising Results
(DAGMAR) model is presented by Colley (1961) on behalf
of the Advertising Research Foundation and the product
adoption model represents Rogers (1962/1995) integration
of a wealth of research to explain the way in which new
products and ideas are accepted among consumers.
Different researchers offer a number of observations that
are difficult to interpret in terms of the cognitive effect
hierarchy way of thinking (Hansen, 1976). Picture perception has been studied by psychologists and Nickerson

1427

(1968) presents highly relevant findings for our purpose.

Imagine an experiment where you show 200 pictures for 2 s
each to an audience of 200 (often undergraduate students).
On the following day, you do the same; only this time, you
include 200 new pictures to make a total of 400 pictures.
Following the exposure of each picture, you ask a question
to test if people can recognise the pictures from the day
before. The overall observation in such an experiment is that
95100% of the stimuli presented on the first day are
recognised. The research has gone on to look into how such
recognition persists over time, the role of the length of the
exposure time, the nature of the pictures presented, and the
motivation of the subjects in the audience. Provided 2 s are
allowed for exposure (or 1 s for exposure and 1 s for
undisturbed information processing before the next exposure), the recognition process is extremely efficient and
documents an enormous capacity for storing of such
information in the brain. This information storage is not
limited to short- or medium-term memory and may persist
for years.
Another line of research has been reported by Zajonc
(1968). Here, the purpose was to study how the evaluation
of items, to which subjects is exposed, increase with the
number of exposures. In a classic study, Chinese characters
and nonsense words have been used. The experimental
design is simple. On the first day, you show a sequence of,
for instance, Chinese characters, but you control your
stimuli so that some of the characters are shown 1, 2, 5,
10, or even 25 times. The following day, you ask the same
respondents what they think the meaning is of the different
Chinese characters in terms of being more or less positive.
Findings from such studies have shown a clear dmere
exposureT hypothesis.
Mere exposure improves evaluation in many situations,
but, of course, limits exist. If the words are not nonsense
words, but rather meaningful ones, such as names of known

Fig. 1. Information-processing models used in testing of communication.

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F. Hansen / Journal of Business Research 58 (2005) 14261436

persons, cities or brands, what you in advance know and

think about the persons or cities may inhibit the mere
exposure effect. Zajonc reports finding from students
counting the frequency with which different words occurred
in a sample of literature from Chicago University Library.
With a different sample of students, they ranked the average
positive, negative evaluation of the different words. The
mere exposure relationship is evident in their data, but,
remarkably, exceptions can be observed too.
In the 1960s and 1970s, corporate image became a major
issue in applied research. Some of the major findings from
the Mori group in London are reported in Worcester (1979).
The basic observation here is that if you measure how
frequently a person has heard about a particular company
(self-rated awareness) and how positively/negatively the
same person evaluates that company (self-rated attitude), a
classical image-positioning picture emerges. Here, it appears
that the better known a company is, the more positively it is
evaluated.
In an extension of the mere exposure research, Zajonc
and Markus (1982) studied what they labelled emotions
without cognitions. In this line of research, the basic idea is
very simple and can be illustrated with one of their classical
studies. You ask two groups of respondents to evaluate
Walkmans by listening to music and speech from these,
which they have mounted on their head. The respondents
are told that it is an experiment designed to evaluate the
quality of a new type of Walkman. The two groups listen to
the same content under the same conditions and with the
same instructions. The only difference between the two
groups is the following. In the test, it is explained that when
you use a Walkman in real life, you will often do so when
walking, running or in other ways be occupied with parallel
activities. To simulate the effect of these other activities in
the listening situation, the respondents are asked to nod their
heads while listening, whereas the respondents in the other
group are asked to shake their heads. Surprisingly enough,
the group nodding their heads evaluate their Walkmans
significantly better than those shaking their heads.
Finally, research concerned with left- and right-brain
information processing should be mentioned also. The
whole issue is complicated and it is doubtful whether its
applicability to the study of consumer information processing has been properly demonstrated. However, the following
are some of the characteristics normally associated with leftbrain versus right-brain information processing. The left
brain focuses on conscious, verbal, analytical, sequential
and arithmetic information processing or with what psychologists call cognitive information processing. The right
brain, in contrast, much more involves unconscious, nonverbal, synthetic, holistic, geometrical or spatial information
processing (Sperry, 1982; Hansen, 1981; 1985). These
findings suggest that things occur when we receive
information in situations like those in which we are exposed
to advertising that are very different from the processes that
the cognitive psychologists assume.

