Advertising Exposure, Memory, and Choice - Case Study Example

Advertising is indeed the art to sell a product even before it has been manufactured. The sale needs to be made without the product coming to the domains of the consumers. However this does not mean that the consumers have to wait for eternity before they can actually get their hands on it. The advertiser must guarantee that the consumers will go to the retail counters and ask for their products, and forget about the competitive ones which are also available. He will choose this product over others and thus give the advertiser the much needed joy – or the sale that he is looking forward to. However this is one tedious process. It involves a great deal of learning on part of the advertiser – the psychological domains of the target audience, their spending patterns, their recall and recollection measures, and indeed their likeliness to become a consumer of the said product as well. The advertiser therefore needs to be spot on as far as making apparent the message of the product is concerned (Koslow, 2000). This can take place with the assistance of the campaign which has been devised in order to make a sale. The manner in which positivism is manifested through the actions and behaviors of the consumers suggests that the advertiser has to make proactive and consistent efforts to highlight the unique selling propositions (USPs) within the product. The consumers are after all looking forward to discern the differentiating factor upon which their product will be sold time and time again. The repeated purchase on the part of the consumers is indeed the prime motive of the advertiser. For a product to be deemed as a success within the relevant market domains, it is important that the consumers recall and recognize how the product will create a much needed different within their lives. The need aspect has to be highlighted in order for it to be seen as a successful one. Recall of the product gives it success. If there is no recall, there is little room for the product making it big within the market and hence the sales figures will not be attainable, as are envisaged by the differing organizational regimes. The manner in which the consumers make note of the product, remember it for their later retrieval in the mind as well as in the retail store, recall it whenever there is a hint of the said product category or brand font and color, are some of the quintessential aspects which suggest success on the part of the product which has been presented to the target audience through the advertiser’s realms (Keller, 1996). The learning process within the minds of the consumers is suggestive of the fact that the product gains the due share of space and they start to prefer this very product over other competing products in the same category. They would most likely resort to buying this product over any other and would actually pay more at times in order to satisfy their connection with the product under question. Thus the manner in which ABC model comes into play here is important to decipher. This is because the attitudes of the consumers are built when they are given the message brought forward by the consumers. These messages aim to highlight the need or want of the consumers in either a very subtle manner or through hard hitting (hammering) tones (Wells, 1997). When the attitude is developed on the part of the consumers, they essentially become a part of the learning process – a process through which they start to relate their behavioral basis in the coming times. A positive attitude will ask the consumers to go towards the retail unit and buy for their betterment the product. It is a totally different matter altogether what sort of cognitive dissonance they have. This however might just be the case when a product has had a negative perception overall and its trial has meant problems for the consumers in more ways than one. A negative attitude might just mean that the consumers drop the idea of trying this product for meeting their needs. They are also more likely to forbid others from having such an attitude which would ask of them to buy this product to meet their respective needs, wants and desires. A clear cut positive or negative attitude is thus the key for understanding the ABC model (Dubitsky, 1990). When the attitude is developed to try this product, the learning process asks for the behavior to be developed in such a manner that the consumers will find themselves to be in line with the acquisition of the product under discussion. They will essentially become a part of the purchase cycle, which is in essence a form of mind game that instantly develops a link on the part of the consumers with the related product category, its competitors as well as the product which is being advertised on a consistent basis, for the sake of such consumers. Behavior is important within the ABC model because it asks of the consumers to realize that they have become a very pivotal part of the learning regime as far as the product is concerned. They have been subjected to attitudinal shifts within their minds and hence it is only time that will decide when they actually go out and buy the said product for their own trial purposes. This means that the next step is based on cognition of the consumers (Sylvester, 2000). Cognition comes about with the psychological result of perception which takes place alongside learning as well as reasoning. However this can either happen on an