Joan Meyers-Levy

Schema Congruity as a Basis for Product Evaluation

Mandler theorized that the level of congruity between a product and a more general product category schema may influence the nature of information processing and thus product evaluations. Products that are moderately incongruent with their associated category schemas are expected to stimulate processing that leads to a more favorable evaluation relative to products that are either congruent of extremely incongruent. Data from three experiments conducted in new product contexts are consistent with Mandlers hypothesis and serve as a basis for theorizing about the process. Copyright 1989 by the University of Chicago.

The influence of message framing and issue involvement.

Studies examining message framing effects on persuasion have produced mixed results. Some studies show positively framed messages, which specify attributes or benefits gained by using a product, to...

Gender Differences in the Use of Message Cues and Judgments

Data from two experiments suggest that the genders differ in how they make judgments. In comparison with men, women appeared to have a lower threshold for elaborating on message cues and thus made ...

Consumers' Processing of Persuasive Advertisements: An Integrative Framework of Persuasion Theories

In this article, the authors propose an integrative model of advertising persuasion that orders the major theories and empirically supported generalizations about persuasion that have been offered ...

Understanding the Effects of Color: How the Correspondence between Available and Required Resources Affects Attitudes

The impact of presenting full-color, black-and-white, and color-highlighted ad photos is examined under different processing resource conditions. When viewers devote few resources to processing, ads with some color outperform black-and-white ads. However, when viewers engage in more effortful ad processing, attitudes are sensitive to the match between available and required resources. When the substantial resources devoted to ad processing are inadequate of thorough ad scrutiny, black-and-white ads or those that color highlight aspects highly relevant to ad claims are more persuasive. By contrast, when available resources better approximate those required for extensive ad scrutiny, full-color ads or ads that color highlight ad photo elements that are highly relevant to the ad claims are more persuasive than either black-and-white ads or ads that color highlight aspects of low relevance to ad claims. These outcomes are interpreted by extending notions offered by elaboration-likelihood and resource theories. Copyright 1995 by the University of Chicago.

How Ambiguous Cropped Objects in Ad Photos Can Affect Product Evaluations

Research in both the consumer and aesthetics literatures suggests that the ambiguity created by a cropped or incomplete object may prompt people to seek closure by supplying the missing part. In turn, this process of resolving the ambiguity can enhance affect. Applying this notion to advertisements, a study is reported that examines whether and when severe cropping of key objects in ads will influence peoples product evaluations. The results indicate that severe cropping of objects in ads can enhance product evaluations if people are sufficiently motivated to complete the cropped object and the cropped object does not impede peoples attempts to verify the ad claims. Copyright 1994 by the University of Chicago.

Exploring the Cognitive Mechanism that Underlies Regulatory Focus Effects

Much research has explained regulatory focus effects via the alternative psychological states (eagerness vs. vigilance) people experience when they adopt different regulatory foci. This article identifies for the first time the cognitive mechanism that underlies regulatory focus effects. We propose that promotion-focus individuals engage in relational elaboration, which entails identifying commonalities or abstract relationships among disparate items. In contrast, prevention-focus individuals engage in item-specific elaboration, which involves focusing on specific attributes of each item independent of others. Results support our theorizing by demonstrating that promotion-focus (prevention-focus) individuals exhibit enhanced performance on tasks that require relational (item-specific) elaboration.

Evaluating persuasion-enhancing techniques from a resource-matching perspective

This article examines how two ad execution characteristics intended to heighten persuasion can influence the resources required to process an ad under high and low motivation conditions. These ad execution characteristics include (1) whether the ad copy is narrative or factual and (2) whether the ad layout either physically integrates or separates the ad picture and ad claims. Results reveal that under low motivation, persuasion is unaffected by these two execution characteristics but instead is affected by heuristic aspects of the ad photo. Under high motivations whether persuasion is heightened or undermined appears to depend on the extent to which the ad execution characteristics render the resources needed to process the ad equal to, in excess of, or inadequate compared with those that motivated viewers have available for processing the ad. Copyright 1997 by the University of Chicago.

Elaborating on Elaboration: The Distinction between Relational and Item-specific Elaboration

This article examines the distinction between and the effects of two different types of elaboration on various indicators of ad effectiveness. One type of elaboration known as item-specific processing, emphasizes the distinctive features of each ad claim. A second type, called relational processing, highlights similarities (e.g., common themes) that link various ad claims. This study shows that recall of ad claims is enhanced when manipulations foster both types of elaboration simultaneously. However, recognition and clustered recall are enhanced only when manipulations invite item-specific and relational processing, respectively. Finally, data on product judgments, consumption intentions, and the correspondence between these types of responses suggest that item-specific processing may have more impact on these measures. Copyright 1991 by the University of Chicago.

Low-Involvement Learning: Repetition and Coherence in Familiarity and Belief

Over thirty years ago Krugman (1965) claimed that learning of advertising messages was much more like an Ebbinghaus nonsense syllable memory task than an exercise in rhetoric. If anything, he seems even more right today in a media environment that continues to become more cluttered. In this article, we investigate the role that memory plays in the development of beliefs within this context and focus on the formation of beliefs that develop with little intention or opportunity to learn. Following on previous work, we investigate the effect of repetition-induced increases in belief for advertising claims that are hierarchically related: a superordinate general benefit claim (e.g., security of a lock) and multiple subordinate feature claims (e.g., pick resistant and professional installation required). We find that beliefs in feature claims increase monotonically with number of exposures, although at a diminishing marginal rate. We find no evidence of horizontal spillover of repetition-induced increases in belief from one subordinate feature claim to another. However, we find a substantial amount of vertical spillover of repetition-induced increases in belief from individual subordinate feature claims to the superordinate general benefit. A dual mediation analysis suggests that the vertical spillover comes from both an increase in familiarity of the general benefit and greater belief in the set of subordinate feature claims.