3. Peripheral and low-involvement information

processing
In central and peripheral information processing, the
concept of low involvement is essential. Emphasised by
Krugman (1968) and Mitchell and Olson (1981), involvement has been made operational by Zaichkowsky (1985). In
many studies of consumer information processing, it has
been demonstrated that with low involvement, consumers
are less accessible, have fewer defences and are little
motivated to cope with complicated information.
Probably one of the more integrated approaches to
dealing with low-involvement information processing is
found in the Rossiter and Percy (1999) informational grid.
Here, two important distinctions are made. One of them
has to do with the kind of motivation that drives
consumers in connection with different purchases. This
distinction relates to positive (such as obtaining good taste
in food, feeling happiness by demonstrating good taste in
clothes) and negative/avoidance motivation (such as
avoiding a headache by using headache remedies, avoiding
too much trouble in winter by having a good snow shovel,
etc.). The other distinction relates to high and low
involvement in the already mentioned terminology of
Zaichkowsky (1985).
From this platform, the authors propose four different
kinds of communication situations shown in Fig. 2.
Whereas the high involvement and particularly highinvolvement informational processing comes close to what
we traditionally find in the effect hierarchy cognitive type of
modelling, the low-involvement transformational kind of
processing is of a much more emotional nature, occurs at a
low level of consciousness, and is stored in terms of implicit
memory (Heath, 2001). In this conceptual framework, a
distinction between recognition versus recall is important. In
many purchase situations where involvement is low and
little factual information is available, recognition of the
alternative to be chosen is of major concern. Here, a parallel
to the subsequently discussed peripheral processing appears;
in contrast, in other purchasing tasks of a more elaborate
nature with planning and comparison of alternatives, the
ability to recall relevant alternatives is extremely important.
It is suggested that communication resulting in recall is
structurally different from information solely providing
recognition. As we shall see subsequently, this is very
relevant for some of the aspects of contemporary thinking
about emotional information processing.
Another theoretical approach to the study of consumer
information processing is presented by Petty and Cacioppo
(1986). Here, the distinction between peripheral versus
central information processing is fundamental. Central
information processing is pretty much what we think of in
terms of the cognitive hierarchical treatment of information,
whereas peripheral relies on less elaborate, probably less
conscious and probably also more emotional types of
information processing. The authors themselves write:

F. Hansen / Journal of Business Research 58 (2005) 14261436

1429

Fig. 2. The RossiterPercy grid (Rossiter and Percy, 1999).

bWe have outlined two basic routes to persuasion. One route

is based on the thoughtful (though sometimes biased)
consideration of arguments central to the issue, whereas
the other is based on affective associations or simple
inferences tied to the peripheral cues in the persuasion
context. When variables in the persuasion situation render
the elaboration likelihood high, the first kind of persuasion
occurs (central route). When variables in the persuasion
situation render the elaboration likelihood low, the second
kind of persuasion occurs (peripheral route). Different
consequences occur from the two routes to persuasion.

Attitude changes via the central route appear to be more

persistent, resistant, and predictive of behaviour than
changes induced via the peripheral routeQ.
The Petty and Cacioppo (1986) Elaboration Likelihood
Model (ELM) is modified by Hansen (1997) in terms of an
Elaboration Likelihood Advertising Model (ELAM). This
model is illustrated in Fig. 3. Here, central information
processing focuses first and foremost on product and brand
relevant information, which generates brand awareness,
brand perception, image preferences and eventually buying
intentions.

Fig. 3. The ELAM (Hansen, 1997).

