Robert J. Kent

The Global Internet Shopper: Evidence from Shopping Tasks in Twelve Countries

ABSTRACT Globally, the characteristics of a website that are critical to increasing the likelihood that customers will shop at that site and will come back for future purchases are largely unknown. Actual shopping tasks by 299 respondents from 12 countries indicate that site quality, trust, and positive affect toward it are critical in explaining both the purchase intentions and loyalty of visitors to the site. This research indicates that the impact of these factors varies across different regions of the world and across different product categories. Results of this research highlight the need to tailor websites according to each world region and product being offered for sale.

The Differential Effects of within-Brand and between-Brand Processing on the Recall and Recognition of Television Commercials

Abstract This study considers the usefulness of a basic distinction between two types of evaluative processing in explaining memory for advertising. The results of empirical tests suggest that between-brand processing leads to increased performance on recall tasks, while within-brand processing appears to facilitate successful performance of brand name recognition tasks. Analysis of the effects of the processing tasks on brand name recall and recognition, dissociations across these tasks, and recognition errors suggests that this distinction in processing types can help us to better understand memory for advertising phenomena. The implications of the findings for future advertising research into the effects of processing differences and the relationship between retrieval tasks are discussed.

The motive for sensory pleasure: enjoyment of nature and its representation in painting, music, and literature.

Eight studies assessed the motive for sensory pleasure (MSP) involving a general disposition to enjoy and pursue pleasant nature-related experiences and avoid unpleasant nature-related experiences. The stated enjoyment of pleasant sights, smells, sounds, and tactile sensations formed a unitary construct that was distinct from sensation seeking, novelty preference, and need for cognition. MSP was found to be related to (a) enjoyment of pleasant nature scenes and music of high but not low clarity; (b) enjoyment of writings that portrayed highly detailed nature scenes; (c) enjoyment of pleasantly themed paintings and dislike of unpleasant paintings, as distinct from findings with Openness to Experience; (d) choice of pleasant nature scenes over exciting or intellectually stimulating scenes; (e) view duration and memory of artistically rendered quilts; (f) interest in detailed information about nature scenes; and (g) frequency of sensory-type suggestions for improvement of a museum exhibit.

Second-by-Second Analysis of Advertising Exposure in TV Pods: The Dynamics of Position, Length, and Timing

ABSTRACT This study explores how message delivery may differ for television commercials that appear in various pod positions. Channel changing at the onset of commercials often may lead to higher exposure levels for advertisements in the first pod position. When advertising pods are relatively long, viewers may return within the pod, so commercials in the first and last pod positions may have higher exposure levels than commercials in middle pod positions. The set of advantageous pod positions, however, can differ in commercial breaks that appear near the beginning and end of programs. Ideas for audience measurement, media buying, and advertising creative are developed.

The effects of postexposure test expectation in advertising experiments utilizing recall and recognition measures

Whether due to unaccepted guises, previous exposure to measures, or overt instructions, subjects in advertising experiments often expect testing related to ads, while individuals encountering ads in daily life feel no such expectation. The results of experiments exploring main and interactive effects of postexposure test expectation on ad retention measures are reported. In the first experiment, subjects who expected a recall or recognition test performed better on that test than subjects who expected a different measure or measures unrelated to retention. In the second experiment, the sort of test expectations which may arise when subjects encounter ads in controlled research settings moderated the effect of competitive advertising interference on recall scores. Summarily, these data suggest that test expectation may often influence the findings of advertising experiments.

Second-by-Second Looks at the Television Commercial Audience

ABSTRACT Television audience measurement needs better technology, improved competition, larger samples, granular data by time, and a focus on commercial, not program, ratings. This paper shows how data from set-top boxes in digital cable television systems can address these needs.

Introducing the Ad ECG: How the Set-Top Box Tracks the Lifeline of Television

ABSTRACT Great sums of marketing dollars are spent on television advertising time in the absence of precise audience-size information for individual advertising units. This paper uses granular data from a large system of set-top boxes to observe how television audiences decline and rebuild during expensive commercial time. the data reveal greater set delivery declines from programs to commercial units than has often been anticipated. Moreover, variation in set delivery was seen within particular shows. the results suggest that advertisers should use detailed commercial audience information to choose shows and negotiate media prices.

Switching before the pitch: Exploring television channel changing before the ads even start

Although much research examines ‘ad zapping’ or channel changing during the commercials, the present work explores preemptive ad avoidance before the commercials begin. Television programs give different ad signals, which could alter rates of preemptive ad avoidance. Ad pods from two hit shows were explored using second-by-second channel-changing data; rates of preemptive ad avoidance were practically important and varied between shows. Inspection of program episodes suggested that the show with more preemptive ad zapping gave clearer ad signals and had more ‘ad safe’ time per episode, that is, there was more time when an ad break would not occur clearly. The data suggest that advertisers should seek unit-specific measures of opportunities to see commercials as such measures become possible with digital distribution of television.

Ad ratings when a marketer runs two commercial messages in one television program episode

Abstract Advertisers sometimes run two messages in one television program episode. We examine the ad-ratings consequences in passively recorded data. Previous findings suggest that repetition can reduce ad affect and attention duration. Viewers might therefore tend to zap the second message for one brand. If second messages are targeted for zapping, marketers might run only one message per episode. We observe channel changing near the start and end of ad breaks, but no targeted second-message zapping emerged. Marketers might therefore continue to buy two ad units in particularly interesting shows. Interestingly, networks separated the two messages for one brand into early and late program segments. In some shows, this separation may influence the relative ratings of the two messages. For example, the first ad had higher ratings in some shows that followed a much more popular program on the same network. However, the second ad had higher ratings in some game and reality shows with strong audience build-up in late running time. But in each of these situations, the pooled rating for the two ads did not differ from the program’s average ad rating. In sum, our data suggest that marketers don’t provoke targeted ad zapping by running two messages in a program episode.

Advice through mice: individual and advisor-system differences in online recommendations

Internet advice and recommendations technologies provide innumerable ways for companies to help consumers make choices. However, basic questions about the acceptance and usefulness of online advice remain unanswered. A large web-based survey found differences in use of advice sources and topics, trust and confidence in human versus automated advice and preferences for advice speed and ease of use. Tactics and strategies for web vendor implementation of online advice systems are discussed.