Capturing implicit texture–flavour associations to predict consumers’ new product preferences

New food product development involves explicit, sensory test phases, though these tests cannot identify consumers' automatic processes and do not consider influential links between perception and memory, so they often lead to biased responses. Rigorous implicit testing can reflect consumer decision making more accurately, by assessing automatic reactions, especially in the case of new food product development where affective reactions are one of the main drivers. Two studies demonstrate the feasibility (Study 1) and accuracy (Study 2) of an implicit sensory test involving the gustatory modality. A gustative priming protocol with a lexical decision task demonstrates that different textures are associated with different flavours in memory. An investigation of consumers’ preferences for products that match the strongest associations further reveals that implicit protocols can inform new product development. Implicit measures of associations are more predictive than explicit measures and can be used upstream during new product development.     

Virtual Product Placement as a New Approach to Measure Effectiveness of Placements

Product placement is a fast growing multi-billion dollar industry, yet measures of its effectiveness, which influence the critical area of pricing, have been problematic. Past attempts to measure the effect of a placement and, therefore, provide a basis for pricing of placements, have been confounded by the effect on consumers of multiple prior exposures of a brand name in all marketing communications. Virtual product placement offers certain advantages: as a tool to measure the effectiveness of product placements; as assistance with the problem in the lack of audience selectivity in traditional product placement; as a testing of different audiences for brands; and in addressing a gap in the existing academic literature by focusing on the impact of product placement on recall and recognition of new brands.     

The Effects of Product Placement in Fictitious Literature on Consumer Purchase Intention

Three experiments tested whether brand‐name products placed in a short story would be more often selected when two identical products with different brand names were presented in either a picture or text format in forced choice purchase intention and placement recognition tests. In Experiments 1a and 1b, there was no significant influence of product placement in a pictorial purchase intention task. However, in Experiments 2a and 2b, a reliable and equal level of recognition memory was observed, regardless of whether the products were presented in a picture (Exp. 2a) or text (Exp. 2b) format. In Experiment 3, the products were presented in a text format in the purchase intention task and participants more often and more quickly chose the brand‐name product from the story. At a practical level, these results suggest some limits to the usefulness of product placement in text.     

DIMENSIONAL RELATIONSHIPS OF RECALL AND RECOGNITION MEASURES WITH SELECTED COGNITIVE AND AFFECTIVE ASPECTS OF PRINT ADS

This study builds on prior work in advertising by investigating issues associated with the dimensional representation of memory for print advertisements and the antecedent factors that relate to those dimensions. Of particular interest to this research are answers to questions associated with whether memory for print ads is unidimensional or multidimensional, as assessed by aided recall and recognition methods, with the nature of the antecedent factors of ad characteristics and subjective reactions, and with how the antecedents relate to memory. The study identified two dimensions of ad-based antecedents to memory, labeled cognitive and affective aspects, and two dimensions of memory, labeled recall and recognition. It was found that recall is influenced by cognitive, and to a lesser extent, by affective factors, whereas recognition is primarily influenced by affective factors. This research provides support for the potential use of stimulus-related factors in conjunction with, or as surrogates of, memory-based measures of effectiveness.     

Are Banner Advertisements in Online Games Effective?

Advertising in online games has grown considerably in recent years and is expected to see continued expansion (Cauberghe and DePelsmacker 2010). However, the literature suggests that banner advertisements in games are sometimes ineffective, often being seen as annoying and potentially triggering avoidance behavior. Because of the possibility of avoidance it is important to examine whether gamers have implicit memory of banner ads even if they don't explicitly recall them. The experiment conducted here measures both explicit and implicit memory of a banner ad in an advergame to assess whether and how well the game players exposed to the ad remembered it. Results suggest that a high proportion of the gamers exposed to the ads did have explicit and implicit memory of the messages shown. Moreover, gamers who were high achievers reported a higher level of implicit memory than those who were less effective at playing games, suggesting that these ads can be remembered despite a high level of concentration on the game. These findings are consistent with the notion that banner ads have a stronger chance of being effective in advergames than in some other contexts, especially among avid gamers.     

