Daegu University

Research Proposal

How to use the suitable contents of ads for low-involvement and high-involvement products

PHAM VAN HANH

June 14th, 2011

Brief Contents

1. Introduction
2.

Statement of the problem 3

3 - Literature review 6 4- Hypotheses 5- Methodology 6 Bibliography 9 12 16

Introduction Through many real situations, some advertising programs are designed elaborately and costly, but unsuccessful in attracting customers attention. Whereas, some other ads contain simple contents, and use less costs become successful in impressing customer. With low-involvement products, customers usually form the beliefs passively through advertising. Customers may not spend so much time to make the buying decisions. Customers make a purchasing decision with little information and the brand may or may not be evaluated afterward. Because customers do not pay much attention to the advertising, so the complicated advertisements may not be efficient with lowinvolvement products. On television or internet, the advertisements that attract customers attentions may create the impression on customers minds. Whatever that is embedded in customers mind can be recalled easily when customer make buying decisions. Since customers receive the information through ads passively, dynamic ads with interesting pictures, voices, or noises may impact on perceptions of customers more positive than uninteresting ads do. Customers may remember better when they see the interesting content of the ads. In addition, because customers do not intend to remember information from ads, so the ads that contain complicated or abstract information may be eliminated from customers minds. The ads with simple and concrete information provide clear information about products can help customers remember better. In contrast, customers usually actively find information about the products when they intend to buy high-involvement products. Some ads that contain so much information or images and/or contain concrete information may not induce customer pay

attention much to the brands that the ads want to introduce to them. The simple ads with simple pictures, or not many animations and containing incomplete or abstract information can induce customer remember better than the ads with much concrete information. This phenomenon is especially true with new products, the ads with abstract information may induce customers to become curious and they try to find more information about the new products and the brands. Literature review Many studies have focus on identifying the effects of music, pictures and ads structures in ads. Several researchers note that music augments word, colors pictures, and adds a form of energy available through no other source (Hecker 1984). Because high involvement consumers are motivated to process the advertised message, the impact of indexicality on attention to the music may not be as strong as that predicted for lowinvolvement consumers (Macinnis, Park 1991). Music, ads structures and pictures affect the ways customer process information received through exploring to the ads. Customers memories depend on the existing interrelations among different elements in the advertisement. The research of Houghton indicated that the pictures in ads establish expectations for the verbal information and ads should be remembered better if the copy is discrepant rather than consistent with the pictures. High-involvement customers pay attention to the information about the products, so the music, pictures, or animations affect less on them. The brands may be better remembered when they appear in one ads. Some previous studies focus on the commercial structures for new products. They believe that ads for new brands are seen as having higher news value to the consumer, as
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one would expect. Information in commercials for existing brands is likely to be redundant with a viewers stored knowledge about the brand name, its attributes, and perhaps its advertising style. Therefore, the old product ads contain comparatively less information than the new product ads do (Olson, Schlinger, Young 1982). Previous research do not identify that customer is curious about the new information and they pay actively more attention to new products. The results from some research shows that viewers of new product commercial are more likely to express a desire to obtain further information about the brand. Because high involvement consumers are motivated to process the advertised message, so if the ads that contain so much information, animations or pictures will not cause customers feel interested in the products they intend to buy. If customers actively identify the information about the high-involvement products, they seem to remember better and consider this information as their discoveries. Research questions - What type of ads (simple pictures with abstract information vs. dynamic pictures with concrete information) will be remembered better with low-and high-involvement products? - What type of ads will be remembered better for brand-new products? Hypotheses Because customers pay little attention to an ad for low-involvement products, so the ads with many animations or dynamic pictures may induce customer remember better. Some humorous ads with funny characters can help customer to remember the
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brands and they can recall when they go to the supermarkets or stores. Customers buy the low-involvement products with not much effort and they are not likely to remember the ads with abstract information. If the ads that provide customer with useful, concrete information such as brand name, store location, detail prices, and how to use the products or manual can help customers easier to make buying decision. So we can hypothesize that: H1: For low-involvement products, the ads that contain more dynamic pictures and concrete information will be remembered better than ads that contain simple pictures and abstract information. With high-involvement products, customers actively seek information about the products they intend to buy. They make buying decisions based on set of information they collect from many sources. It is not easy for customers to make buying decisions after exposing to the ads. Because customers want to identify more about the products, so some ads that can arouse customers curiousness may induce them remember better. When customers expose to the ads that contain abstract or incomplete information and they will wonder that what ads are about and they actively find the answer when they go to the supermarkets or stores. H2: For high-involvement products, the ads that contain less pictures or animations and contain abstract information about products will be remembered better than ads that contain more dynamic pictures or animations and provide concrete information about the products. Customer pay more attention to this type of ad.