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F. Hansen / Journal of Business Research 58 (2005) 14261436

Peripheral information processing following exposure

and attention concerns itself more with how the message
looks, what the story is, what perceptual representations,
such as, e.g., music, pictures, etc., appear in the advertisement or commercial. These, in turn, generate attitudes
towards the ad (rather than towards the brand) and
emotional responses all reflected in ad liking. Attitudes
towards the ad and ad liking may influence the extent and
nature of the parallel central information processing to the
extent that such occur. It may also lead to implicitly stored
memories that may eventually be generated as recognition
and possible purchase influence in purchase situations.
Variables used to reflect the central processing are often
brand related in terms of brand recall, brand recognition,
brand processing, attitude towards the brand preferences for
the brand, purchase intentions and possibly changing
purchase behaviour. Measurements more related to peripheral information processing are concerned with ad recall, ad
recognition, ad processing, attitudes towards the ad emotions and ad liking. Particularly in connection with
advertising processing, different studies have been conducted to identify the characteristics of peripheral versus
central processing at the Center for Communication
Research at the Copenhagen Business School.

4. The Copenhagen peripheral versus central

information processing studies
Center for Marketing Communication has had access to
18 standardised advertising pretests for fast-moving consumer goods, conducted by Gallup/TNS in Denmark 1998
1999. Each of these included 120150 respondents. They
follow the lines described in the ELAM model. In each test,
questions are partly formulated at the brand level (e.g.,
attitudes toward the brand) and partly at the advertising level
(advertising recall and A-Ad). A more detailed account of
this study is found in Hansen (1997) and Hansen and Hansen
(2001). Here, we are particularly concerned with the extent
of peripheral versus central information processing and the
Table 1
Number of central and peripheral responses in a study of 18 ads (a
respondent may be counted both as one with negative and as one with
positive central responses, or as one with both negative and positive
peripheral responses)
Central positive
Central negative
Central
Peripheral positive
Peripheral negative
Peripheral
No. of respondents classified
Unclassified respondents
Total
a

No. of respondents

No. of statements

353
231
540
1209
1068
1627
2167
310a
2477

706
320
1026
1603
1488
3091

4117

Respondents with no classifiable responses are excluded.

Table 2
Self-rated recall, liking and buying intention

Respondents with central

information processing
Respondents with peripheral
information processing

Self-rated
recall

Liking

Buying
intention

3.9

3.9

2.4

2.3

2.2

1.1

On a 6 point scale, 50. All differences significant, Pb.01.

nature of the responses depending upon which data processing approach is dominating. Responses from three open
questions asked in the course of the test, partly evaluating
positive and negative aspects of the ads and partly asking for
what the respondent thinks the advertising is supposed to
communicate, were analysed. A standardised procedure for
probing respondents was used and responses were coded by
two independent coders to their basic elements; for instance a
bgood-looking girl in beautiful carQ was divided into bgoodlooking girlQ and bbeautiful carQ.
Subsequently, all such informational items were categorised depending on whether they were positive or negative,
and depending on whether they primarily related to the
product, its use, its advantages (central) or whether they
primarily reflected the story in the ad, its pictures, its
underlying music, and its execution (peripheral; see Table 1).
The relatively few items that were unclassifiable along these
dimensions were excluded. On average, around two informational elements were registered for each respondent. The
total number of useful statements totalled 4117. Several
observations can be made from these figures. First, more
than three times as many peripheral statements can be
identified relative to the number of central informational
ones. Secondly, when central information processing dominated, respondents were mostly positive in their responses.
With peripheral information processing however, negative
statements near the number of positive ones, and here, 650 or
more than 1/3 of the respondents reported positive as well as
negative ad-related items. Only 44 respondents (353+
231
540) repeated both positive and negative, centrally
(brand) related statements.
Summary results regarding the nature of central versus
peripheral communication effects are shown in Table 2.
Table 3
Attitudes towards the ad in % of respondents with central or peripheral
information processing
Exciting
Credible
Sensitive
Warm
Entertaining
Informative
Stupid
Irritating

Central, n=540 (%)

Peripheral, n=1627 (%)

22
42
31
22
36
32
19
17

19*
33*
27*
21
32*
29*
24*
24*

* Significant, Pb.01 t test.

