Effect of Advertising & Promotion on Consumer Behavior

by Kevin Johnston, Demand Media Your small business needs to advertise and promote to attract customers. However, that doesn't mean you can just put out your message and start counting the new customers. Advertising and promotion affect consumers in ways you might find surprising. You need to know these effects before you launch your campaign.

Increased Awareness
Advertising and promotion offer a news function to consumers. Viewers of ads learn about new products and services available to them, much like they learn about events in the news. This information function has a neutral role. It provides facts without approval or disapproval from consumers. Customer behavior at this stage encompasses expressions of curiosity.

Analysis of Features
Consumers have a rational response to advertising when they look at the features of a product or service. This response focuses on a logical listing of all the functional aspects of the offering. This is an intellectual response, rather than an emotional one.

Evaluaton of Benefits
When customers weigh benefits, they become emotionally involved with advertising and promotion. Consumers identify ways the product or service can make them happier, improve their lives or give them pleasure. This part of the consumer response is irrational and can lead to impulse buying and competition to obtain the product.

Reminders
Repeated advertising messages affect consumer behavior. This repetition serves as a reminder to the consumer. Behavior that stems from reminders includes suddenly thinking of a product while shopping and making a decision to buy it, as if it had been on the consumers "to-do" list.

Promotion of Loyalty or Alienation

Consumer behavior splits between loyalty and alienation depending on how well the product lives up to its advertised benefits. Corporate behavior such as scandals or charity work can also affect alienation and loyalty responses. Once the consumer makes this choice, advertising and promotion are not likely to undo that decision.

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References
Journal of Interactive Advertising: Measuring the Effects and Effectiveness of Interactive Advertising University of Southern California: Consumer Behavior -- The Psychology of Marketing University of Texas at Austin: Toward A Critical Theory of Advertising

About the Author

Kevin Johnston began writing in 1975. He has written about business, law, finance, grants, entertainment and education for publications such as "The New York Daily News," "Business Age," "Nation's Business" and "The Early Learning Letter."

Advertising: Attention and Distraction

Have you seen that new advert? The one with the armadillo throwing water balloons at the small family car as it drives through a field of flowers; the graphic over the top says Awesome and is whooshed away in the breeze as the car whizzes past the countryside. Its been on all the channels a lot! If you havent seen it, does that mean it isnt a good advert? An over-preoccupation with conscious thought processes would almost certainly bring you to that conclusion. It seems entirely logical that, assuming youve been watching some commercial TV you would have been exposed to it. Therefore the only logical conclusion is that youre not being aware of it means it has been ineffective. But hold on a moment. Do you usually watch the adverts? I mean actively watch them: consciously engage with them? Perhaps you take notes in your little book of interesting adverts! I strongly suspect that the vast majority of advertising (of all kinds, including sponsorship) is experienced in passing, by people who are focusing their attention on something else. Looked at another way, are you influenced by advertising or sponsorship? Most people say an unequivocal no. And yet companies spend billions of dollars on putting their name in front of us perhaps we all think that its OTHER people who are taken in by it! When your attention is distracted by something else, such as talking about the programme youve been watching before the break, or watching your favourite football team play like a bunch of people whove never met before, does advertising influence you? The answer appears to be a clear Yes. Whilst the research Im about to reference is only a simulation of the process we each experience hundreds, if not thousands, of times each day, it clearly illustrates the potential mechanisms at work. Researchers in the US conducted an experiment where they showed people pairings of brands and images (associating the two in peoples minds). These were either positive (flowers, the word awesome or a mother and child together) or negative (people by a graveside, someone in a contamination suit or the word terrifying). The brands they chose were Coke and Pepsi. They then distracted them by getting them to remember an eight digit number, and offered them a choice of drink to take with them as they left. Of course, what was of interest to the researchers was which drink they selected. As you might expect, the brand association shown before the distraction task didnt influence people who had a pre-existing brand preference. However, those who were neutral were influenced by it. Even when people couldnt recall which brand had been in the advert they were still influenced by it. There are two crucial points for brand owners to recognise from this research (and it is supported by other research on subliminal processing of adverts):

1. Conscious attention isnt a pre-requisite for advertising impact. Indeed, I would argue that using measures like awareness and brand recall (both unprompted and prompted) are BAD ways to evaluate your advertising campaign. 2. The brain works by association: so thinking in terms of what youre associating your brand with in your customers unconscious minds, doing so consistently, and choosing associations that are beneficial is absolutely crucial for successful marketing. You will notice, I hope that both of the points Ive made above are to the unconscious mind. As it happens there are market research approaches that can tap into the unconscious mind, but very, very few organisations currently use them. Most are still using techniques that ask the wrong part of a consumers brain the wrong question in a way that influences the unconscious to provide a particular answer. Philip Graves
Source: University of Chicago Press Journals (2008, April 21). Coke Or Pepsi? Being Distracted Can Make You More Susceptible To Ads. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 28, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/04/080421111649.htm

Advertising: Context and Misattribution

The effect of advertising is starting to rumble in my house. My children, now aged 9 and 7, have finally been allowed to watch commercial television. It is illuminating to track the I really want in light of this additional influence, the school playground having already nurtured desires of its own.

Recently my daughter explained that she really wanted to buy some kind of squirting dinosaur toy. They sounded dreadful and I questioned whether they would really live up to her expectations: I also asked whether or not she might have been unduly influenced by the excited children that I assumed had been depicted in the advert. To her credit she took little convincing that she might be wasting her money. Such marketing influences arent always bad. Recently a group visited my childrens school to do a demonstration of skipping (or, as I believe Americans call it, jumping rope, which I confess sounds more athletic and less prance about in the playground!). The children emerged from school full of excitement. Not only were the demonstrations amazing, the company sold ropes that change colour in sunlight: such wizardry is, evidently, thrilling to children. The clarion call of two childrens, Pleaaaaase? necessitated a visit to see what was on offer and, much to my surprise, the price was very reasonable. A satisfying amount of heart-rate-raising skipping has endured several weeks later. A parent simply advocating that a child take up such a new hobby could not have created the same effect, of that Im certain. In psychological terms the issue is misattribution: numerous studies show that we have a tendency to take a feeling from a wider context and mistakenly attribute it to something we happen to be looking at. Surely, we conclude, that item must be thrilling, because Im feeling a thrill. Its understandable, and it almost certainly happens far more than wed ever like to admit to ourselves. Recent research explored the role of televised sporting events on peoples perceptions of adverts. The research discovered that misattribution occurs here too. More than one hundred people were asked to watch a collegiate basketball game on TV. In one case the game people viewed was dramatic and full of suspense in another there was little drama, the result was clear-cut. After the game (and the adverts) had been shown, the participants rated the brands and adverts theyd seen. The researchers found clear evidence that the level of suspense and excitement in the game was linked to peoples reactions to the advertised brands. Especially when the ads themselves had a lot of energy and excitement in them. Interestingly, it didnt make a difference whether a favoured team won or lost the match. This research reflects a phenomenon that I call congruent misattribution: when a brand can associate itself with something that generates feelings that it would like to be associated with, provided that those attributes are in keeping with the way the brand is perceived and portrayed, they can benefit dramatically.

Of course, as a consumer (or a parent) it pays to be watchful: theres a fine line between a positive misattribution experience and regretting a purchase when its viewed away from the exciting context in which it was encountered. A quick audit of your childrens toys or items you have purchased in a sale but not used will probably illustrate this influence at work better than anything else. Philip Graves
Source: Oregon State University. "Sporting event ads viewed favorably, especially if the game is close." ScienceDaily, 31 Jan. 2012. Web. 3 Apr. 2012