With the new products, customers want to be the first person who can possess these products. If the ads contain so much detail information about the products, customers may not feel interest in the products. H3: Customers will remember better and pay more attention to the ads that contain fewer pictures, but provide abstract or incomplete information about the new products. Simple Ads with abstract information Dynamic Ads with concrete information Methodology - Design The experiment employed a between subjects design with randomized two levels of involvement (high versus low). Level of complexity of the ads via pictures, animation, and information and high versus low involvement were included in the analysis as independent variables. The level of remember and attention to the products is considered as dependent variables. - Stimulus materials Four ads in form of video clips or slides shows are used to conduct experiments. Low-involvement products consist of shampoo and detergent. High-involvement products consist of brand-new car and watch. There are two types of experiments. Experiment 1 is conducted to test customers memory between low and highHigh-involvement better Low-involvement

better

involvement products. Experiment 2 is used to test customers memory to existing and new products. In the first experiment, the differences between two kinds of ads (simple ad with abstract information and dynamic ad with concrete information) are the pictures, animation and number of music pieces or sounds used in ads. The simple ad with abstract information contains fewer pictures, less animations and less music in it. The simple ads convey the incomplete information about the products. The dynamic ads with concrete information about the products contain more pictures, more animations and more music, or more sounds in it. The dynamic ads provide customers with concrete information about the products such as brand name, models, or types. Some familiar brands will be used in the experiment for high- and lowinvolvement products and fictitious brands appeared in the ads to test the hypothesis for new products. The same pictures of products will be used in the ads for both high-and low-involvement products but the number of picture is different. The advertising video clips will be tested with the groups of 50 students from Daegu University first to examine the effects of association with existing products. In the second experiment, the four ads will be designed to test the customers memories about the brands. Fictitious brands will be used as the new products to eliminate the effects of existing product association. - Sample The sample consists of 300 students in Daegu University. Respondents will be chosen randomly from students in some classes.
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- Procedure The respondents will be informed that the purpose of the experiment is to obtain the information about the customers ability to remember the ads. Then, respondents will view four ads in form of video clips or slides shows about four types of products. After that, respondents will answer the questionnaire about which ads they remember or pay attention the most. Measures The questionnaire will include two dependent variables: the customers ability to remember the brands and their attention to the brands. The questionnaire will be designed in English and then was translated into Korean. The Korean translation was based on the English original and then a back translation was made from Korean to English.

Bibliography
1. Deborah J Macinnis, C. Whan Park, The differential role of characteristics of music on highand low-involvement consumers processing of ads, The journal of consumer research, vol 18, September 1991. 2. David Olson, Mary Jane Schilinger, and Charles Young, How consumers react to newproduct ads, Journal of Advertising research, vol 22, No.3, June/July 1982. 3. Wendy Bryce, Thomas J. Olney, Modality Effects in television advertising: A methodology for isolating message structure from message content effects. Advances in consumer research, vol 15, 1998. 4. Bernd H. Schmitt, Nader T. Tavassoli, Robert T. Millard, Memory for print ads: understanding relations among brand name, copy, and picture, Journal of consumer psychology, vol 55, 1981.

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