The Effect of Terminologies on Attitudes Toward Advertisements and Brands pps

The Effect of Terminologies on Attitudes Toward Advertisementsand Brands: Consumer Product Knowledge as a Moderator Shih-Chieh ChuangÆ Chia-Ching Tsai Æ Yin-Hui ChengÆ Ya-Chung Sun Publi

The Effect of Terminologies on Attitudes Toward Advertisements

and Brands: Consumer Product Knowledge as a Moderator

Shih-Chieh ChuangÆ Chia-Ching Tsai Æ

Yin-Hui ChengÆ Ya-Chung Sun

Published online: 2 July 2009

Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the

relationship between advertisement terminology and

con-sumer product knowledge in the attitudes toward

adver-tisements and brands

Design/Methodology/Approach One hundred and twenty

undergraduates participated in a 2 9 2 (terminologies are

used versus terminologies are not used 9 high consumer

product knowledge versus low consumer product

knowl-edge) between-subjects design

Findings Low consumer product knowledge individuals

form significantly more favorable advertisement attitudes

and brand attitudes toward advertisements with

terminol-ogies than toward advertisements without terminolterminol-ogies,

but no differentially favorable advertisement attitudes and

brand attitudes are formed for high consumer product

knowledge individuals

Implications The interaction effects of message-level

variables (such as terminology) and consumer-level

variables (such as consumer product knowledge) are of importance The effectiveness of advertisement terminol-ogies depends on the levels of consumer product knowl-edge Understanding the consumer-level variables of target markets before making advertisement decision is very critical Techniques of data-mining and psychographics benefit advertisement managers to better realize the tar-geted consumers

Originality/Value This is one of the pioneering studies to examine the relationship between advertisement terminol-ogy and consumer product knowledge in the attitudes toward advertisements and brands Additionally, most of the prior studies on advertisement effects associated with the use of advertisement terminology ignored the influence

of consumer product knowledge The present study helps

us to understand the influence of consumer product knowledge in advertisement effects and provides evidence for the relationship between advertisement terminology and consumer product knowledge in the attitudes toward advertisements and brands

Keywords Terminology
Consumer product knowledge
Attitudes toward advertisements
Attitudes toward brands

Introduction

Terminologies refer to the advertising messages that are associated with the functions of products based on scientific specification and technology (Hong2002) For instance, the GPRS system of a mobile phone, the ZPT ingredient of shampoos for anti-dandruff, and the ABS system of vehicles are popular terminologies used in advertisements

In recent years, terminologies have been used in large quantities in advertisements (Meeds1998) Shibata (1983)

Received and reviewed by former editor, George Neuman.

S.-C Chuang

Department of Business Administration, National Chung Cheng

University, 168, University Rd., Min-Hsiung, Chia-Yi, Taiwan

e-mail: bmascc@ccu.edu.tw; chuang.teacher@msa.hinet.net

C.-C Tsai

National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Yunlin,

Taiwan

Y.-H Cheng (&)

