Overview of Findings

Most print ads utilize text to communicate with consumers. However, how consumers integrate the information conveyed in the text of one ad, or across multiple ads, has rarely been explored. Therefore, we are left with the following questions: How do consumers put together the information provided in several ads for the same brand?, and How can marketers facilitate and enhance that process?

The article reviewed here presents a psychological theory of how individuals make meaning from a text. That theory argues that a text must have two characteristics if the writer wants readers to form an accurate and full idea of what the text says. First, the text must have “referential continuity.” That is, it has to keep key points and entities in the content of the ad fresh in the reader’s mind on a continuous basis. Second, the text must have “coherence.” That is, its structure must facilitate the integration of different pieces of information. For example, a text has referential continuity when paragraphs or sentences repeat certain key cues throughout the text. A text has coherence when its structure follows a causal progression (e.g., one thing leads to another), making integration of the different events easier than if they are just listed without a strong relationship among them.

The article describes four experiments that apply that theory to ad campaigns. Different ads are treated as different texts, and each of them must repeat certain cues that refresh consumers’ minds and remind them of previous ads. Only then can consumers process the different ads as a whole. The studies use ads that have a strong structure across ads, like when one ad presents a problem that is not answered within the same ad, but it is solved in a different ad (book-end ads). Such ads are then compared to campaigns that use independent ads. The studies find that book-end ads (high coherence) lead to superior recall and attitudes but only when verbal cues are repeated across the ads (high referential continuity). The article also investigates whether pictures can serve as cues to establish referential continuity and finds that they can, but only when the pictures are related in meaning to the ad content.

Significance of Research

The research presented here integrates two generally opposing views of text processing: (1) a top-down approach consisting of the use of coherence relations, which are based on scripts like causal or problem-solution relations, and (2) a bottom-up approach consisting of the use of cues to reactivate information from long-term memory. The view of text processing advocated here joins two streams of advertising research: studies of cue repetition effects and studies of how the presentation format or structure of an ad’s text influences ad responses. Further, the process underlying cue repetition and presentation format effects is identified and described in detail.

Overall, this article provides a new direction for future advertising research. A text processing perspective describes the process through which consumers reinstate and integrate knowledge from different ads in a campaign with a common theme or story line. This is a significant area for further research, as much of the existing literature on advertising effectiveness focuses on individual ads. In addition, the text processing approach provides a theoretical backdrop against which a host of variables could be tested to examine their effect on ad processing. For example, future research could explore the effect of varying the amount of conceptual overlap between reinstating cues and previously processed information on referential continuity, or it could examine the effect of conflicting information on the imposition of coherence. Also, factors that have historically played a major role in advertising research (motivation, involvement, ability to process, etc.) could be included in future studies.

Implications for Marketers

This research shows how advertisers can design campaigns to better fit how consumers process information. Two recommendations emerge from the studies in this article:

1. Campaigns that tell a story spanning several ads (book-end advertising) result in more positive evaluations and greater memory of the ad claims than campaigns that include the more traditional, independent ads. This explains the success of campaigns such as Folgers’ series of ads that told a romantic story spanning several ads. However, for this type of ad campaign to provide superior results, there must be cues that are repeated across the ads. For example, certain phrases or slogans should be repeated at least once in each ad.

2. Pictures can serve as cues that activate previous ads in consumers’ memories, but they have to be related to the ad content. For example, logos that do not tie in with the ads’ content will not work; but pictures that support the text (e.g., a tent when the story is about camping) will work.

Overall, the article suggests that advertisers should pay attention to the wording and structure of the text in the ads. Ad copy has to capture attention, as is well-established in advertising, but it must also facilitate integration of the ads’ content in memory.

Original Article

Luna, David (2004), “Integrating Ad Information: A Text Processing Perspective,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 15 (1), 38-51.

References for More Information

Adaval, R., & Wyer, R. S. Jr. (1998). The role of narratives in consumer information processing. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 7, 207-245.

Albrecht, J. E., & Myers, J. L. (1998). Accessing distant text information during reading: Effects of contextual cues. Discourse Processes, 26, 87-107.

Graesser, A. C., Singer, M., & Trabasso, T. (1994). Constructing inferences during narrative text comprehension. Psychological Review, 101, 371-395.

Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983). Mental models. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Zwaan, R. A., & Radvansky, G. A. (1998). Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychological Bulletin, 123, 162-185.