F. Hansen / Journal of Business Research 58 (2005) 14261436

Here, when central information processing dominates, the

ad is recalled better, liking is higher, brand preference is
higher and buying intention (here measured as positive selfrated changes in buying intention following the exposure) is
higher. In addition, attitudes towards the ad show the same
picture. The items here are borrowed from the Gallup
Robinson standardised advertising pretesting procedure
(Metha, 1994). Two statements from each of the four
factors underlying this instrument (informative, entertaining,
evaluative and negative attitudes) are used (see Table 3).
Five out of six positive attitudes score (significantly) higher
when central information processing is involved, and the
negative ones do the opposite.
All measures suggest that better communication results
are achieved when central information processing is
generated. One exception occurs. The test included 12
feeling statements (Table 4). Here, we found that peripheral
information processing resulted in more positive emotional
responses and fewer negative emotional ones. Of the 12
items used, 9 show significant differences in the direction
indicated here.
Summarizing this second part: when predominantly
concerned with fast-moving consumer goods advertising,
75% of the information processing is peripheral. When
central information processing occurs, it is always more
efficient as indicated by practically all commonly used
measurements of the communication effect. When peripheral information dominates, only the emotional responses
tend to be more positive.
An overall conclusion may be that we may like to
generate central information processing as much as we can;
however, when we cannot achieve this, we must be
concerned particularly with the emotional responses following the peripheral information processing. In designing
campaigns, it is likely to be a basic issue whether one should
emphasise central information processing by providing lots
of relevant product and use information or whether one
should focus on creating more attention and thereby
possibly also ending up with more peripheral information

Table 4
Self-rated feelings/emotions associated with central and peripheral information processing (in % of respondents)
Pleasure
Hope
Acceptance
Happiness
Dominate
Enjoyment
Inspiring
Surprising
Mistrust
Sorrow
Anger
Fear

Central, n=540 (%)

Peripheral, n=1627 (%)

26
29
22
27
9
46
29
19
8
7
12
3

40*
33*
34*
41*
13*
58*
28
23*
9
5*
7*
5

* Significant, Pb.01 t test.

1431

processing. The more creative advertising executions may

have a tendency to do the latter. That is, high attention is
achieved at a price in terms of lesser informational content.
Of course, the good, creative solution generates both central
and peripheral information, but is difficult to get at.

5. The nature of emotional responses

Presenting an extensive review of contemporary neuropsychological research is impossible here. Excellent discussions are available in Damasio (2000), Goode (2002) and
Franzen and Bouwman (2001). It is, however, necessary for
our discussion of emotional responses to repeat some basic
observations from this line of research. Basically, the brain
can be seen as composed of three elements. The so-called
neo cortex, that is, the outer part of the brain and in humans
by far the largest. Cognitive processes are primarily believed
to take place here and this occurs with some specialisation
in terms of the left and right side of the brain as discussed
earlier. The second part, the so-called old cortex, is found in
mammals and in all animals as low as at the reptilian stage
of development. This system functions as the controlling
brain system in most animals and plays an important role in
interacting with the cortex in the human brain. Finally, the
inner central or oldest part of the brainthe prereptilian
brain is where the most basic, elementary, controlling
processes occur. Particularly, the prereptilian part of the
brain contains thalamus through which most sensory
stimulation passes and amygdale, which is shaped like an
almond and controls the most elementary responses, such as
glandular behaviour and autonomous responses, and hippocampusnamed after its shape, which resembles a sea
horse (Fig. 4).
In the hippocampus, very elementary information is
stored, and in interaction with amygdale, it controls the
simple emotional responses. It may be the seat of implicit
memory. Contemporary neuropsychology refers to the
processes controlled by thalamus, amygdale and hippocampus as emotional. They may occur before any cognitive
activity is activated in responses to stimuli and they control
very elementary approach and defensive, aggressive
responses of importance to the survival of the individual.
The entire prereptilian brain interacts with the cortex and
information is transmitted, coded, edited and stored here. In
addition, in this part of the brain, the occurrence of different
kinds of feelings (different from emotions) can appear.
Whereas the basic emotional responses are of a rather
primitive avoidance/approach character, people report in
much more detail when asked to describe aspects of the
relationship between perceived situations, goals and more
basic emotions (feelings). Emotional responses can first and
foremost be identified with the use of physiological
measurements. Their EEG response, eye movements, heart
rate, voice and facial expressions are measures frequently
used. Because the emotions seem to be products of the

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F. Hansen / Journal of Business Research 58 (2005) 14261436