The boomerang effect of mandatory sanitary messages to prevent obesity

A variety of prevention measures are being adopted to counter obesity. One of them is to include health sanitary messages on advertisements for food products. We tested the efficacy of this type of measure in an experimental study with 131 participants who were randomly exposed to an advertisement for a hedonic product containing or not a sanitary message. Implicit memory representations (priming protocol), explicit attitudes (questionnaire) and a behavioral measure of food choice (healthy versus unhealthy snack) were collected. Results showed that participants associated negative concepts more easily to the product when the advertisement was presented without the sanitary message, while there were no differences in the explicit attitudes. Moreover, the choice of a healthy snack doubled in the absence of sanitary message. Contrary to its objectives, the obesity prevention sanitary message fills in consumers’ need for justification leading to a greater acceptability of the advertised product and increased choice of an unhealthy snack.     

Audience Response to Product Placements: An Integrative Framework and Future Research Agenda

This study comprehensively reviews the literature on product placements to develop an integrative conceptual model that captures how such messages generate audience outcomes. The model depicts four components: execution/stimulus factors (e.g., program type, execution flexibility, opportunity to process, placement modality, placement priming); individual-specific factors (e.g., brand familiarity, judgment of placement fit, attitudes toward placements, involvement/connectedness with program); processing depth (degree of conscious processing); and message outcomes that reflect placement effectiveness. The execution and individual factors influence processing depth (portrayed as a high—low continuum), which in turn impacts message outcomes. The outcomes are organized around the hierarchy-of-effects model into three broad categories: cognition (e.g., memory-related measures such as recognition and recall); affect (e.g., attitudes); and conation (e.g., purchase intention, purchase behavior). This study integrates potential main and interaction effects among model variables to advance a series of theoretical propositions. It also offers an extensive research agenda of conceptual and empirical issues that future work can address.     

Dissociating explicit and implicit effects of cross-media advertising

Knowledge of cross-media advertising effects is mainly based on explicit psychological measures, such as self-reports. To fully understand the mechanisms responsible for the success of cross-media advertising, it is important to also use implicit measures. We used both types of measures to assess whether exposure to different media combinations affects the cognitive and evaluative impact of advertising. Results show that participants performed better on all explicit and implicit measures of memory and brand preference after exposure (versus no exposure) to target ads, which validated the use of these measures. Comparison of cross-media versus single medium exposure showed differences on the explicit level, but not on the implicit level. This suggests (1) that cross-media advantages may be driven by explicit rather than implicit memory mechanisms, and (2) that implicit advertising effects may require more drastic manipulations than context changes, such as varying the combination of media used for exposure to advertising.     

Effects beyond click-through: Incidental exposure to web advertising

While Web advertising tends to be based on a direct response model, there is a growing debate about the brand building potentials of Web ads. Click-through rates (CTR) are disappointingly low, but Web ads can be effective at brand building in an environment where Web ads are outside of consumers' attentional focus. With this in mind we conducted two experiments. The first experiment examined the effects of incidental exposure to banner ads. Subjects who were incidentally exposed to banner ads reported greater priming effects induced by implicit memory, more favorable A_ad, and greater likelihood for the advertised brand to be included in a consideration set over no exposure to the ad. These effects were found without significant improvement on explicit memories (i.e. recall and recognition) and click-through intention. The second experiment to assess the conditions conducive to incidental exposure examined two advertising strategies: format (animated vs. static) and placement (congruency vs. incongruency). Findings suggest that the level of congruency between an advertised product and Webpage content play significant roles in affecting consumers' responses to incidentally exposed banner ads. This paper examines the results of these two experiments before discussing the implications for the role of Web ads on brand building and directions for future research.     

