THE MORE WE SEE IT THE MORE WE LOVE IT!

Hello Consumers!

Yesterday I had a nice Sunday in, and while finishing all my Uni assignments and reading some scientific paper I was watching the television. Suddenly, I realised that in the time space of 3 hours, I could remember one specific tv advert ( Meerkat Movies) that I had never seen before due to  the fact that it was repeated at least 8 times in only 3 hours. This is one of the reasons why I decided to examine more in depth this phenomena and by reading empirical studies and research papers I found out that is probably the Mere Exposure Effect.

The Mere Exposure effect is based on the idea of the continue exposure of a stimulus under incidental conditions results in enhanced liking for that particular stimulus ( Fang et al, 2007)  Moreover, recent studies have analysed the different explanations for this effect and in particular one reasonable explanation can be attributed to a cognitive perspective. According to Nordhielm (2002), a repeated exposure of a stimulus  enhance its perceptual fluency when the individual is not aware of the true source.The Perceptual Fluency/ Misattribution model  suggests that  the process facilitation is an arousal-like experience and this experience can influence extremity of the evaluation by leading to either a more positive or a more negative evaluation of the stimulus, depending on the contextual factors.

Another theory is the Hedonic Fluency Model, which suggests that the dynamics of information processing can lead to positive affective responses, which lead to a more positive evaluation. High fluency may generate positive affect mainly because it indicates stimulus familiarity, which signals a harmless situation. Moreover, It may also indicate progress toward the goal of successful recognition ( Wienkielman et al, 2003)

A scientific research conducted by Gorn ( 1982) , tried to address the Mere Exposure Effect in advertising questioning whether features like humour, sex, colour, and music in a commercial merely can increase our attention to product information in a message or not. In the present study they decided to use the classical conditioning, therefore 244 undergraduate students were exposed to a neutral product (conditioned stimulus) in the context of a background feature (unconditioned stimulus), often found in commercials. The subjects were exposed to different conditions in which music was playing while watching some slides. The students had then to rate on a scale how much they liked the music.The results supported the idea that the simple association between a product (conditioned stimulus) and another stimulus such as music (unconditioned stimulus) can affect product preferences as measured by product choice.  However, these results could be interpreted not only by looking at the classical conditioning but also as a result of information processing due to the fact that music could have created relevant thoughts.

Moreover, another important implication is whether the repetitive exposure on a brand can influence consumer’s brand choice. I personally believe that it could somehow influence consumers brand preferences and choices due to the familiarity effect. For example, in Italy the most common and repetitive TV adverts are of water brands or pasta brands, in particular the Barilla ( see picture above) , and the brand was found to increase dramatically in sales since they increased the amount of TV adverts shown during the evening’s most watched TV programmes.  From a more scientific perspective, a study conducted by Baker (1999) found exactly the same results.  In this examination, they analysed brand familiarity, affective classical conditioning and Mere Exposure Effect and they found that advertising that evokes positive feelings can influence brand evaluation. The source of these feelings, however, may be critical to their persuasiveness. In fact, positive feelings may be generated by the consideration of brand related information that persuades consumers in terms of outperforming other brands.

In conclusion, the Mere Exposure effect can be crucial in terms of advertising therefore brands should take this into account when programming how many times and advert can be presented in TV or in other forms in order to get all the benefit of this phenomenon.