An Examination of Classical Conditioning Principles in an Ecologically Valid Advertising Context

Abstract

The objective of this study was to apply classical conditioning principles in an examination of the effect of affectively valenced advertising on brand attitudes and purchase intentions. The most often-cited research on conditioning in an advertising context has primarily used artificial ads for fictitious brands as stimuli to gauge effect on attitudes. For increased ecological validity, practitioner developed television commercials for actual brands were used in a 2 (brand familiarity) X 2 (affect) X 3 (repetition) experimental design. As hypothesized, results suggest that ad affect's influence on brand attitudes was inhibited by familiarity with the brand regardless of ad repetition, while unfamiliar brands showed evidence of a direct affect transfer from ad to brand. Implications for advertising managers in the areas of creative strategies and pretesting are discussed.