Winning Versus not Losing: Exploring the Effects of In-Game Advertising Outcome on its Effectiveness

Prior literary works on product placement in games predominantly focus on a host of game and brand characteristics to eventually explore their effects on consumers' psychological responses and behavior. One primary facet of in-game advertising (IGA) that has largely been ignored is game outcome in terms of winning and losing and its effect on consumers' nature of information processing. This article explores the effect of IGA outcome and performance feedback shown to players on their motivation expressed in terms of induced regulatory focus. Further, the effects of regulatory focus are examined on players' implicit and explicit memory, game and brand attitude, and emotions. A conceptual framework highlighting afore-mentioned relationships is developed and empirically tested which reveals that IGA outcome and performance feedback in the form of game messages plays a major role in explaining players' motivation which in turn also affects their memory and attitude. Managerial implications, limitations, and scope for future research are also discussed.     

Age Differences in Response to Grocery Store Price Information

The study reported here investigated age differences in consumer response to grocery store price information. A sample of 160 female consumers shopped for twelve grocery products in a simulated store. Following the shopping task, subjects responded to an unannounced memory performance test requiring them to recall the prices of products on the shelves. Respondents' methods of encoding information and certainty regarding recall were also recorded. Analysis revealed age differences in usage of price information, in recall of product prices, and in certainty experienced by shoppers. Hypothesized age differences in the encoding of information did not surface. Discussion centers on the policy implications of these findings.     

Consumer response to service brand physical elements: Using a semantic priming task to explore implicit understanding of service brand meaning

Consumers' responses to design features involve both conscious and non-conscious information processing. The current research therefore argues that a combination of explicit and implicit measures should be used to assess consumer understanding of service brand meaning conveyed by a service brand's physical elements. However, most methods traditionally used to evaluate design meaning are explicit methods, based on conscious cognitive processes. The current research addresses this gap by documenting how understanding of service brand meaning conveyed by a service brand's physical elements can be tapped by an implicit measure. More specifically, it aims to investigate the extent to which a greater ability to decode meaning conveyed by design features results in differences in implicit understanding of service brand meaning. This research uses a Semantic Priming Task to assess associative strength between brand meaning and a service brand's physical elements. Results (N = 157) show that command of the design language, captured by design acumen and involvement in the product category, results in greater ability to implicitly understand brand meaning conveyed by a service brand's physical elements, and moderates the implicit-explicit relationship. Results suggest that combining implicit and explicit measures may help practitioners in charge of creating brand's physical elements, especially when associations between design types and brand impressions are not constant across product categories.     

How using versus showing interaction between characters and products boosts product placement effectiveness

Placements in movies increase brand awareness. Whether they are effective beyond memory, (e.g. in terms of brand attitudes) is a contested issue. This paper argues and shows that a specific type of placement, character–product interaction (CPI), is able to achieve effectiveness across measures of placement success. A comparison of three experimental versions of the same movie demonstrates the consistent advantage of CPI placements over static prominent placements. Additional exploratory analyses suggest that placement effectiveness may also depend on characteristics of the placed product.     

Exploratory comparisons of alternative memory measures for brand name

Two experiments examined memory measures other than recall for use in advertising evaluations. In one experiment, an Ebbinghaus Savings Test was used as an indirect test to recover delayed memory for ad information when free recall was at floor levels. In a second experiment, a direct measure (recognition) and an indirect measure (word fragment completion) were compared in delayed tests. Processing levels affected recognition scores significantly, but no such effects were noted for word fragment completion. These results suggest that alternative awareness measures can provide important marketing research information. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

PP for ‘product placement’or ‘puzzled public’?

This research examines the effectiveness of the European ‘PP’ symbol, recently introduced as a warning of product placement in locally produced television programmes. The authors test whether this symbol counters the pervasive effect of product placement on purchase intention. Study 1 shows that the symbol does not prompt resistance to the influence of product placement. This is because the majority of consumers neither notice nor comprehend the symbol. In Study 2, two training methods are tested to increase the symbol’s effectiveness: (1) verbal label training and (2) a combination of verbal label training and information training. The addition of information training is necessary to increase the symbol’s noticeability, whereas verbal label training helps increase the symbol’s comprehensibility and effectiveness in activating persuasion knowledge and decreasing purchase intention. Finally, the results provide evidence that brand recall is crucial for resistance to product placement, suggesting the importance of brand recall as a moderator of resistance processes.     

