Investigating Brand Attitude Changes toward High-Involved Hedonic Products Via Optimal Ad Appeal Arrangements over Multiple Exposures

Employing advertisements to build a new brand with high-involved and hedonic products requires careful consideration of ad appeal arrangement. This study manipulates ad appeal over three repetitions to identify the effects of ad exposure sequence on effectiveness for brand building. With Krugman's "three sequential advertising exposures" theory in mind, this research pays special attention to the effect of the third exposure and proposes a better appeal arrangement order over these three exposures when building the new brand. These results may provide new insights for marketing researchers and brand managers. (ProQuest: . denotes formulae omitted.) Introduction There are two product traits under consideration in our study: hedonic and high-involvement. Hedonic products invoke consumer interest in experiential factors (Dhar and Wertenbroch, 2000), hence, an emotional appeal will be more effective than a rational appeal at generating higher levels of positive attitude toward the ad (Stafford and Day, 1995). Additionally, products with the high-involvement trait incline consumers to seek out rational information to satisfy their needs for tangible, product-related information (Kolter et al., 1999). The rational appeal "puts a fine point" on the development of the consumer's attitude. The rational appeal could be adopted to elaborate the message argument, and increase positive brand attitude (Johar and Sirgy 1991). For a high involvement product launched under a new brand, consumers must pass through a number of stages to make the final purchase decision, such as awareness, recognition (knowledge), attitude (conviction), and purchase (action) and so on. Hence, an optimized ad appeal arrangement which best addresses these continual shifts in consumer attitude is worth looking into, and significant results could hold promise for marketing researchers and brand managers. For a new brand, creating brand attitude, composed of brand trust and brand affect, is an important milestone of brand building. Thus, this study employs brand attitude and purchase intention as our final dependent variables. In order to understand the optimal arrangement of ad exposures with various appeal, this research manipulates ad type (rational vs. emotional) over three ad exposures to observe the changed magnitude of brand trust and brand affect for a high-involved hedonic product and further identifies the ad appeal arrangement which most effectively influences purchase intention. This study takes as a working hypothesis Krugman's "three sequential advertising exposures" (Krugman 1972, 1975). Literature Review Three Exposures Theory Krugman ( 1 972) experimentally tracked the consumer reactions and cognitions over the course of three actual exposures. He undertook a study of eye movement exploration of print ads which seemed to indicate peak effectiveness after two or three exposures. Then, he plausibly hypothesized a hierarchy of effects from three idealized sequential advertising exposures. Krugman's three-exposure theory was widely supported by many scholars and practitioners (e.g., Calder and Sternthal 1980; Gorn and Goldberg 1980) but still invited much comment and criticism (e.g., Jones 1997; Cannon et al. 2002). In spite of this body of commentary, there are two important issues which had not been addressed. First, Krugman's (1972, 1975) three sequential advertising exposures theory only focuses on the numbers of advertising exposures, but does not touch on other potentially impinging factors, such as varying appeal, etc. Second, no direct testing of Krugman's conjecture - germane to the goal of marketing application - has been conducted. Appeal Consistency of the Initial Two Exposures and New Brand Recognition Based onKrugman's three-exposure theory (1972, 1975), consumers have no knowledge of a new brand prior to exposure to the brand advertisings. Upon first exposure, consumers will experience curiosity, and mentally link the appeal of the ad to the new brand, which then forms an important part of the brand association and recognition. …