Do different advertising strategies impact levels of consumer involvement affect?
Do different advertising strategies impact levels of consumer involvement affect?
2004
Abstract.
Advertising is a very powerful weapon for companies, and it's getting stronger with years as more studies of consumer psychology are made. Without the deep knowledge of consumer psychology, the advertisements would never be able to influence customers in the way they do now. The success of the advertising strategy applied for a particular case can be estimated through the level of consumer involvement affect. Practice shows that advertisements can have both a major immediate effect and minor effects the influence of which on the potential customers will take a long time. The major immediate effect can occur in the case when the company has something new to say in the advertisement. The strategy of repetition in advertising has proven to be very efficient, especially for low-involvement products. The strategy of "image advertising" consists in shifting the perception of a certain product on the characteristics which are enjoyed by people. The cueing effect of the advertisement is very efficient in making the audience involved.
Do different advertising strategies impact levels of consumer involvement affect?
The power of advertising is undoubted nowadays due to its strong impact on the public. At present, no company producing goods or financial services neglects the possibilities which advertising offers to them. Even though companies have many ways to provide the promotion of their goods and services, advertising has been and will remain one of the most powerful tools which companies are using. The success of the product is in many ways pre-destined by the advertising strategy which the company uses. In case of a successful choice of advertisement strategy, the product will as well be successful in the market. If the advertisement strategy fails, it may as well be the failure of the product. The goal of every advertisement is involving customers' attention in such a way that he decides to buy even though products which he would otherwise never consider buying. The success of the advertising strategy applied for a particular case can be estimated through the level of consumer involvement affect. In some cases, the consumer involvement affect can be the strongest, and most of the people who watch the advertisement or listen to it make up their mind to obtain the product. If the advertising strategy failed, the level customer involvement will be at its minimum, and customers will refuse to buy the product. Due to the importance of the choice of a right advertising strategy, it's important to investigate keys to making successful advertisements which provide maximum involvement of customer attention to the products.
Practice shows that advertisements can have both a major immediate effect and minor effects the influence of which on the potential customers will take a long time. The major immediate effect can occur in the case when the company has something new to say in the advertisement. It can be some invention which will turn the life of customers upside down, or a further development of some existing product with strikingly new functions. In such a case the company always has a striking effect on the audience. However, if the product which is being advertised is not new, doesn't bear many new functions, or failed customers in the past, the advertising strategy has to be chosen very carefully. There is little hope the advertisement of the product will be met with much interest and involves any of the customers' attention, unless the commercial focuses on the advantages of the product which it might even not have. It's very important to make the product look better in the advertisement than it originally is because only in such a case the attention of the audience will be attracted1.
Especially this strategy works on the low-involvement product categories in which a customer doesn't care much which brand to buy- for example, oil, yogurt, juices and many other items. When the customer comes into the store, he can stop his attention at any of the available brands because they are absolutely equal for his. They weight the same for the customer if put on the scales. However, it requires just 1 feather on one part of the scales for some particular product to weight more. This feather is the advertisement. In case of the low-involvement products, the quality ...