Fig. 4. The function of the emotional brain (Le Doux, 1998).

prereptilian brain, our verbal questions about feeling

responses do not necessarily relate directly to underlying
emotional states.
If, for example, an individual in the middle of a road
observes a car approaching with fast speed, the perception
channelled through the thalamus may, through the amygdale, generate an increased heart rate (autonomous
response), sweating in the hands (glandular response) and
freezing or running away. All these may occur before any
activity in cortex takes place. Only later, when information
has been transmitted here, can the more precise nature of
the danger be identified and labelled, and possibly, this
may influence the further direction of the response. In a
more straightforward consumer behaviour case, the individual mayfaced with a row of coffee brandsidentify
the brand usually bought, pick it up and conclude the
activity. This may happen before any coffee information
processing occurs or prior to the activation of earlier stored
information about quality or other aspects of different
coffee brands.
Emotional responses, mostly unconscious, automatic
reactions, are controlled by information stored in implicit
memory. Feeling responses, the associated, perceived,
cognitive perceptions of what is going on emotionally,
involve centrally stored information, cognitive processing
and evaluations. In this connection, the distinction,
emotions versus feelings, is not synonymous with the
distinction, conscious versus unconscious processes. Feelings may be conscious as well as unconscious. Cognitive
processes may be of a high- or low-involvement character
and may also relate to emotional activities. We realise the
automatic, very little demanding, fast and energy-saving
emotional responses occur in many situations where
cognitions, comparisons and information searches would
have been unnecessarily time demanding and complicated.

In earlier psychological theory and in studies of

consumer behaviour, emotions and feelings are often used
interchangeably. In our terminology, feelings have been
studied since the very early days of psychology and a large
number of measurement instruments used for identifying
different kinds of feelings based upon verbal responses have
been developed (Franzen and Bouwman, 2001). The
number of feelings identified with a different instrument
varies from few (two to four) to as many as 20 or 30. In
many of these studies, a factor analysis has been used based
upon the respondents own rating of words that reflect
different kinds of feelings. One such typical set is reported
by Richins (1997). Departing from several of the more
generally accepted batteries, such as Izard (1977) and
Mehrabien and Russell (1974), she identified 16 plus 4
consumption-related feelings. In most cases, these can be
reduced to two to three meaningful factors.
One case of this kind is Shaver et al. (1987). Here, a
hierarchical cluster analysis on a large number of feeling
items results in 24 grouped feelings. However, when these
are grouped at higher levels, they fall into two (or three)
separate sets: a predominantly positive (approach dimensionlove and joy); a predominantly negative set (anger,
sadness and fear); and possibly an arousal-like dimension
labelled surprise. Of course, the amount of variance
explained with these lower order levels is less than when
a larger number of factors are included, but the uniformity
of the dimensions and their face validity is such that the
solutions can still be judged to be operationally useful.
Some authors have even focussed on these fewer more
fundamental dimensions. For instance, Mehrabien and
Russell (1974) talk about pleasure versus dissatisfaction.
Similarly, in a commercially applied setting introduced by
Vaughn (1980), a distinction is made between negative/
positive versus active/passive feelings.

F. Hansen / Journal of Business Research 58 (2005) 14261436

1433

underlying dimensions identified. Only in the design test

was the avoidance dimension less expressed. Here, one
might better work with three or four factors.
The data give no uniform answer to the question of
whether one should ideally work with one, two, three, or
maybe even four emotional dimensions. If a need for a more
general, basic measurement instrument is felt, more research
is needed before such standardised list of items can be
identified with the purpose of measuring across very
different consumption and communication situations. Still,
based on the following case from one of the studies already
completed, it is possible to illustrate the usefulness and the
strengths of such an emotional battery.

