The Impact of Affective Reactions on Attitudes toward the Advertisement and the Brand: A Step toward Ecological Validity

The author investigates the impact of affective reactions elicited by television advertisements on two variables of major interest in advertising: attitude toward the advertisement (Aad) and postexposure brand attitude (A bp ). Previous research has suffered from using non-natural settings, verbal measures of affect, and unknown brands. The author's study avoids forced exposure, uses a real program in which real commercials for unknown and known brands were embedded, and interviews subjects after they have viewed all the commercials. Thus, it offers a more natural setting in which to examine whether previously established relations between affective reactions and Aad and attitude toward the brand (A b ) still hold. The author measures affective reactions through facial expressions, as well as classical verbal measures, and finds that the contribution of affective responses to Aad and A bp is evident for verbal, but not facial, measures of affect. The impact of affective responses varies in a theoretically predictable way across familiar and unfamiliar brands, with the latter being more influenced by verbal affective reactions generated by the advertisement. The author presents several explanations for the results and offers issues for further research.