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Especially this strategy works on the low-involvement product categories in which a customer doesn't care much which brand to buy- for example, oil, yogurt, juices and many other items. When the customer comes into the store, he can stop his attention at any of the available brands because they are absolutely equal for his. They weight the same for the customer if put on the scales. However, it requires just 1 feather on one part of the scales for some particular product to weight more. This feather is the advertisement. In case of the low-involvement products, the quality of the advertisement plays the major role in the customer's choice. Sometimes, the advertisement can focus on the characteristics of the product which are available in other similar products as well but those companies simply don't advertise that particular feature. For example, vitamins and calcium are added to juices made by different companies but if some particular company focuses the attention of customers on this feature of their product, customers might get an idea that other similar products of other companies don't have those vitamins. Therefore, they will go to buy juices of this particular company. The situation is different in the case with high-involvement products. Those include expensive items like cars, vacation packages, fur-coats, jewelry, and advertising strategies used to involve the customers into buying those products are very different. In this case, it's necessary to focus on the unique characteristics of the products and their quality. High-involvement products mostly belong to the category of luxury, so people will buy them as long as the company provides the highest quality of those items. Therefore, it's very important to make sure the advertising strategy the company uses is applicable for the type of product they are offering. The user image is very important in the advertising strategy. It works very well when famous people are involved in advertisement of such products because if potential customers see, for example, Cindy Crawford or Anna Kurnikova advertising Omega watch, they will believe that this Swiss watch is actually of the highest quality as the advertisement describes. Companies can also use another strategy to advertise- instead of taking a famous face to advertise the product, they can choose the stereotype user who will embody the qualities of people who would like to buy the product. For example, when the big car like Mustang is being advertised, the image of the user necessarily has to be a handsome athletic guy in fashionable clothes who looks like an ideal, and drives an ideal car. There is no doubt that many men who see this advertisement will get a strong desire to get this car in order to be as stylish as the guy in the commercial, and get as much attention from women looking at the car passing by.
The strategy of repetition in advertising has proven to be very efficient, especially for low-involvement products. We often notice that many commercials appear on the screen over and over again. The company doesn't introduce new commercials but keeps showing the same one which tells about the same product in the same way. Even tough on the first sight it seems not very wise, it has a very good reason. The thing is that the effect of one advertisement is very small, and in order to achieve the major effect, it needs to be repeated many times. When the potential customer gets used to seeing and listening to the same advertisement for a long time, he ends up thinking about the actual advantages of the products, and will end up buying it because it doesn't really matter to him which exact alternative he will choose2.
The strategy of "image advertising" has also become very popular among companies. This strategy consists in shifting the perception of a certain product on the characteristics which are enjoyed by people. This strategy works well both on low- and high-involvement products. For example, when producers of the car Volvo (a high-involvement product) were looking for the way to advertise their car, they chose image advertising. They showed the commercial about the car many times, and claimed that this car offered the greatest safety. After the repetition of the advertisement, the customers got an idea fixed in their minds that Volvo associates with safety. Every time they thought of buying a safe car, their first thought was exactly about Volvo. With low-involvement products, it's more difficult to use the "image advertising" strategy, however, it can work very well, too. For example, when hair-sprays were first introduced, they all claimed they could hold hair. Therefore, the customer could use any hair-spray available in the store because the companies didn't claim for any specific qualities of their hair-sprays. In order to break this tendency, one brand which came into market in its advertisement claimed that its hairspray could hold the hair longer than any other brands. This had an immediate effect on the public. Other brands which came into the market started using the same strategy of "image advertising". Some of them claimed that their hairspray could hold long hair better than others, some came up with an idea that you brush your hair the easiest with their hair-spray, and so on. Thus, every company made sure the brand of their hairspray was associated with some quality which customers were looking for.