The fundamental observation made here is that in the

terminology of an SOR model, and with the use of selfadministered questionnaires, we may identify 1020 different indicator variables describing aspects of feelings.
However, in forcing solutions and fewer dimensions upon
the data, more basic dimensions emerge. These dimensions
we may rightfully label emotions. Thus, our major
observation at this point is that we may still gain some
insight into emotional responses based on measurement of
feelings and by doing a bconcentratedQ analysis of the data
(i.e., looking for fewer factors).
Here, some of our own data we present from four
different studies of communication effects (see also Hansen,
1997). The design test and the logo tests are reported in
more detail in Kristensen et al. (2000), and the two
sponsoring studies are reported in more detail in Hansen
et al. (2002). All tests are based on the variables used in the
ELAM test.
In these studies, one statement corresponding to each of
the underlying feeling dimensions in the Richins (1997)
battery is included. In some of the experiments, the battery
has been reduced further, but in each of the tests, at least the
same 12 feeling items are used. In addition, there is good
reason to look at findings across the different applications in
the different contexts involving the short list of 12 items. In
all cases, a two- to four-dimensional factor solution is
meaningful. All solutions include an approach (positive) and
an avoidance (negative) emotional dimension, and one or
two dimensions reflecting involvement with the issue,
strength of the emotion or arousal. To force comparability
upon the data, two-factor solutions are shown for all data in
Table 5.
The amount of variance explained with the relatively
limited number of factors is lower than ideally wished (26
32%). However, the consistency of the dimensions across
the different data sets confirms the general validity of the

6. The value of sponsorships explained by emotions

We choose to look into the findings from the study
concerned with how possible sponsoring objects (sponsees)
are evaluated (Hansen et al., 2002) in a little more detail.
Here, the respondents were 169 first-year undergraduate
students at the Copenhagen Business School completing a
self-administered questionnaire for which they received a
book on advertising published by the Center for Communication Research as a reward. The authors involved in this
project do not claim that the findings are in any way
representative of the Danish population when it comes to
evaluating possible sponsees. They do argue, however, that
the relationships identified between the different measurements are much less sensitive to the sample bias involved
here and thus suggest a more general usefulness of the
measurement instrument with larger random samples. Such
a project is presently underway.
Basically, the 27 feeling items used are derived from
Richins (1997) study. Some feeling statements obviously
less related to consumer information processing are deleted

Table 5
Loadings on two factors in analyses of data on sponsoring, ad-test, design and colours of logo (I=Approach, II=Avoidance)
Sponsoring
Happiness
Joy
Pleasure
Accept
Inspiring
Hope
Surprise
Anger
Fear
Mistrust
Trust
Sorrow
Dominant
Trustworthiness
None of these
x) indicates missing data.

Ad test

Design

Colours of logo

II

II

II

II

.39
.61
.48

.45
.38
.33

.02

.07

.03
x)
.32

.07

.10
x)
x)

.03

.11
.01

.56

.16

.02
.16
.61
.45
x)

.36
.40
.08
x)
x)

.70
.67
.58
.56
.54
.51
.40

.01
.17

.06
x)

.07
.23
x)

.50

.01

.04

.21
.08

.05
.12
.19
.67
.65
.60
x)
.50
.44
x)

.13

.72
.78
.75
.06
.62
.43
.16

.84

.73

.71
x)

.76

.47
x)
x)

.16

.06
.03

.55
.43

.30
.81

.11

.13
.07
x)

.31
.30
x)
x)

.63
.71
.54

.02
.50
.38
.22

.53

.49

.55
x)
x)

.25
.08
x)

.07
.23

.05

.68
.13

.13
.51
.47
.48
.53
x)
x)
.10

.72
x)

1434

F. Hansen / Journal of Business Research 58 (2005) 14261436

and some more appropriate items taken from the Ray and
Batra battery (1982) are included. The total list is shown in
Table 6.
The measurement of the feeling responses took place by
having each respondent choose feeling statements they felt
agreed with 27 possible sponsoring events divided into
sports, culture, television programmes and social aid
organisations. The sponsors studied are listed in the first
column of Table 7. With the somewhat crude data
collection procedure of respondents choosing only a few
items to be associated with each possible sponsoring object
and with a total of 27 items reduced to four factors, the
amount of variance explained in the data is 29% of the total
variance.
The face validity of the four factors suggest that each of
the factors reflect one important emotional dimension when
dealing with sponsoring. The four-dimensional solution
chosen centres on an avoidance (negative emotional) and
approach (positive emotional) dimension (numbers two and
three). Loneliness and sadness are the two highest loading
items reflecting avoidance, whereas joy, romantic love,
enjoyment, happiness are the four items that best represent
the approach tendency. The fourth factor in the battery,
labelled arousal, reflects feelings, such as excitement,
surprise, lack of trust and lack of accept. Finally, the first

