Curtis P. Haugtvedt

Need for Cognition and Advertising: Understanding the Role of Personality Variables in Consumer Behavior

Three studies were conducted to examine the role of need for cognition on attitudes formed as a result of exposure to advertisements. Prior research on need for cognition has used only long messages, counterattitudinal topics, or employed instructions that specifically told participants to evaluate products. Results of our studies reveal that need for cognition also affects the processes of attitude change when no explicit evaluation instructions are provided and when exposures are to relatively short, unfamiliar advertising messages presented in either self-paced or externally controlled formats. Consistent with prior research, attitudes of high need for cognition individuals were based more on an evaluation of product attributes than were the attitudes of low need for cognition persons (Studies 1 and 2). In addition, the attitudes of low need for cognition individuals were based more on simple peripheral cues inherent in the ads than were the attitudes of high need for cognition persons (Study 3). Implications for the study of personality variables in consumer behavior are discussed.

Personality and Persuasion: Need for Cognition Moderates the Persistence and Resistance of Attitude Changes

Hypotheses about the persistence and resistance of attitudes and beliefs formed by individuals scoring high or low in Need for Cognition (NC; Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) were derived from the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). In Study 1, both high-NC and low-NC individuals formed evaluatively similar attitudes toward an unfamiliar attitude object (a new product) after exposure to a persuasive message (an advertisement). The newly formed attitudes of high-NC individuals decayed less than the newly formed attitudes of low-NC individuals over a 2-day period. In Study 2, both high-NC and low-NC individuals were persuaded by an initial message that a food additive was unsafe. However, when immediately exposed to a second countermessage arguing that the product was safe, the initial experimentally created beliefs of high-NC individuals were shown to be more resistant to change than the experimentally created beliefs of low-NC individuals.

Message Order Effects in Persuasion: An Attitude Strength Perspective

Contemporary research on attitude change processes is reviewed for implications regarding the relative influence of successive opposing messages on final judgements. Based on this review, extent of message relevant elaboration is offered as a moderator of primacy versus recency effects in prior research. Support for this view is derived from the ability to explain the results of pervious studies and from two experiments in which message presentation order and personal relevance of the topic are manipulated in a factorial design. We find that situations that foster high levels of message elaboration lead to greater influence of an initial message on final judgments (a primacy effect) whereas situations that foster low levels of message relevant elaboration lead to greater influence of a second message on final judgments (a recency effect). Copyright 1994 by the University of Chicago.

Advertising Repetition and Variation Strategies: Implications for Understanding Attitude Strength

We argue that researchers need to move beyond the simple measure of attitude extremity to more clearly assess the impact of various advertising repetition strategies on consumer attitude. In study 1, we show that different advertising variation strategies can lead to the development of equally positive attitudes, even though the basis of the attitudes is quite different. In study 2, we show that, despite the appearance of equal effectiveness on the dimensions of extremity, persistence, and confidence, type of advertising repetition strategy differentially influences the extent to which individuals resist change in the face of a counterpersuasive attack. Coauthors are David W. Schumann, Wendy L. Schneier, and Wendy L. Warren. Copyright 1994 by the University of Chicago.

Interactive Effects of Presentation Modality and Message-Generated Imagery on Recall of Advertising Information

We argue that imaging is a cognitive process that uses the same mental resources as perception. Therefore, when imaging and perception compete for the same resources, message elaboration and learning should be undermined. Two experiments are reported that provide support for this theorizing. In the first experiment, the learning of visual or auditory imagery-provoking information is adversely affected by reading or listening, respectively. In the second experiment, information with high levels of visual imagery is found to be learned better than information with low levels of visual imagery when the information is presented auditorily, but the reverse occurs when information is present visually. Copyright 1996 by the University of Chicago.

Online Consumer Psychology : Understanding and Influencing Consumer Behavior in the Virtual World