The impact of advertisement on customers is very different in cases of buying low- and high-involvement products. For low-involvement products, the advertisement plays a crucial role because there is no difference for the customer which brand to buy. Of course, there is no way that the customer will be so much influenced by the advertisement that he will run out the house to buy the product. However, he might buy it next time he goes into the store after seeing a commercial on TV. For high-involvement products, advertising cannot have the same effect on the customers. There are too many other sources from which their opinion is formed- previous experience, stereotype, advice of relatives and friends. People don't buy such products every day, and they are very concerned about how to spend their money. When they are buying a car, they have a huge list of car brands on their mind. They have some idea about them, and the most important issue is which cars will remain on the person's short list right before he makes up his mind to make the purchase. Advertisement is hardly able to influence the customer's final choice, however it's able to get the particular brand it's advertising on the customer's short list. After that, it's up to him to make a final decision, but the possibility of him buying exactly this brand of car out of those 4 or 5 available in the list is very high.3
Advertising strategies which are used for different kinds of products and services differ from one another in many ways. For example, advertisements of products which can be used by families (vacuum-cleaners, cereal, yogurt, blenders, carpets, and many other goods like that) require concentration on the family values in order to attract the customers. In such types of advertisement, the best and the most effective strategy would be a commercial focusing on the happy life in the family, and even greater happiness resulting from the purchase of the new product. For instance, when advertising yogurt, many companies tend to show a morning in the family when everybody grabs a yogurt from the fridge to start the day in a healthy way. It's very important for the company in such a commercial to focus on the enjoyment which family members obtain from the product which they are using, concentrate the audience's attention on the healthy values of the product. What the company advertising its product is really trying to achieve is to give the audience the idea that with the help of their product, the morning in the family becomes full of sunshine and happiness. With the help of this strategy, the company involves those potential customers who are very family-oriented, and who value family the most. This advertising strategy usually makes sure kids participate in the commercials because without them, the view of the family harmony will not be complete. It's very important to show kids enjoying the products because it also influences potential customers who live in families with many kids. This advertising strategy has been used in Italy for a long time, when children were often participating in commercials advertising food products. In order to prevent companies from choosing child labor, the government adopted a law against that. However, it didn't stop the companies from applying their favorite strategy. As some of the managers marked, the use of children was the crucial factor in their advertisements. If there are no kids in the advertisement, lots of people refuse to buy products because the level of their involvement in such a case isn't high enough. With that adoption of the law, the companies had to search for other opportunities to provide their advertising strategy which involved children in advertisements. They had no problem going abroad, and employing kids there to make high-quality commercials. It's impossible to suppose that companies can ever deny an advertising strategy which has proved to be successful during a long period of time.
It's also important to stop on the agenda-making and cueing effects in advertising which are often used. For example, when a person gets hungry, and thinks about where to go eat lunch, he has several alternatives. He can eat a sandwich, go to McDonald's, go to Burger King. The first thought he has is that he is tired of sandwiches. So, his second thought enters- that he should go to McDonald's, and he drives there to have lunch. The person doesn't go to Burger King not because he doesn't like it but because it's the last alternative on his list. He simply doesn't reach it. The reason why the person chooses McDonald's is because the advertisements of this company are always on his mind, and this is the first fast-food place which comes to his mind. The cueing effect of the advertisement is very efficient in making the audience involved. We start associating some words with certain companies because we hear their slogans repeated on TV million of times. We simply can't think of anything else when hearing those worlds. For example, "Have a break" always reminds us about KitKat because it's their slogan. L'Oreal's slogan "You're worth it" is also firmly fixed in our mind. When companies keep reminding us their slogans all the time, whenever we come across similar words, we always think about the company. Since it's always on our mind, we are going to buy its products4.
Advertising is a very powerful weapon for companies, and it's getting stronger with years as more studies of consumer psychology are made. Without the deep knowledge of consumer psychology, the advertisements would never be able to influence customers in the way they do now. Advertising strategies are different for low- and high-involvement products, and it's very important for companies to consider that issue in order not to make mistakes. However, in case of the application of the right strategy, the results of the advertisement can be astonishing. The most powerful strategies of advertising used nowadays are repletion, image advertising, stimulate agenda-making, cueing, and others. They are all very efficient in stimulating customers to buy certain products, and in many situations advertisements can be crucial for the customers' decisions.
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John Deighton, 'The interaction of advertising and evidence', Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 11, No. 3, December 1984, pp763-770.
2 Scott Hawkins and Stephen Hoch, 'Low Involvement Learning: Memory without evaluation', Journal of Consumer Research, 19, Sept. 1992, pp 212-225
3 S. Shapiro, D. Macinnis, & S. Heckler, 'The effects of incidental ad exposure on the formation of consideration sets', Journal of Consumer Research, vol 24, June 1997, pp 94-101.
4 Dr. Marx Sutherland, Alice K. Sylvester. Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer. 2002
