Between Two Brands: A Goal Fluency Account of Brand Evaluation
Published 8/1/2006
Author: Aparna A. Labroo and Angela Y. Lee
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Executive Summary
Advertisers often negotiate restrictions on the number of advertisements from competing brands appearing in close proximity to their own advertisements. They are less concerned about the effects of advertising of brands from other product categories on their products. However, advertisers’ more relaxed attitude about advertisements from different categories may be unfounded. Previous research has shown that prior exposures to advertisements in one product category can affect consumers’ subsequent judgments of brands from a related but different category (e.g., mayonnaise and ketchup). When consumers are exposed to an advertisement, thoughts on benefits and other products that are related to the advertised brand may come to mind. When consumers subsequently encounter a related product advertisement, they can process the advertisement more easily. This increased ease of processing, termed “processing fluency,” is a positive experience, which in turn leads to more favorable evaluation of the advertised product.
The focus of this article is to extend the processing fluency model to show that when consumers can more readily process the goal that a product services, they also develop more positive attitudes toward the product. More specifically, the authors proposed that there are two fundamental goals (promotion and prevention) that consumers possess, and usually, only one of these goals is dominant at any given time. Consumers whose promotion goal is salient pursue desirable outcomes (gains) and avoid not attaining desirable outcomes (nongains), whereas consumers whose prevention goal is salient strive for the absence of undesirable outcomes (nonlosses) and avoid undesirable outcomes (losses). When consumers view an advertisement that addresses a particular goal (promotion or prevention), that goal becomes activated in their memory. When the same goal is addressed by subsequent advertising they encounter, consumers can process that subsequent advertisement more easily. In turn, this enhanced goal fluency results in more favorable attitudes toward the advertised product. However, when consumers encounter an advertisement that addresses a different goal, the conflict between the two goals interferes with their processing of the subsequent advertisement, resulting in less favorable attitudes toward the advertised product.
Across two studies, the authors show that consumers’ evaluation of an advertised brand can be influenced by the compatibility or conflict between the goals addressed by the target advertisement and by prior advertising. Participants across both studies were exposed to the advertisements of two related products (prime and target). When the goal (promotion or prevention) serviced by the target matched (conflicted with) the goal serviced by the prime, participants indicated higher (lower) purchase intent (Experiment 1) and more (less) favorable evaluation of the target brand (Experiment 2). In particular, participants in Experiment 1 viewed an advertisement for a shampoo formulated to kill lice. Presumably, this activated a prevention goal in memory and, in turn, led to higher purchase intent toward Raid (insect killer), which also services a prevention goal, but to lower purchase intent toward Nutriance (a hair conditioner), which services a promotion goal (Experiment 1).
Experiment 2 replicated these effects by showing that the same target brand positioned differently could either benefit or be hurt by the positioning of prior advertising. Specifically, when the prevention goal made salient by an advertised product (e.g., deodorant that saves you from feeling embarrassed) matched the prevention goal made salient by a previously advertised related product (e.g., a foot sanitizer that prevents foul smelling feet), liking of the target brand (deodorant) is enhanced. In contrast, a promotion goal of the prime (e.g., a foot sanitizer gives you fresh, happy feet) that conflicted with the prevention goal of the target resulted in less positive evaluation of the target. Furthermore, these effects were driven by participants’ ease (or difficulty) of processing the target advertisement, rather than by their involvement or mood across the different conditions.
Biography
Aparna A. Labroo is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Graduate School of Business at University of Chicago. She has a doctorate from Cornell University; an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; and an undergraduate degree in economics from Delhi University in India. Her research interest is in the area of consumer psychology, with an emphasis on investigating the effects of mood and memory on the processing of advertising and promotional communications by consumers and brand choice. Dr. Labroo’s teaching interests include marketing strategy and integrated marketing communications. She worked in client servicing at J. Walter Thompson before her academic career.
Angela Y. Lee is Associate Professor of Marketing in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She teaches marketing management and marketing research and has served as the faculty advisor of the Global Initiatives in Management class for China and South Africa. Dr. Lee’s expertise is in consumer behavior. Her research interests include consumer learning, effects of memory on product evaluations and brand choice, motivation and affect, and cross-cultural similarities and differences in information processing. Dr. Lee’s publications appear in both marketing and psychology journals.
J Marketing Research, Volume 43, Number 3, August 2006
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