Competitive Interference and Consumer Memory for Advertising

Abstract

This article reports the results of three experiments that examine memory interference in an advertising context. In Experiment 1, consumer memory for a brand's advertising was inhibited as a result of subsequent exposure to ads for other products in that manufacturer's product line and ads for competing brands in the product class. Experiment 2 demonstrates analogous proactive interference effects. The results of Experiment 3 indicate that the presence of advertising for competitive brands changes the relationship between ad repetition and consumer memory. Repetition had a positive effect on recall only when there was little or no advertising for similar products.