Study of Inter-Relationship Between of Consumers Mental State and Advertising Effectiveness

Individuals often try to anticipate each other’s mood prior to interactions and read others moods during encounters. In these ways, mood information is acquired and used informally for social and professional interactions. For example, knowledge of the boss’s mood on a particular day may help an employee anticipate the boss’s reactions to a request for a pay raise. Analogously, knowledge of the consumers’ mood state in certain situations may provide marketers and advertisers with a more complete understanding of consumers and their reactions to marketing strategies and adverts. This mood-state knowledge may be particularly relevant for understanding consumer behaviour as affected by the content of marketing communications and adverts and the context in which these communications appear. Advertising typically has some positive or negative content that can trigger affective reactions (Coulter 1998). Early research on mood and persuasion indicated that people who are in a positive mood are more susceptible to persuasion than the average person. For example, Janis (1965) had some people read a persuasive message while they ate a snack and drank soda, while others simply read the message without the accompanying treats. Greater attitude changes occurred among the“munchers” than among the “food free” group. Similareffects were also found among people listening topleasant music (McMillan and Huang, 2002). Good feelings enhance persuasion partly by enhancingpositive thinking. In a good mood, people view theworld through rose-coloured glasses. They also makefaster, more impulsive decisions, they rely less onsystematic thinking, but more on heuristic cues(Schwarx, 1991; Garner, 2004). Because unhappypeople ruminate more before reacting, they are lesseasily swayed by weak arguments. Thus, it has beensuggested that if you cannot make a strong case, it is a smart idea to put your audience in a good moodand hope they will feel good about your messagewithout thinking too much about it (Schwarz, 1990). One of the reasons for this, is proposed by the‘feelings-as-information’ view, that while negativemoods signal to people that something is wrong in their environment and that some action is necessary,positive moods have the opposite effect; they signalthat everything is fine and no effortful thought isnecessary (Schawtz, 1990). As a result, people in apositive mood are more persuadable because they areless likely to engage in extensive thinking of thepresented arguments than those in a neutral or

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negative mood. Although the ‘feelings-as-information’ view contends that happy people tend to rely on peripheral route processing, an alternative cognitive response explanation – the ‘hedonic contingency view’ – asserts that this is not always the case (Wenger and Petty, 1994). According to this perspective, happy people will engage in a cognitive task that allow them to remain happy and will avoid those tasks that lower their mood. Research investigating this possible effect indicated that a happy mood can indeed lead to greater message elaboration than a neutral or sad mood, when the persuasive message is either uplifting or not mood threatening (mood congruent) (Norris, Colmon and Aleixo, 2003; Coulter, 2003; Wegner, Petty and Smith, 1995). Thus, it appears that happy people do not always process information less than neutral or sad people. Taken together, the above studies suggest that there is a likelihood that mood has a lot of effect on the way messages are received and processed. Therefore the aim of this study is to determine whether being in a positive mood or negative mood affect audience evaluation of advertisement as effective or not effective.

DESIGN

A between-subject experimental design was employed to test whether positive or negative affect induced by the film clips had any effect on advertising effectiveness. Advertising effectiveness was measured by attitude towards the advertised products scale and intention to buy the advertised products scale. The adverts were embedded into the positive and negative film clips.

The research participants were three hundred (300) university undergraduates drawn from the MANAV BHARTI UNIVERSITY. Like most other advertising research studies (e.g. Knoch and McCarthy, 2004; Fieldling et al, 2006; Shenge, 2003; Morison et al, 2003) this study was conducted using undergraduate students, but, unlike those studies, the participants were not paid for participating in the research; neither did they receive any credit on any course for their participation.

The adverstiments. Unlike some previous advertisingresearch (e.g., Kim and Biocca, 1997; Knap and Hall,2006; Puccinelli, 2006), utilizing existing adverts,specifically designed adverts were used for this study.Two undergraduate actors (male and female) recruitedthrough theatre organizations on a university campusserved as the presenter of the adverts. Beforevideotaping the adverts for each product, the actorsmemorized the product descriptions. Each personpresented the two products to eliminate the likely effect of sex of the advert presenter.

A 10-minute film clip was used to induce a negative orpositive mood. Both the negative clip and the positiveclip were extracts from a home video titled “TheBastard”. The positive clip was about a family thateverything was going on well for; the parents wereprospering economically and in other respects, and the children were gaining admission into university. Thenegative aspect was how a gang of armed robberscame to wipe off the joy of the family by raping thedaughter, killing the father and son and leaving themother and daughter with psychologicallytraumatised. Extracting both positive and negativeinduced aspects from the same film made it possible touse the same set of actors. The two clips were subjected to a rating by aconference of experts with raters expressing 100percent rating for the sadness-eliciting clip and 70.5percent rating for the happiness-eliciting clip. Anotherset of 20 undergraduates also watched and rated theclips on a ten-point scale; a reported feeling ofsadness at 9.5 was recorded for the sadness eliciting clip and a happy feeling of 8.0 was recorded for thehappiness eliciting clip. These mood-eliciting clipswere combined with four types of advert to produceeight adverts and affect types.

Attitude towards using advertised product wasmeasured using a modified form of Belch’s SemanticDifferential Scale (1981) measuring attitudetowards using advertised products. For reliability, Attitude Toward using AdvertisedProduct Scale had a standardized coefficient alpha of0.81, coefficient alpha for part 1 (five-item) split-halfalpha of 0.65, coefficient alpha for part 2 (five-item)split-half of 0.68, split-half of 0.74 and overall reliability(Spearman-Brown) coefficient of 0.85 (Shenge, 2003).

