Executive Summary
Two experiments, conducted among 2850 adolescents, test versions of a real television program with an antismoking educational placement against a control. Educational placements increasingly replace public service announcements, but their efficacy is questionable because they invariably contain mixed messages. An antismoking program typically contains three indirectly competing messages about referents: Smokers are attractive and prevalent but disapproved of. The study findings indicate that educational placements should appear on television to convey disapproval messages and discourage problem behaviors. The placement of a disapproval message can deter viewers from engaging in the problem behavior, even if the program also conveys positive prevalence and attractiveness messages. However, practitioners should avoid educational placements that indicate some people actually approve of the problem behavior. A disapproval message may be powerful enough to nullify approval, attractiveness, and prevalence messages, but the goal of the disapproval message is to produce a net negative effect rather than merely a null effect; that goal is unlikely to be realized. Finally, practitioners should reconsider their use of epilogues to reinforce educational placements. An epilogue discloses the program’s persuasive intent, such that it actually may be counterproductive among those who disagree with the message.
Experiment 1 tests an antismoking television program with smoker attractiveness, prevalence, and disapproval messages. The disapproval message dominates and elicits negative smoker thoughts and beliefs, despite the otherwise potent smoker attractiveness message. Experiment 2 reveals corresponding effects on intent but shows that adding a directly competing smoker approval message nullifies these effects. Experiment 2 also features an educational epilogue designed to reinforce the disapproval message; instead, it has a boomerang effect among smokers. For smokers, the educational placement is counterattitudinal, so the epilogue, which disclosed the placement and evoked persuasion knowledge, caused smokers to generate more positive smoker beliefs and intentions.
This work helps resolve discrepant findings about the relative effects of competing reference group messages. The study is the first to show that a disapproval message dominates prevalence and attractiveness messages when all three messages are salient, such as in mass media settings. In addition, a disapproval message dominates over an attractiveness message, even though both message types relate to group acceptance. Finally, this study reveals that though a negative disapproval message can nullify positive prevalence and attractiveness messages, it cannot simultaneously nullify a directly competing approval message. Thus, the authors confirm that a negative message receives more weight, though there are limits to this negativity effect.
Prior research into persuasion knowledge shows that both marketing and delayed disclosures have weak effects. However, the findings of this study indicate that the source and timing of the disclosure are not the most important factors; the key factor is whether the message is counterattitudinal. An epilogue or delayed disclosure of a marketer’s intent to persuade induces a boomerang effect among those viewers for whom the message is counterattitudinal.
Biography
Cornelia (Connie) Pechmann (PhD, Vanderbilt University) is Professor of Marketing, Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine. Pechmann conducts controlled experiments that examine the effects of controversial and highly scrutinized forms of marketing communications on consumers, focusing primarily on comparative and tobacco-related ads. Pechmann has received seven grants, amounting to $1.5 million, to study adolescents’ response to pro- and antismoking ads and placements on television and in films. Pechmann serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Consumer Research (JCR), Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Journal of Public Policy & Marketing (JPP&M). She has won a JCR best-article award and JCR and JPP&M outstanding reviewer awards, and her dissertation won the Marketing Science Institute award. Pechmann appears among the Top 50 Marketing Scholars and in Who’s Who in Economics, based on citation counts. Her research has been featured in state and federal legislative hearings, tobacco litigation, and the mass media. She also assists the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign.
Liangyan Wang (PhD, University of California, Irvine) is Assistant Professor of Marketing, Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Wang’s dissertation examines the potential hierarchical effects of the three major types of reference group messages that can be conveyed in ads. She tests these messages in the context of obesity to measure snack food consumption rates. Wang is also an expert in youth tobacco control, the use of televised entertainment education for tobacco control, and the normative aspects of tobacco use. Wang has been working on Professor Pechmann’s youth smoking grants for more than four years. Her dissertation proposal won the prestigious Association for Consumer Research Sheth award. Wang was an American Marketing Association Doctoral Consortium Fellow in spring 2007. She also received several prestigious fellowships and scholarships during her masters and doctoral studies.
Journal of Marketing Research, Volume 47, Number 1, February 2010
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