overnight basis or could take sometime for it to happen. The bottom line remains that the cognitive abilities could only be exploited when there has been an attitude change for the better within the consumers and when their behaviors manifest a form of likeness related with the product and its eventual usage. In short, the ABC model works to best effects for the sake of advertising a product and indeed gauging the result of such messages which are aimed to get a trial basis for the sake of their products from the consumers themselves. The reasoning for using this product as well as the upping of self-esteem within the consumers is given all this while nonetheless (Mitchell, 1993). The advertiser needs to keep in mind that the social and individual preferences of the consumers must be studied beforehand in order to create a much needed difference within their lives through their products. This suggests that the advertiser will go all out in his efforts to prove to one and all that the company means business. It wants to draw its consumers in a mind game, the end result of which is sale of the product. This does not end here, and the game keeps continuing in the form of repeat purchases, time and time again (Falk, 1996). The competitive activity is taken into consideration since the competitors mean different problems for the advertiser. The learning process on the part of the consumers is that they come to gather information which the advertiser is giving them through the different advertising messages and campaigns. They gather information, do a bit of alternative searching and select the product (to be trialed) which closely matches with their need levels. It is a given that the price levels, quality regimes, size, proportion and other tactical tenets are adequately understood by the consumers before they actually buy this product and thus benefit the advertiser in a whole lot of ways. The learning process is a constant fight for survival within the competitive market domains and the consumers understand that the advertiser will have to minimize its prices or up the quality if more competitors throng the business. It might just be a possibility that the advertiser finds its own self out of the business sooner rather than later, as it finds it hard to cope up with the competitive pressure which has thronged the market for all the right reasons, as far as the consumers are concerned. The persuasive ability of the advertiser to draw the audience in front of it means that the advertiser is firm in making its stance known to all and sundry. It also suggests the fact that the advertiser is ready and willing to face the competitive levels in a head on fashion, and for that it will pass through any hurdles which come in its way (Stevens, 1999). This is quite an understandable proposition and more so in the time and age of today – present times being the era of consumerism essentially. The learning that is done on the part of the consumers is something which will instill a sense of meeting the needs and wants with respect to them. They will find it better to have used a product and then term it as an exercise which went down well or one that was entirely a futile undertaking. The psychological stance within the learning process of advertising is a significant one since this brings in the much debated persuasive angle of the consumers. How these consumers will think of the product from a broader perspective depends a great deal on their understanding of the product which is being advertised (Alwitt, 1985). If the advertising message remains unclear or becomes cluttered with competitive messages and/or noise coming into the transmittal system, there is a great deal of chance that the consumers will find it difficult to relate their own selves with the product and hence the advertiser’s task would be made strenuous with each passing day. The campaigns would find it hard to make a direct and serious effect on the minds of the consumers and there would be more losses incurred by the advertiser than anyone else. Therefore it is very fundamental to understand the minds of the consumers first, gain an ideology related with their preferences, have an insight of their likes and dislikes; and then only focus on propagating the advertising message for the sake of the consumers. References Alwitt, L. (1985). Psychological Processes and Advertising Effects: Theory, Research, and Applications. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Dubitsky, T. (1990). Emotion in Advertising: Theoretical and Practical Explorations. Quorum Books Falk, E. (1996). Why Sexist Language Affects Persuasion: The Role of Homophily, Intended Audience, and Offense. Women and Language, Vol. 19 Keller, K. (1996). Initial Retrieval Difficulty and Subsequent Recall in an Advertising Setting. Journal of Consumer Psychology, Vol. 5 Koslow, S. (2000). Can the Truth Hurt? How Honest and Persuasive Advertising Can Unintentionally Lead to Increased Consumer Skepticism. Journal of Consumer Affairs, Vol. 34 Mitchell, A. (1993). Advertising Exposure, Memory, and Choice. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Stevens, B. (1999). Persuasion, Probity, and Paltering: The Prudential Crisis. The Journal of Business Communication, Vol. 36 Sylvester, A. (2000). Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why. Allen & Unwin Wells, W. (1997). Measuring Advertising Effectiveness. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Word Count: 1,721 Read More