Attend to Context When Advertising

Consumers form attitudes about a product or service in terms of the context in which an ad for the product or service is presented. See context through the eyes of your shoppers.
     Some years ago, researchers at Northwestern University and University of Chicago had study participants look at an advertisement for shampoo. They wanted to evaluate the degree to which exposure to the shampoo ad would affect the participants’ impressions of a related product—hair conditioners. In a previous study, the same researchers had found that thinking about mayonnaise products builds a more positive impression of related condiments, such as ketchup.
     But when the ad presented to the participants was for a lice-killer shampoo, this instead led to more negative impressions of the hair conditioners. Consumers like their hair conditioners to have a pleasant sensual personality. Potions associated with killing and with bloodsuckers fail to project that personality.
     In contrast, thinking about the lice-killer had no significant effect on the participants’ liking of products from categories that don’t depend on being pleasantly sensual in order to motivate purchase. Flashlight batteries, for instance, as the lice-killer shampoo researchers predicted and then confirmed.
     Similarly, where you place an ad inside your store influences the effects of that ad.
     More recent research surprisingly suggested that the rules are different for outdoor advertising. Researchers at Hofstra University and Saint Louis University explored the effects of billboard location on the beliefs consumers formed about the advertised product or service, the consumers’ positive or negative feelings about the item, and the consumers’ intentions to purchase the item.
     They found no evidence of the background environment impacting the beliefs, emotions, or intentions.
     What’s going on? First off, consider a methodological issue: When research fails to find an effect, it might be because the researchers weren’t looking in the right place or in the right way. It’s possible the neighborhood in which the billboard is located does make a difference.
     But I suspect another explanation accounts for the findings. It has to do with what Colorado State University researchers refer to as the differences between “personal territory” and “public territory.” Most people looking at a billboard are inside their own automobile. That’s their context more than is the neighborhood.
     An important implication for retailers: When using outdoor advertising, choose the locations based on traffic patterns, not by the quality of the neighborhood where the billboard is positioned.

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