Table 6
Varimax factor analytical solution based on a four-factor solution on
emotional responses to different sponsoring aspects

Hope
Sorrow
Worry
Fear
Inspiring
Optimism
Dominating
Satisfaction
Shame
Loneliness
Anger
Sad
Envy
Desire
Guilt
Dissatisfaction
Joy
Romantic love
Enjoyment
Happiness
Peacefulness
Excitement
Surprising
Trust
Accept
Relief
Pride

bUncertaintyQ

bAvoidanceQ

59
57
46
45

31
28

23

16
0
4
3
15

2

7
3
24

6
0

14
14

5

12
7
8

8
4

18

19
16
6
14

15

27
17
9
54
40
40
40
37
34
34
28

17
5

5
0
8

8

3

11
10
10

7

19
1

3
4
0

17

6
12

1

4
4

2
7

5

2

2
62
52
51
49
31

17
2

15

21
1

9

19
0

8

2

13
12

6

9

4
11

11
0
0
30
7

3
20
10
0

3

18
64
44

40

35
22
21

Decimals were omitted.

bApproachQ

bArousalQ

Table 7
Standardised scores for 27 different sponsoring objects on awareness, liking
and self-rated purchase intention, together with total score for each
(geometrical average score)
N=169

Awareness

Liking

Purchase
int.

Overall
score

The Danish Cancer

Society
Danish Red Cross
Save the Children
Denmark
The AIDS
Foundation
Danchurchaid
The Danish Muscular
Dystrophy
Association
The Danish Heart
Foundation
Averagesocial aid
organisations
Friends (TV2)
The Weather Report
(TV2)
Ally McBeal (TV2)
Rejseholdet (DR)
Onside (TV3)
Big Brother
(TVDANMARK)
The Hotel (TV2)
The Great Mission
(TV2)
Averagetv
programmes
Tivoli
Eurovision song
contest
The zoo
The royal theatre
The Roskilde Festival
The Danish National
Gallery of Art
Arken
Averageculture
Mens National
Soccer Squad
Womens National
Handball Squad
Team Danmark
FC Copenhagen
Brbndby I.F.
Averagesport

1.09

1.23

1.16

1.55

1.05
0.99

1.19
1.18

1.10
1.11

1.37
1.30

0.91

1.21

1.15

1.26

0.78
0.68

1.09
1.13

1.03
1.09

0.88
0.84

0.62

1.18

1.11

0.81

0.87

1.17

1.11

1.14

1.33
1.23

0.95
0.86

1.01
0.93

1.27
0.98

1.08
0.99
0.84
1.09

0.89
0.88
0.88
0.67

0.94
0.95
0.97
0.74

0.91
0.82
0.71
0.54

0.72
0.77

0.78
0.76

0.90
0.85

0.51
0.49

1.01

0.83

0.91

0.78

1.41
1.27

1.13
1.02

1.07
1.00

1.69
1.29

1.05
0.98
1.08
0.80

1.07
1.06
0.95
1.04

1.04
1.01
0.96
1.03

1.17
1.05
0.98
0.86

0.70
1.04
1.22

0.94
1.03
1.06

0.96
1.01
1.07

0.63
1.10
1.39

1.11

0.99

0.98

1.08

0.97
1.18
1.05
1.11

1.06
0.95
0.88
0.99

1.05
0.94
0.87
0.98

1.07
1.06
0.80
1.08

item, labelled uncertainty, relies on responses to feelings,

such as hope, sorrow, worry and fear. The usefulness of such
an emotional battery, of course, depends upon the extent to
which it meaningfully describes the different items (sponsoring objects) rated, and the extent to which measurements
relate meaningfully to traditional, well-established effect
measures used in the study of sponsorship effects.
In the study reported here, different traditional effectrelated measures of sponsoring were included. Awareness of
the sponsee was measured on a five-point self-rating scale

