Attitude toward Brand: An Integrative Look at Mediators and Moderators

ABSTRACT Exploring the effects of advertisement on attitude toward a brand has been a major concern to marketing scholars for decades. However, the literature on brand attitudes is so broad and the areas of focus of researchers are so fragmented that cognitive and affective elements and processes involved are often studied in isolation, neglecting the joint effects of these variables and resulting in a disconnected literature. In this paper, an integrative model of determinants and moderators of attitude toward the brand is provided along with a brief literature review of its formation and change. Key features of the model are: 1) comprehensive discussions on antecedents and moderators of brand attitude including new and traditional viewpoints, 2) inclusion of affect in the model, 3) distinction between positive and negative affect and their different paths of influence on attitude, 4) recognition of the role of brand familiarity especially in moderating affective impacts on brand attitude, 5) inclusion of irrelevant thoughts and their role on cognitions, 6) a more updated discussion of cognitive capacity theory and its implications on the model, and 7) distinction between informational ads and emotional ads in the formation of attitude toward the brand. INTRODUCTION Delving into the processes through which advertising efforts stimulate consumers to buy a particular brand has been an area of interest among marketing researchers for a long time (MacKenzie, Lutz, & Belch, 1986). In this way, attitude, the cynosure of social psychologists, has been a cornerstone of consumer research as well. In most studies in this area, attitudes have served as dependent variables and the impact of different ads, their repetition, and other factors on attitude formation and change have been studied (Berger & Mitchell, 1989). Cognitive perspective of attitude was the dominant viewpoint in the years when consumer behavior was a fledgling body of knowledge, owing much to Fishbeinian theories and multi-attribute models (e.g. Fishbein, 1963). However, the pioneering works of Mitchell and Olson (1981) and others (such as Zajonc, 1980; Shimp, 1981) gave rise to a new stream of research in which alternative paths to persuasion were explored. The influential Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty, Cacioppo, & Schumann, 1983) and the series of studies by Lutz, MacKenzie, and Belch (1983), MacKenzie, Lutz, and Belch (1986), and MacKenzie and Lutz (1989) further expanded our knowledge of attitude formation and change to include peripheral paths, especially through attitude toward the ad. While some studies were carried out to probe into the nature of this new construct (e.g. Gresham & Shimp, 1985), purely affective influences of advertisements on attitudes also came to light (Batra & Ray, 1986; Edell & Burke, 1987). However, attitude researchers have focused on selected areas developing the now voluminous attitude literature in different and even disconnected directions. Along with a need for integration, current theories include relationships between some constructs that do not effectively explain the nature of effects or neglect the role of moderator variables. Argument quality, for example, has been noted in many studies (e.g. Petty, Cacioppo, & Schumann, 1983; Lord, Lee, & Sauer, 1995) in terms of its direct effect on brand attitudes; however the mediating role of brand cognitions has not received worthy attention. The moderating role of irrelevant thoughts on Arg-Cb relationship and the importance of availability of cognitive resources in moderating that relationship are also less accentuated. Our study aims at providing an integrative framework that encompasses both cognitive and affective determinants of brand attitudes in the field of advertising effectiveness. This framework also includes the different processes and constructs that become activated as a result of emotional versus informational ads, a comparison neglected in previous studies. …