How Schema Incongruity Influences Consumer Responses: Exploring the Degree of Incongruity For Different Sources of Discrepancy

The present research investigates how consumers respond to advertisements that vary in the degree of incongruity with established brand schemata. Two experimental studies were conducted in which the degree of incongruity was manipulated through the verbal (study 1) and the pictorial component (study 2) of a print ad. As expected, results in the second study supported an inverted U relationship between the degree of incongruity and consumer responses, with moderately incongruent advertisements producing more ad processing, better memory, and more favourable attitudes. However, the first study provided mixed results, indicating that verbal-based discrepancies might moderate the effects of schema incongruity.

Citation:

Georgios Halkias and Flora Kokkinaki (2011) ,"How Schema Incongruity Influences Consumer Responses: Exploring the Degree of Incongruity For Different Sources of Discrepancy", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9, eds. Alan Bradshaw, Chris Hackley, and Pauline Maclaran, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 144-150.