We show that the repeated presentation of web banners with brand names can generate increased liking for these brands even when these banners did not receive focal attention. Our main contribution consists of a rigorous control manipulation of the focus of attention in order to assure that subjects did not look at the banners

The idea that exposures to marketing stimuli can lead to unintentional influences has always fascinated marketing practitioners and academics. There is solid evidence now that even in the absence of recall or recognition of the exposure, marketing communications can influence our behaviour (Anand, Sternthal, 1991). These findings have their theoretical underpinnings in the form of research on implicit memory (Shapiro, Krishnan, 2001). Applications of research on implicit memory in marketing are important to advance our understanding of communication effects because most exposures to marketing stimuli involve very little active processing. The fact that we have been exposed to them is therefore unlikely to be remembered. Researchers have, however, gone a step further and have also proposed that brand information that is not attended to can influence attitudes (e.g. Janiszewski 1988, 1990, 1993) and the likelihood that the brand enters the consideration set (e.g. Shapiro, MacInnis, Heckler, 1997). The term « incidental » has been used to describe this type of exposure and demonstrations of the effect have used what is referred to as an incidental exposure paradigm (e.g. Shapiro, MacInnis, Heckler 1997). We argue here that these demonstrations are not as powerful as they could be because it is not entirely clear if the experimental exposures were really non-focal. Our objective is not to put the validity of previous results into question, but rather to make a demonstration of the effect of exposure to unattended materials that is as unambiguous as possible.

Article Finanza marketing produzione
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