Department of International Business, National Taichung

University, 140 Min-Shen Road, Taichung 40306, Taiwan

e-mail: yinhui77@gmail.com

Y.-C Sun

Vanung University, Chung-Li, Taiwan

DOI 10.1007/s10869-009-9122-4

pointed out the use of monolingual messages, and English

is increasingly important and is used more frequently in

Japan Mueller (1992) investigated the use of Western

languages in Japanese advertisements in 1978 and 1989

and showed that the percentage of English (without

trans-lating into Japanese) that was used in Japanese

advertise-ments had been increasing The main reasons for using

terminologies in advertisements, even not in the native

language, are that they serve to attract the attention of

audiences, and audiences may process advertisements that

contain terminologies by using the ‘‘peripheral routes’’ of

elaboration likelihood model (ELM), which makes the

advertisements persuasive (Petty and Cacioppo1986) In

addition, the use of terminologies may invoke professional

recognitions and technology associations, and result in

professional images, which in turn have an impact on the

purchasing behavior of consumers

Previous studies have suggested that the use of

termi-nologies in advertisements can increase the advertising

effectiveness (Hong2002) Hong examined the effects of

using terminologies in advertisements for different product

categories and showed that when the advertised products

are less innovative, consumers adopt information searching

of low involvement, and do not need to collect too much

information Therefore, consumers’ attitudes would not be

favorable to the terminologies, and resultantly, the

adver-tising effectiveness of terminologies is dramatically

reduced In contrast, when the advertised products are more

innovative, a higher advertising effectiveness of

terminol-ogies occurs because for such high involvement products,

participants would employ more information searching,

and advertisements that contain terminologies appeal to

audiences for more cognition

In general, most consumers are ignorant of innovative

products while they might be knowledgeable about less

innovative products Therefore, that consumers’ product

knowledge would affect the advertising effectiveness of

terminologies was assumed This study focuses on the

advertising effectiveness of terminologies for consumers

who possess a high and low level of product knowledge

Literature Review

Terminology

Terminologies are the advertising messages that are

con-nected with the functions of products based on scientific

specification and technology (Hong 2002) According to

Stewart and Koslow (1989), the messages in print

adver-tisements can be served to distinguish from other

com-peting brands so that the products can be recalled by

consumers, and consumers will be persuaded to buy the

products The messages will form the so-called advertising value in the mind of consumers and will have an impact on consumers’ purchasing behavior It is the reason why ter-minologies are used in advertisements

The Effect of the Terminology on Attitudes Toward Advertisements and Brands

ELM (Petty and Cacioppo1986) can be applied to explain the effect of terminologies In ELM, the central route is presumed to produce more enduring judgments that are based on the extensive and critical elaboration of adver-tising messages while the peripheral route results in rela-tively ephemeral judgments that are grounded in simple and intuitive inferences If consumers adopt the ‘‘peripheral cues’’ of the ELM to elaborate the messages of advertise-ments, they will associate terminologies with a high level

of technology and professionalism and thus pay more attention to the advertisements Consumers devote more resources to noticing and processing the contents of advertisements with terminologies, and consequently, the advertisements are more persuasive

Empirically, advertisements that include terminologies cause preferences for the advertisements and brands and increase the desires of consumers to purchase the advertised products Such advertisements can make deeper impres-sions of consumers especially when the advertised products are innovative, and consumers would attach a high-tech-nology image to the advertised products, which results in better attitudes toward the advertisements (Hong2002) Terminologies represent professionalism for consumers and can serve to attract consumers’ attention Consumers tend to associate brands that are promoted by advertisements containing terminologies with uniqueness and superiority compared to advertisements that does not contain terminol-ogies Thus, the presence of terminologies in advertisements can create a better brand attitude of consumers Thus, Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2 are proposed as follows: Hypothesis 1 Advertisements that contain terminologies will cause better attitudes toward advertisements than those without terminologies

Hypothesis 2 Advertisements that contain terminologies will cause better attitudes toward brands than those without terminologies

Consumer Product Knowledge

Consumer knowledge is one of the important constructs in consumer behavior and can affect information searching (Brucks1985; Rao and Sieben1992) and information pro-cessing (Alba and Hutchinson1987; Bettman and Park1980; Johnson and Russo1980; Rao and Monroe1988) Bieha and

