Integrating Ad Information: A Text-Processing Perspective (original) (raw)

2005, Journal of Consumer Psychology

This article utilizes psycholinguistic models to examine text processing in advertising. In particular, the article theorizes that fonning an accurate mental representation of the text content of ads is essential for comprehension and can influence evaluations. Two conditions must be met in order to forni a mental representation: referential continuity and coherence. A text possesses referential continuity if each of its parts refers, implicitly or explicitly, to an entity introduced in the previous part. A text is coherent if individuals can readily integrate its parts. Four empirical studies suggest that the repetition of certain verbal and pictorial cues can help provide referential continuity and that an ad's structure, or presentation format, can facilitate coherence but only when referential continuity is established. Most print ads utilize text to communicate with consumers. Research has begun to examine how the processing of this text is influenced by its structure (e.g., whether it is in narrative format or presented as a list of attributes; Adaval & Wyer, 1998; Escalas, 1998). However, how consumers integrate the information conveyed in the text of one ad or across multiple ads has rarely been explored. Current psycholinguistic theories of text processing can provide insight into this process. A psycholinguistic paradigm permits us to integrate past research on factors like cue repetition (K. L. Keller, 1987) and text format (Adaval & Wyer, 1998) into a general model of text processing. A psycholinguistic perspective also allows an exploration of the role of different types of verbal (and nonverbal) cues. In this article I argue that both the repetition of certain cues and the text's structure can influence the mental representation of an ad's content, comprehension, and evaluations. To investigate this claim empirically, participants in this research were exposed to several ads for the same product (i. e., ad series). Each ad in the series was separated by unrelated material. I hypothesized that participants would be more likely to integrate information across ads when the ads had a common story line, for example, when one ad stated a problem (the initial ad) and a later ad solved it (the conclusion ad). However, this integration is only likely to occur when the conclusion ad contains a cue that reminds Requests for reprints should be sent to