Non-Recognition of Print Advertising: Emotion Arousal and Gender Effects

Source: Journal of Marketing Communications; March 2007, Vol. 13 Issue: Number 1 p39-57, 19p


SUMMARY

The article, as a study done by Thomas & Russell on the recognition level of emotional advertisements while comparing female responses to that of males’, is comprised of the results of a research conducted in order to address strategic approaches for advertising industry. Briefly, the research first exposed the subjects to emotion-arousing advertisements as a pretest, and exploring the ratio of their retention as a posttest conducted 4 weeks later. Non-recognition is accepted as the dependent variable of the statistical data because subjects could recall advertisements in the posttest as a result of past memory or experience even though they hadn’t been shown in the pretest, so recognition as a variable could be misleading. The results interestingly showed that emotional involvement is enhancing the memory. Even though the difference was not significant between emotion-neutral and emotion-arousing stimuli in terms of change in memory, the clear difference was put in front of us between female and male participants. Female subjects showed greater memory for the emotional advertisements than the males. Yet, the research had limitations such as using only college students as subjects and using only one advertisement medium, i.e. print, as sample, and there is further need of investigation for the choice of the dependent variable. Nevertheless, the outcome is pioneering for advertising industry, by finding that the strategy of using emotional appeals in advertisements is more appropriate for women.

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