THE ROLE OF DISCLOSURE AWARENESS

Due to concerns about the possible deceptiveness of sponsored content in television programs, the EU decided to make sponsorship disclosure obligatory. The goal of sponsorship disclosure is to raise awareness of sponsored content so that viewers can guard themselves against persuasion. This study explores how sponsorship disclosure infl uences the use of persuasion knowledge, and to what extent recall of a disclosure infl uences its effect. An experiment (N = 208) shows that a disclosure leads to greater recognition of sponsored content as advertising (i.e., activation of conceptual persuasion knowledge), which consequently makes the viewer evaluate the sponsored content more critically (i.e., higher attitudinal persuasion knowledge). This effect is only manifest for viewers who recalled the disclosure. Theoretically, this shows the importance of sponsorship disclosure and the recall of disclosure for effects on consumers’ use of persuasion knowledge. As regulations are still in development in several countries, the fi ndings are important for the implementation of sponsorship disclosure. 2. THE ROLE OF DISCLOSURE AWARENESS 52 INTRODUCTION Brand, products, and persuasive messages are increasingly integrated in editorial television content (Cain, 2011; Van Reijmersdal, Neijens & Smit, 2007). This so-called sponsored content can be implemented in various ways, such as brand placement, in which a brand or product is placed in a program, or brand integration, in which a brand plays a key role in the story line and production of the program (Hudson & Hudson, 2006). The implementation of sponsored content is growing fast, and especially brand integration is seen as “the future of advertising” (Hudson & Hudson, 2006; Smit, Van Reijmersdal, & Neijens, 2009). Because sponsored content is intertwined with noncommercial television content, it is often diffi cult for viewers to distinguish the commercial from the editorial content. A possible consequence is that viewers process the persuasive message less critically as they would have if they had known it was commercial (Nebenzahl & Jaffe, 1998). A survey amongst Dutch television viewers showed that viewers indeed share this fear, since 69% of the viewers thought it was possible that they were unconsciously infl uenced by sponsored content (Neijens & Smit, 2002). Therefore, sponsored content is often considered as deceptive (Cain, 2011; Nebenzahl & Jaffe, 1998), and has been a cause of serious concern for policymakers and consumer organizations. As a result, the EU has decided that television viewers need to be informed about sponsored content by means of sponsorship disclosures (Audiovisual Media Services Directive, 2010). Until now, only two studies have investigated the effects of sponsorship disclosure. Campbell, Mohr, and Verlegh (2007) found that a sponsorship disclosure infl uences brand attitude, depending on the moment the disclosure is displayed in the program. A sponsorship disclosure at the beginning of a program, and during the sponsored content, resulted in more positive brand attitudes, whereas a disclosure at the end of the program led to more negative brand attitudes. Moreover, they showed that a disclosure decreased the top of mind awareness of the brand, regardless of its timing. Dekker and Van Reijmersdal (2010) compared two sponsorship disclosures, one revealing the sponsor, and one also mentioning the persuasive intent of the sponsored content. They found no effect of both types of sponsorship disclosures on brand attitude and the acceptance of product claims. Interestingly, these prior studies only focused on how sponsorship disclosures infl uence the effects of the sponsored content. However, the main purpose of disclosures is to avoid deception by activating persuasion knowledge (Cain, 2011). Persuasion knowledge is defi ned as people’s general understanding of persuasion, and knowledge of how to cope with persuasion attempts (Friestad & Wright, 1994). To date, no research has yet focused on the effects of sponsorship disclosure on viewers’ use of persuasion knowledge. Yet, to understand whether sponsorship disclosures achieve their goal, it is important to know whether disclosures in television programs can activate viewers’ persuasion knowledge. Therefore, this study aims to examine to what extent sponsorship disclosures can make television viewers recognize sponsored program content as advertising, and to what extent