초록 열기/닫기 버튼
본 연구는 광고의 모호성이 광고와 제품에 대한 소비자의 반응에 어떤 영향을 미치는지를 인지적 자원과 제품유형이라는두 개의 조절변수와 함께 고찰하였다. 기존연구에 의하면 다의적 모호성은 소비자로 하여금 광고에 몰입하여 광고가 내포한 다양한 의미를 해석하는 즐거움을 유발하고 부정적 생각을 감소시키는 작용을 하는 것으로 제시되어 왔다. 시각적 모호성을 대상으로 한 본 연구에서는 이러한 모호성의 효과가 소비자의 인지적 자원에 의하여 조절되는 것으로 보고되었다. 즉, 다의적 모호성이 높은 광고는 소비자가 활용할 수 있는 인지적 자원의 양이 많을수록 더욱 긍정적인 반응을 야기하였고, 반면 모호성이 낮은 광고는 인지적 자원의 양에 의하여 영향을 받지 않았다. 이는 자원일치이론의 예상과 일치하는결과였다. 또한 다의적 모호성의 효과는 전반적으로 실용적 제품보다는 쾌락적 제품의 경우에 더욱 크게 발생하는 것으로발견되었다. 이는 제품유형에 따라서 소비자의 정보처리방식에 차이가 존재하기 때문인 것으로 추론할 수 있다.
It has long been argued that the simpler and clearer the advertising message is, the more effective it will be. More recently, however, some scholars began to report that rather abstract and ambiguous advertisements can be as or more effective. Moreover, in practice, quite a number of advertisements are found to employ the latter approach. Thus, in this paper, we attempt to examine the effects of visual polysemy in advertising (i.e., a type of ambiguity) on consumers’ attitude toward the ad and the brand, and propose two moderating factors in this relationship: cognitive resources and product type. Consistent with the literature on semiotics, we conceptualize ambiguity or polysemy as being present when a word or message is associated with multiple meanings, which would lead to different interpretations depending on the recipient or situation. It has been suggested that polysemy used in communication can generate positive responses from the audience for various reasons. First, when a consumer is exposed to a message with polysemy, she is likely to experience a certain degree of arousal initially, resulting in positive emotions (arousal boost). Then, if the consumer successfully comprehends or interprets the meanings of the message, her initial arousal will be reduced. This will give her feelings of pleasure (arousal jag). Second, a consumer should concentrate her cognitive resources on the task when attempting to interpret a polysemous message. This, in turn, is likely to prevent her from coming up with counter arguments or negative thoughts about the advertisement, which will facilitates her to form favorable attitudes toward it. The proposed effects of polysemy have rarely been tested empirically. In marketing, an exception was found in McQuarrie and Mick (1992), which investigated how consumers would respond to polysemy included in the ad headline and its resonance with a pictorial body. Our paper is to replicate their findings in the context of visual polysemy, and to identify factors that may moderate the effects of polysemy. We propose, first, cognitive resources available to a consumer as a potential moderator, based on the fact that polysemy requires a substantial amount of cognitive efforts from the consumer to be successfully processed and comprehended. That is, a message with polysemy is expected to be effective only when a consumer has a high likelihood of elaboration. In our study, the elaboration likelihood is determined by an amount of cognitive resources available to her when a consumer is processing the message. This prediction is consistent with the resource matching theory, which suggests that consumers show more favorable responses when the amount of cognitive resources required to process a stimulus matches to that available to them. Thus, H1 posits that the effects of visual polysemy in advertising will be moderated by the amount of cognitive resources available to a consumer. The type of products is proposed as the second moderating factor. It is well known that consumers tend to undergo different psychological processes depending on whether they are dealing with utilitarian or hedonic products. The evaluation process for utilitarian products tends to be more cognitively driven, and thus consumers focus primarily on the objective and tangible attributes of the product. These characteristics imply that ad messages should be presented in a clear and objective fashion so as to elicit better responses. On the other hand, the evaluation process for hedonic products tends to be highly subjective and affect-driven, primarily based on aesthetics, taste, and sensory experience, and on how well the product communicates its desired meanings. Therefore, the ambiguity and abstractness of ad messages are suitable for stimulating the subjective and diverse nature of the hedonic processing. Moreover, pleasures that a consumer would feel while attempting to interpret polysemous messages may serve as part of positive consumption experiences from the consumer’s point of view. Taken together, H2 predicts that the differential effects of polysemy in the ad will be larger for hedonic than utilitarian products. A 2 x 3 x 2 between-subjects full-factorial experiment was conducted, varying visual polysemy (low and high), cognitive resources (processing time; 5, 20, and 40 seconds), and product type (utilitarian and hedonic products). Two hundred twenty-two university students participated in the experiment. The dependent variables included attitude toward the ad and the brand, and covariates were product knowledge, product involvement, and tolerance for ambiguity. We also measured thoughts that participants generated when exposed to the ad, which would be used to explore the potential mechanism underlying the proposed effects of polysemy. The results showed, first, that participants responded more favorably to the ads containing a higher degree of visual polysemy as the time resources available increased. On the other hand, participants’ responses toward the ads with a lower degree of visual polysemy were not affected by the amount of time resources provided. Second, the differential effects of polysemy in advertising were stronger for hedonic products than for utilitarian products possibly due to consumers’ different styles in the processing of the two types of product. In addition, the analyses of participants’ thoughts revealed that consumers who had a larger amount of cognitive resources available generated more positive and less negative thoughts about the ads with a high (vs. low) degree of polysemy. In future research, different methods of manipulating polysemy as well as cognitive resources should be employed. Also, scholars should not consider only product type, but also various types of brand concept within a product category as a potential moderator. Lastly, other types of psychological responses including attention and memory should be explored in addition to attitudes.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
advertising effectiveness, visual polysemy, cognitive resources, product type.