In recent years, few questions have been of greater interest to consumer researchers, as well as to marketers of consumer products, than the viability of the internet as a platform for commercial transactions. At the heart of this debate is the issue of whether or not the internet provides anything that is substantially new or different from traditional business-to-consumer (B2C) channels. We believe that, indeed, the internet does provide some unique opportunities to marketers in their quest to better understand and ultimately influence their target customers. In particular, retailers on the internet have an unprecedented opportunity to personalize the shopping experience and control the shopping environment. In this chapter we will examine three specific psychological mechanisms that can play a central role in influencing the interaction between shoppers and recommendation agents in electronic marketplaces. PERSONALIZATION AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO INFLUENCE Thanks to Moore’s Law, marketers now have the ability to remember and respond to the tastes and preferences of many individual consumers. Advances in technology, and techniques for database marketing, have created the opportunity for retailers to resurrect business practices over one hundred years old. At that time, the local shop owner was able to develop individual relationships with each of his customers, providing them with personalized service and product recommendations. Don Peppers and Martha Rogers (1997) explain it this way: We are facing a paradigm shift of epic proportions – from the industrial era to the Information Age. As a result, we are witnessing a meltdown of the massmarketing paradigm that has governed business competition throughout the twentieth century. The new paradigm is one to one (1:1) – mandated by cheaper and faster data management, interactive media, and increasing capabilities forfor a grant to initiate this research and Theresa Cai and Harshavardhan Gangadharbatla for their invaluable help during the data collection. Consumers learn about products from the experience of interacting with people, objects and the environment. However, an experience is more than simply the passive reception of external sensations or subjective mental interpretations of a situation. Rather, an experience is the result of an ongoing transaction that gains in quality, intensity, meaning, and value integrating both psychological and emotional conditions (Mathur, 1971). These conditions are ultimately accomplished via the generation of thoughts and/or sensations brought together creating the experience (Hirshman, 1984). A product purchase is in many ways not the purchase of a physical good itself but of an experience that the product affords (Pine II and Gilmore, 1998). Thus, the role of consumer learning about a product prior to the purchase is mainly to assess what consumption experience the product can offer and how well it can meet the expectations of the anticipated experience (Hoch and Deighton, 1989). Research has documented that consumers learn about products through indirect experience, such as advertising, and via direct experience, such as product trial it has been speculated that the type of medium may limit the effect of advertising and a more powerful medium for communicating the details and experiences of a product, such as the Internet, could have a stronger impact on consumer learning (Moore and Lutz, 2000). Three-dimensional (3-D), multiuser , online environments constitute a new revolution of interactivity by creating compelling virtual experiences (Waller, 1997). McLuhan and McLuhan(1988) suggest that within any medium there is a connection between the human mind, the technology, and the environment that serves to immerse users. It is the interactive nature of the Internet that immerses consumers and offers the greatest potential to marketers because of the ability to offer user-controlled product interactive experiences (Schlosser and Kanfer, 2001). Since most products are 3-D objects that are experienced with the senses, the use of dynamic 3-D visualization in ecommerce is increasing as companies seek to give users a virtual experience of the product. The implications are that a 3-D virtual product experience is a simulation of a real or physical product experience and can be construed to be located between direct experience and indirect experience within the spectrum of consumer learning. To fully understand the impact of a virtual experience and the use of 3-D product …

Contemporary Attitude Theory in Sport: Theoretical Considerations and Implications

Although the attitude construct has received considerable attention in the social psychological literature, its application to better understand how people form strong, stable and continuous involvement with athletic teams remains largely unexplored. Following a review of attitude strength research in other disciplines, previous methods used to investigate attitudes in the leisure and sport literatures are reviewed. Based on this review, a framework for the study of attitudes is discussed for understanding allegiance to sport teams. This framework includes a description of the structural relations among various attitude properties and their likely influences on the persistence of attitudes over time, resistance of attitudes in the face of challenges, thoughts about the attitude object, and the likelihood of attitudes influencing behaviour. It is suggested that consideration of attitude strength issues may allow sport managers to better understand how attitudes may be formed toward teams, and may provide insights into how to manage fan loyalty.

Ego-Involvement and Persuasion: An Appreciative Look at the Sherif’s Contribution to the Study of Self-Relevance and Attitude Change

It has been 30 years since Sherif and Hovland’s (1961) Social Judgment volume in the Yale series on attitude and communication was published. This text, which was the fourth and final monograph in the highly influential Yale series, represented a significant departure from the previous books on at least two grounds. First, the volume provided a new theoretical framework for understanding attitudes. While the previous volumes were loosely organized around learning, drive, and reinforcement notions, the new theory was based on the idea that the principles of human judgment uncovered in studies of psychophysics could be applied to understanding attitudes and persuasion. Of particular importance was how a person judged the position advocated by the communicator—was the position judged to fall within the person’s latitude of acceptance, rejection, or noncommitment? Placement of the communication was a critical determinant of the amount of attitude change expected.

Individual differences in intrinsic motivation and the use of cooperative negotiation tactics

Considers cooperative negotiation tactic use in early stages of business‐to‐business buyer‐seller relationships. Specifically, it addresses a serious gap in the study of individual difference effects on cooperative negotiation, an area that has received little academic attention. In doing so, insight is provided on an area that marketing researchers say needs attention now. We conduct a study where subjects take the role of a salesperson. They make offers, or respond to buyers’ offers, to negotiate. Subjects indicate what offers they would make, or what counteroffers they would respond with. Results support the notion that individual differences in intrinsic motivation (operationalized as autonomy causality orientation) affect the use of cooperative offers, but do not affect counteroffers, due possibly to reciprocation.

Assessing the Provision of Nutritional Information on Quick Service Restaurant Menu Item Choices for College Students

This study examines the effect of providing nutritional information on quick service restaurant menus and whether or not this information leads consumers to select healthier food items. A computer-based experiment was conducted in which 273 participants were presented with 3 different versions of a standard quick-service restaurant menu. Providing nutritional information led consumers to choose healthier foods. Nutritional information disclosure on menus had the most significant effect on choices in the burger sandwich category. In addition, individual differences in consumers’ nutritional knowledge, health consciousness, body mass index and gender affected the use of nutritional information in food choices.