The Effect of Conceptual and Perceptual Fluency on Brand Evaluation

According to the processing fluency model, advertising exposures enhance the ease with which consumers recognize and process a brand. In turn, this increased perceptual fluency leads to consumers having more favorable attitudes toward the brand. The authors extend the processing fluency model to examine the effect of conceptual fluency on attitudes. In three experiments, the authors show that when a target comes to mind more readily and becomes conceptually fluent, as when it is presented in a predictive context (e.g., a bottle of beer featured in an advertisement that shows a man entering a bar) or when it is primed by a related construct (e.g., an image of ketchup following an advertisement of mayonnaise), participants develop more favorable attitudes toward the target. It is believed that positive valence of fluent processing underlies these processing-fluency effects. When conceptual fluency is associated with negative valence (e.g., hair conditioner primed by a lice-killing shampoo), the authors observe less favorable attitudes.