Chakravarti (1983) discovered that consumers make choices

after they acquire information and also pointed out that

consumers recall different information based on different

patterns of decision making Lynch et al (1988) proved that

consumers make decisions based on the information in their

memories Rao and Monroe (1988) found that product

knowledge can influence how consumers assess products

Consumers with varying levels of knowledge in specific

product category respond differently to advertisements For

example, MacInnis and Jaworski (1989) evidenced that there

is a variation in the processing of advertisements because of

the different consumer knowledge levels Toncar and Munch

(2001) showed that when advertising agencies adopt

incomplete product advocacy, the information consumers

could not fully understand, they may lose the control over the

information and have to take the risk of misunderstanding the

information However, the incomplete product advocacy can

significantly increase the effectiveness of print advertising,

making advertisements more persuasive and recallable

Notably, the effectiveness is limited to consumers with low

product knowledge Consumers with low product knowledge

are more motivated to pay attention to advertisements that

contain product-related information In addition, they adopt

the peripheral route to elaborate such advertisements and

devote more resources to processing the advertisements It is

expected to have a positive effect on the persuasiveness of

the advertisement and brand awareness In contrast, a

knowledgeable consumer is less motivated to devote the

resources to judge and elaborate the messages in such

advertisements, and thus the advertising effectiveness is

lessened Therefore, we presume when consumers have low

product knowledge, advertisements that contain

terminolo-gies have a more positive effect on the attitudes toward

advertising and brand than those without terminologies

Therefore, Hypothesis 3 and Hypothesis 4 were generated

Hypothesis 3 Advertisements that contain terminologies

will cause more favorable attitudes toward advertising than

those that do not contain terminologies for participants

with low product knowledge, but will not for those subjects

with high product knowledge

Hypothesis 4 Advertisements that contain terminologies

will cause better attitudes toward brand than those that do

not contain terminologies for participants with low product

knowledge, but will not for those subjects with high

product knowledge

Method

The study primarily examines how the use of terminologies

influences attitudes toward advertisements and brands for

consumers with different levels of product knowledge The experimental design is as follows

Experimental Design

One hundred and twenty undergraduate students were recruited in this experiment as a part of the requirements of

a marketing management course The experiment was a

2 9 2 (terminologies are used versus terminologies are not used 9 high consumer knowledge versus low consumer knowledge) between-subjects experimental design The participants were randomly divided into the four experi-mental conditions: terminologies are used and low con-sumer knowledge, terminologies are not used and low consumer knowledge, terminologies are used and high consumer knowledge, and terminologies are not used and high consumer knowledge

Manipulation of Terminology

The participants under the conditions in which terminolo-gies were used were asked to read a leaflet that contained terminologies, and those under the conditions in which terminologies were not used were asked to read a leaflet that did not contain terminologies The leaflets were about an e-play cell phone, and the contents included the photographs

of e-play cell phones and the descriptions of cell phone function with or without terminology The six terminologies including TFT, GSM, WAP, MMS, CMOS, and infrared transmission are selected and used in the study according to Hong (2002) We designed an advertisement with a verbal description that did not use terminologies and was close in meaning to the aforementioned terminologies as the advertisements for the conditions without using terminol-ogies For example, MMS was used in the advertisements with terminologies, whereas multimedia messaging service was used in the advertisements without terminology The fundamental difference between the advertisements with and without terminologies was that the terminologies that were used in the leaflet about e-play cell phones were printed in red and boldface font A questionnaire, using the question ‘‘How many terminologies do you think there is in this advertisement?’’ on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (not

at all) to 5 (a lot) to rate the participants’ feelings about the terminologies, was also administered

Manipulation of Consumer Product Knowledge

To divide the participants into two groups, high and low consumer product knowledge groups, the study designed a

‘‘Cell Phone Terminology-Related Instructions’’ document The document covered six terminologies including TFT, GSM, WAP, MMS, CMOS, and infrared transmission For

example, the document contained the information that a

TFT (Thin Film Transistor) is made of amorphous silicon

(a-Si) and the combination of TFT technology with LCD

technology is called TFT-LCD When this technology is

applied to the screen of a cell phone, the display of text and

graphics is enhanced and the cell phone becomes slimmer,

more compact, and energy saving

The high-knowledge group was asked to read the ‘‘Cell

Phone Terminology-Related Instruction,’’ but this step was

omitted for the low-knowledge group Both groups were

then asked to take a ‘‘Cell Phone Product Knowledge Test’’

to investigate if consumer product knowledge were

suc-cessfully manipulated

Procedure

The experiment started with giving the participants

instruc-tions concerning the experiment, such as not to talk and to

read the product information carefully The subjects in the

high-knowledge treatment were given the ‘‘Cell Phone

Terminology-Related Instruction’’ document to read for

5 min, whereas the ones in the low-knowledge treatment

were not given anything to read In addition, the subjects in

the treatment terminologies were used got the ‘‘E-play Cell

Phone Leaflet with Terminology’’ to read, while the ones in

the treatment terminologies were not used had the ‘‘E-play

Cell Phone Leaflet without Terminology’’ to read for 30 s

Finally, the participants were asked to complete scales

to assess their feelings about the terminologies, the levels

of consumer product knowledge, and attitudes toward

advertisements and brands The experiment took *15 min.