F. Hansen / Journal of Business Research 58 (2005) 14261436

(bHow well would you say you know. . .Q), the same was
done for liking, and persuasion was quantified as selfreported changes in purchase intentions. The question was
bdo you think that it is more likely that you would purchase
a product sponsoring dxxxxT after having learned about the
sponsorship than beforeQ. The measurement, crude as it is,
has been applied in most of the studies reported earlier, and
on the whole, is sensible and meaningful. On average, 50%
of the respondents report that they do not intend to change
their purchase intentions. However, the rest do report
positive as well as negative purchase intentional changes.
These measures in ad testing are in accordance with other
research believed to make good sense in evaluating
sponsorship attitude based on these.
A total score is computed as the geometric average of
the evaluations of the sponsorships with the sponsoring
objects.
Overall effect score
Awareness
Linking


Average Awareness Average Linking
Self
rated change in buying intention

Av: Self
rated change in buying int:
The overall score for all of them is 1.00, suggesting that a
sponsoring object scoring higher is evaluated as better than
average and vice versa. That is, for instance, the liking score
for the Danish Cancer Society was divided with the average
liking score for all sponsoring objects rated and thereby a
score larger than one reflects an above-average evaluation.
The same was done with the awareness and purchase
intention scores and to arrive at a single overall evaluative
score, the three past scores were simply multiplied with each
other.
The critical question now, of course, is to what extent the
emotional responses we have identified are able to explain
variations in this overall effect score. This is done by
computing a factor score for each sponsoring object on the
four dimensions, shown in Table 6. With these as
independent variables, and with the total effect score of
Table 7 as a dependent variable, a multiple regression
analysis was carried out.
For the 27 rated sponsoring objects as dependent
variables, the analysis provides an adjusted R 2 score of
.60. It appears that negative emotions, positive emotions
and uncertainty are significantly related to the overall
evaluation, with the greatest explanatory power associated
with negative emotions (b=
.003, t=
3.54, Pb.001),
followed by uncertainty (b=.0024, t=4.34, Pb.001) and
positive emotions (b=.0016, Pb.01). We shall not try to
extract more far-reaching interpretations from these data,
but we do want to emphasise that an adjusted R 2 value of
.60 in an analysis with 27 observations, four independent
variables and basic ratings simply made by having people
choose whether specific feeling statements do or do not
relate to sponsoring objects seems to be a strong

1435

confirmation of the usefulness of the approach. We look

forward to work with larger, more representative samples
with more sensitive rating procedures applied in other
marketing communication contexts than sponsoring. So far,
however, we dare conclude that energy spent in this
direction seems worthwhile.

7. Conclusion
Despite the somewhat tentative nature of the findings
reported here, a number of conclusions emerge to which we
would like to direct the attention of the reader.
(1) More and different measures are available when
studying marketing communication responses than
what is suggested in AIDA and similar formulations.
(2) A distinction between central/peripheral, higher/lower
involvement or more or less cognitive information
processing seems useful.
(3) The central information processing is, when it occurs,
by far more efficient in terms of effect scores normally
used in marketing communication studies.
(4) Only in terms of emotional responses does peripheral
information processing seem to have a stronger
impact.
(5) In the real world, the advertiser may wish to generate
strong concentrated central information processing.
(6) However, competition from other communication,
other advertising, low involvement on behalf of the
receivers, etc. set limits to the extent to which this is
feasible.
(7) In reality, at least when talking about fast-moving
consumer goods, peripheral information processing
seems to be dominant in most instances.
(8) To study emotional responses may be a useful
approach, when peripheral responses are dominant.
(9) With a distinction introduced between feelings and
emotions, it is suggested that an operational measure
of more basic emotions may be derived from scores
based on statements of feelings of a more cognitive
conscious nature.
In any event, emotional activities contribute significantly to the overall effectiveness of communication. This
is not least the case when peripheral communication is at
stake. It is not obvious from the data analysed here whether
the emotional effect primarily makes other information
processing more efficient, or whether it is a more direct
effect with information being stored at an emotional
(implicit) level and reactivated in purchasing and other
situations at the same very low prereptilian brain level. In
all events, we do not know enough about how emotions are
formed or how they influence subsequent consumer
behaviour. The area must be a central one for future
research in consumer behaviour.

1436

F. Hansen / Journal of Business Research 58 (2005) 14261436

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