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For validity, there was a least correlated item-total correlation of 0.36 and a highest correlated item-total correlation of 0.61. Intention to try advertised product was measured using a ten-item set of opposite-in- meaning evaluative factor adjectives earlier used by Shenge (1996). It measures subjects’ intention to try the advertised product, which in real life advert practice, is also viewed by the advertiser as instrumental for unticipating the audience’s final purchase of the advertised product. For reliability, the Intention To Try Advertised Product Scale had a standardized coefficient alpha of 0.75, coefficient alpha for part 1 (five-items) split-half coefficient alpha of 0.61 for part 2 (five-items) split-half of 0.57, split-half of 0.62 and overall reliability (Spearman-Brown) coefficient of 0.77. For validity, there was a least correlated item-total correlation of 0.33 and a highest correlated item-total correlation of 0.48; also, a factor analysis result on intention showed that there was a high degree of agreement among the intention scale items (Shenge, 2003).

Prior to the participants’ admittance to the laboratory, efforts were made to minimize distraction by lowering the window blind. Efforts were also made to prevent passers-by from making a noise and distracting the subjects. Participants were randomly assigned to the various experimental groups. After the instruction was given participants watched the film clips assigned to them. Participants were not told the relevance of the film clips to the adverts. At the end of the exercise, they rated their feelings about the adverts using the questionnaire given to them. The completed questionnaires were collected and participants were debriefed, thanked and politely sent away.

The results revealed that induced affect had asignificant effect on advertising effectiveness (F (1,318) = 8.36, P< .05). An observation of the meanscore shows that participants in the happy moodhave a more positive attitude towards theadvertised product (x = 44.50) as compared toparticipants in the sad mood (x 32.05). This findingconcurs with Schwarz and Clore’s (1988) findings thatcustomers will often use their feelings as informationand, therefore, make judgment that are congruent withthe implications of these feelings.

This study experimentally examines the effects ofmood on advertising effectiveness. Sex of advertpresenter and product types were build into the studyto control for the possible effect that they may have on the study. Positive and negative mood were inducedwith the use of home video. In measuring advertising effectiveness two criteriawere combined: attitude towards advertised productand intention to try advertised product. Belch (1981),Cacioppo and Petty (1974), and Schroeder (2006)have found that multiple criteria were more efficaciousin measuring of advertising effectiveness than a single criterion. The findings reveals that there is a significanteffect of mood on advertising effectiveness, butthere are no significant effects of sex of advertpresenter and product type on advertisingeffectiveness

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Wegener & Braverman (2004) provided evidence that people who are in a good mood like adverts more and are more capable and willing to process message information. This means that when people are in good mood they view the world through rose-coloured glasses and evaluate events around them positively (Garsper, 2004). Various mechanisms have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. According to the excitation or affect transfer hypothesis (Cantor, Zillman and Bryant 1975, Tavassoli, Shuitz and Fitzsimons 1995), the positive evaluation of the context is transferred to the advert and, as a result, the advert is also positively evaluated. Another explanation is the fact that a positive mood enhances advert processing according to the hedonistic contingency theory (e.g. Lee and Sternthal, 1999). People in a positive mood engage in greater processing of stimulus because they believe that the consequences are going to be favourable. This explanation is similar to that advanced by Isen (1984) who stated that knowledge structure (associative networks) associated with good moods are generally more extensive and better integrated than structures that are associated with bad moods (affective priming). Aylesworth and Mackenzie (1998) provided a different explanation for the same phenomenon. They established that television advert processing is better when people were in a positive mood after seeing a programme. Their explanation is that people who are in a bad mood after seeing a programme are still processing the programme centrally while seeing the advert, as a result of which the advert is processed peripherally. People who are in good mood after seeing a programme are less inclined to analyse it further, and, therefore, are more capable of processing the advert centrally. As a result, a media context that is well appreciated may lead to a more positive appreciation of the advert shown in that context and to more elaborate advert processing. The excitation transfer hypothesis and related theories have been confirmed in several other studies (Goldberg and Gorn, 1987; Murry, Lastovicka and Singh 1992; Lynch and Stipp, 1999). The finding of this research lends credence to Puccineli’s (2006) findings that participants in a good mood react positively to a salesperson who conveys positive feelings and are willing to pay more for the product endorsed by the person, while participants who are in a bad mood react negatively to such a person and are willing to pay less for the product. This finding contradicts some studies that concluded that a positive mood does not lead to positive evaluation of advert, e.g., Cantor and Venus(1980), Derks and Avora (1993). In their findings,using the contrast effect of Mayers – Levy and Tybount(1997), they assert that message style that contrastswith the nature of the context may lead to positiveadvertising effects. The study suggested that a positively evaluatedenvironmental context, or a context that evokes apositive mood, leads to a less positive advertevaluation and especially less advert processing. Thisphenomenon is attributed to the fact that a positivemood reduces the processing of stimulusinformation. According to the cognitive capacitytheory, a positive mood activates an array ofinformation in the memory that limits the recipient’sprocessing of incoming information (Mackie and Worth,1989). It is worth noting that for an advert to achievethe desired aim of creating a favourable impression in the mind of the audience it seems to be useful ifmembers of the audience are in a happy mood.

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Communication yearbook 23 (103-23) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. About the author: Dr A. B Owolabi is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology, University of Ado Ekiti Nigeria. He is an industrial / organizational Psychologist with an interest in consumer behavior and Psychology of advertising. He has published several articles in this area. All correspondence should be address to; Owolabi A. B, Department of Psychology, University of Ado Ekiti, Nigeria, P. m. b 5363 E-mail: labdem2005@yahoo.ca