Measuring the Impact of Product Placement on Children Using Digital Brand Integration

Recent marketing literature has called for more research that focuses on the influence of new media on children and, specifically, the use of product placement. The objective of this study was to analyze the impact of food and beverage product placements on children of different ages. Using an experimental approach, groups of children viewed the same television program, but with either healthy products or unhealthy brands digitally inserted. A detailed survey then measured aided and unaided recall and immediate choice behavior. In total, 225 children from two schools took part in the experiment. The results indicated strong recall for the products placed, especially for the unhealthy products, and particularly among older children. However, the placements had only a modest influence on immediate behavior, with regression analysis suggesting that the packaging was more significant in influencing choice. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

To look tasty,let's show the ingredients! Effects of ingredient images on implicit tasty–healthy associations for packaged products

This study investigates the effect of ingredient images on implicit tasty–healthy associations for packaged products. An implicit association test (IAT) with 106 respondents reveals the impact of repeating ingredient images on the implicit healthy = tasty intuition; fewer ingredient images are linked to a stronger intuition. This study also considers explicit product packaging preferences and the number of ingredient images depicted. The implicit intuitions affect explicit preferences, such that packages depicting few ingredient images are preferred over those depicting many ingredient images for healthy products, but no significant effects emerge for unhealthy products.     

Awareness changes placebo effects for feeling relaxed,but not for liking

Information and communication of beliefs can influence effectiveness and liking of food products. This study is the first to investigate how two positive states, activation and relaxation, can be associated with a product through communication, how this influences liking, and how manipulation awareness influences both liking and the association between positive states and the product. Three groups of participants received an unfamiliar herbal infusion. Group 1 was told that the herbal infusion would have activating properties, group 2 was told that it would be relaxing, and group 3 was given no information. During an 11-day home-consumption phase, 148 participants filled in a diary, detailing consumption and feelings of relaxation. On day 12, implicit and explicit measures of relaxation, liking, and manipulation awareness were taken after consumption. Participants in the relaxed condition felt significantly more relaxed than participants in the active and the control condition, but only if they were unaware of the experimental manipulation. Independently of awareness, participants liked the tea better in both the activating and the relaxing than in the control condition. Results show that a positive state can be connected with a product without employing active ingredients, and that liking increases as a consequence of this connection. Results also show a trend that manipulation awareness influences the effect on positive state, but not on liking.     

Framing Effects in Risk Perceptions of Aids

This paper examines a boundary condition of the ease-of-retrieval effect shown to affect risk perceptions of AIDS (Raghubir and Menon 1998; R&M). R&M had shown that when AIDS-related behaviors were difficult (vs. easy) to recall, people reduced their estimates of contracting AIDS, based on an inference that the more difficult an item was to recall, the smaller the population of behavioral experiences in memory, from which it was drawn. In this paper, we show that when people can attribute recall difficulty to task contingencies (i.e., the difficulty is not informative about their own behavioral experience), the content of the information recalled from memory, rather than the ease with which such information was recalled, affects judgments. In such a scenario, framing the recall task as one that causes AIDS leads to perceptions of higher risk versus one that prevents AIDS. Theoretically, these results show that the use of information accessibility as a cue is based on inferences about the population from which the information is drawn. Managerially, the results suggest that risk perceptions are based on contextual cues that affect content and accessibility of memory-based information.     

Exploring children's choice: The reminder effect of product placement

There has been little attempt to understand the influence on children of branded products that appear in television programs and movies. A study exposed children of two different age groups (6–7 and 11–12) in classrooms to a brief film clip. They were then individually asked to demonstrate their witness skills by describing in as much detail as possible what they had seen. Half of each class was shown a scene from Home Alone that shows Pepsi Cola being spilled during a meal. The other half was shown a similar clip from Home Alone but without branded products. All children were invited to help themselves from a choice of Pepsi or Coke at the outset of the individual interviews. Those who had seen the branded clip made a significantly different choice of drink. The responses to the interviews suggest that it is not simply exposure to the film but rather previous exposure together with a reminder in the form of recent exposure that affects choice. Age (and by implication processing skill) does not appear to be a mediating factor affecting choice, because implicit memory (mere exposure) seems to be more important than explicit recall. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.