Increasing Brand Name Recall in Print Advertising among Asian Consumers

Abstract

The authors replicate and extend previous research on the effects of pictures, consumer information-processing level, ad meaning, and ad exposure on brand name recall by using consumers in a different culture. The findings indicate the robustness of the effects of those factors on recall. Specifically, better recall was obtained with ads containing pictures and words than with words-only ads, with ads processed semantically than with ads processed sensorially, with ads having high level of meaning, and with ads that were repeated. Use of a high-meaning picture-and-words ad that was processed semantically and repeated achieved an improvement of nearly 52% in brand name recall over use of a low-meaning words-only ad that was procssed sensorially and shown once to subjects. The most significant contributor to explaining brand recall variation is the level-of-meaning factor, followed by ad exposure, level of processing, and ad type. Several significant interactions among those factors also were observed that replicate and extend prior findings in psychology and marketing research. Implications of the results are discussed and future research directions are suggested.