Article Abstract

"The Diagnosticity of Advertising Generated Brand Attitudes in Brand Choice Contexts"
by William E. Baker - Journal of Consumer Psychology, Vol. 11, 2, pp. 129-139

Advertising effectiveness is often measured by assessing changes in brand attitude before and after advertising exposure. This study demonstrates that advertising generated brand attitudes are often not reliable predictors of the effect of advertising on brand choice behavior. Brand attitudes measure global, holistic responses to the brand. Brand choice, however, is often based on very specific brand information. As the motivation to deliberate at the time of evaluation increases, the ability of holistic brand responses to predict brand choice declines. Critically, consumer motivation to deliberate at the time of advertising exposure can usually be expected to be lower than at the time of brand choice. In this study, it was found that the advertisement that generated the strongest brand attitude was not typically the advertisement that had the strongest effect on brand choice. A better measure of advertising effectiveness than brand attitude is the ability of advertising to effectively communicate the specific information content that consumers are likely to use to form brand preferences at the time of brand choice. This requires advertisers to base advertising message development on a thorough understanding of the consumer choice process.

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