Patterns of Reactions to Commercials Can Demonstrate Advertising Effectiveness

VOL. 50 • NO. 2  June 2010 137 Measurable Emotions—How Television Ads Really Work: Patterns of Reactions to Commercials Can Demonstrate Advertising Effectiveness Anca Cristina Micu and Joseph T. Plummer • Emotions play at least the same level of importance as conscious rational thought in consumer reactions to brand messages. • It is likely advertising researchers have exaggerated the role of conscious thought. • Verbal inquiries about people’s spontaneous preferences are neither sufficient nor adequate. • Physiological measures add depth to our understanding of how commercials work by allowing us to tap into the moment-by-moment emotional reactions commercials generate. • Storytelling in advertising enhances anchoring of the brand name into memory because consumers co-create the meaning of the brand together with the advertiser at an emotional level. 154 Using Interactive Program-Loyalty Banners to Reduce TV Ad Avoidance: Is It Possible to Give Viewers a Reason to Stay Tuned during Commercial Breaks? Stephen Richard Dix, Steven Bellman, Hanadi Haddad, and Duane Varan • Interacting with loyalty banners can reduce channel changes by 39 percent. • Loyalty banners increase audience arousal and retention during advertising breaks. • However, loyalty banners reduce advertising recognition by 14 percent and advertising recall by 36 percent. • Loyalty banners reduce the persuasive effects of advertising (attitude towards the ad, attitude towards the brand and purchase probability). • Full-screen interactive intersituals between full-screen ads may provide a better model than loyalty banners superimposed onto the ads. 162 Assessing a New Advertising Effect: Measurement of the Impact of Television Commercials on Internet Search Queries Dan Zigmond and Horst Stipp • As most Americans today use both television and the Internet on a daily basis and are frequently online while they are watching television, they can now easily obtain more information on an advertised product by searching for additional information on the Web. • This article demonstrates that this evolving media use pattern facilitates a new kind of TV advertising effect and that this effect can be measured with a new metric—a measure of changes in Google search queries—that is introduced here. DOI: 10.2501/S0021849910091257 June 2010  JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH  111 • A number of case studies presented show how TV commercials or sponsorships can trigger Internet searches by consumers. The data show that this effect typically happens immediately after a TV commercial airs. • We believe this metric is not a replacement for other ad effect measures but that it is a valuable addition to the researcher’s toolkit for assessing advertising effects: It is able to measure ad effects almost instantly and, more important, it measures an actual behavioral advertising response. 169 The Power of Emotional Appeals in Advertising: The Influence of Concrete Versus Abstract Affect On Time-Dependent Decisions Cenk Bülbül and Geeta Menon • Advertising-induced emotions can be powerful in shaping consumer decisions if they are meaningfully associated with consumer mindset. • It is crucial to understand the anatomy of the affective experiences to be able to predict their influence on persuasion. In this article, authors examine affective experiences to be able to predict consumer decisions for the short- versus long-term. • Concrete affect is very influential when consumers are in the short-term mindset (focused on the decisions of the near term). Concrete affect entails very visceral emotions and feelings such as excitement, surprise, elation, and the like. • Abstract affect is very influential when consumers are in the long-term mindset (focused on the decisions of the longer term). Abstract affect entails fuzzy and de-contextualized emotions and feelings such as warmth, affection, gratitude, and the like. • It is the very specific nature of concrete affect that distinguishes its experience from abstract affect. 181 A Netnographic Exploration: Listening to Online Consumer Conversations Rama K. Jayanti • A significant gap exists between online consumer conversations and hospital communications to their customers. • Patients in online conversations emphasized physician partnership and personal outcomes, whereas the majority of hospital communications highlighted reputation, expertise, and compassion. • To gain strategic insights into patient perspective on care, hospitals may wish to enable social spaces for patients to nurture conversations. 197 Listening Solutions: A Marketer’s Guide to Software and Services Stephen D. Rappaport • Listening tools and methods have been used for decades. Formerly the province of specialists, interest in listening exploded as a consequence of the Internet, which made it possible for people to 112  JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH  June 2010 share their thoughts, ideas, likes, dislikes, and viewpoints online. For the first time on a large scale, marketers and advertisers could have access to and analyze the conversations people have through listening. • Listening tools are organized into four categories: search, real-time search, and monitoring; text analysis; private communities; and full-service offerings that combine services and consulting. Selecting tools to use depends on the listening initiative’s objectives, strengths, and fitness of purpose. Additionally, organizations need to refine their choices based on their own technical capabilities, listening expertise, and budget. • Listening organizations need to think beyond the tools to the “raw materials” that will be collected, harvested, mined, analyzed, and reported on. It is very important to understand why the sources used were chosen, why the rules were used that decide which data are captured, how to clean the data so that the signal-to-noise ratio is optimal, and how to be confident in the research methodologies employed. • Using listening tools requires staff with expertise in areas that can be thought of as “nontraditional.” In particular, skills in selecting sources, in gauging the importance of comments, in inductive reasoning, in pattern recognition, and in developing explanatory models, frameworks, or theories are needed. • Listening research can contribute to making tough marketing decisions. For that reason, listening practitioners have to know how to make a persuasive story grounded in their observations, data, and analysis. • As an emerging discipline, listening poses seven challenges that need to be addressed for listening to fulfill its promise and potential. 214 Match Game: Linking Sponsorship Congruence with Communication Outcomes Gerard P. Prendergast, Derek Poon, and Douglas C. West • Extensive research has considered the issue of congruity between a sponsor and the event being sponsored. • The key interaction between functional and image congruence is examined by means of an experiment. • This congruence influences communication outcomes, such as attitude toward the brand and purchase intention. • Functional congruence is important for organizations offering a “thinking” service, whereas image congruence is important for firms offering a “feeling” service. • If there is no functional or image congruence between the sponsor and the event, and leaving potentially important altruistic motivations aside, the sponsor might as well not bother; incongruent sponsorships are found to be no more effective than doing none. June 2010  JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH  113