Measurement of Attitudes Toward Advertisement

and Brand

According to Muehling and Laczniak (1988), this study used

eight 5-point scales ranging from 1 to 5 to measure

adver-tisement attitude The larger numbers indicated more

posi-tive responses to the advertisements The participants were

asked to indicate their attitude toward advertisements by

completing the statement, ‘‘The advertisement was…’’ not

attractive–attractive, bad–good, unpleasant–pleasant,

unfa-vorable–favorable, dislike–like, dull–dynamic, depressing–

refreshing, and unenjoyable–enjoyable The endpoints were

coded 1–5, with larger numbers indicating more positive

responses Cronbach’s alpha is 0.91

Brand attitude (a = 0.88) was measured by using the six

5-point scales ranging from 1 to 5, with larger numbers

indicating more positive attitudes toward the brands The

participants were asked to complete the statement, ‘‘My

attitude toward the e-play cell phone was…’’ bad–good,

unfavorable–favorable, negative–positive,

unlikable–like-able, unattractive–attractive, and unpleasant–pleasant

Results

Manipulation Checks

The t test is used to investigate if terminologies and con-sumer product knowledge were successfully manipulated The t test results were depicted in Tables 1and2 According to Tables1and2, the mean for the treatment terminologies were used is 3.63 and that for the treatment terminologies were not used is 2.88 The mean for the high-knowledge treatment is 16.2 and that for the low-knowl-edge treatment is 12.3 The p-values were 0.005 and 0.000, respectively, indicating that the manipulations of termi-nologies and consumer product knowledge were successful

Effects of Terminologies and Consumer Product Knowledge on Attitudes Toward Advertisements

Two-way ANOVA was used to examine the effects of ter-minologies and consumer knowledge on attitudes toward advertisements The results are shown in Tables 3,4, and Fig.1

The study showed that the use of terminologies caused significantly better advertisement attitude (M = 3.5;

SD = 0.87) than the absence of terminologies (M = 3.11;

SD = 0.88) (F(1,133) = 5.894, p \ 0.05), but consumer product knowledge had no significant impact on advertise-ment attitude (F(1,133) = 1.88, p [ 0.1) Thus, Hypothesis

1 was supported In addition, the experiment found that terminologies and consumer product knowledge had a sig-nificant interaction on advertisement attitude (F(1,133) = 4.02, p \ 0.05) The use of terminologies made better advertisement attitude (M = 3.76; SD = 0.82) than the absence of terminologies (M = 3.27; SD = 0.74) for the participants with low product knowledge (t(58) = 3.47,

p\ 0.01) However, the use of terminologies does not result

in a significantly more favorable advertisement attitude (M = 3.23; SD = 0.86) than the absence of terminologies

Table 1 Results of terminologies manipulation check

Terminologies were not used 2.88

Table 2 Results of consumer product knowledge manipulation check

High consumer product knowledge 16.2 6.92 0.000 Low consumer product knowledge 12.3

(M = 3.06; SD = 1.01) for the participants with high

product knowledge (t(58) = 0.27, p [ 0.5) As a result,

Hypothesis 3 was supported

Effects of Terminologies and Consumer Product Knowledge on Attitudes Toward Brands

A 2 9 2 ANOVA was used to examine the effects of ter-minologies and consumer knowledge on attitudes toward brands The results are depicted in Tables5,6, and Fig.2 The study showed that the use of terminologies caused significantly better brand attitude (M = 3.4; SD = 0.97) than the absence of terminologies (M = 3.08; SD = 0.96) (F(1,133) = 3.31, p \ 0.1), but consumer product knowl-edge had no significant impact on brand attitude (F(1,133) = 2.06, p [ 0.1) Therefore, Hypothesis 2 was supported Moreover, the results also showed that termi-nologies and consumer product knowledge had a signifi-cant interaction on brand attitude (F(1,133) = 4.04,

p\ 0.05) The use of terminology made better brand atti-tude (M = 3.7; SD = 0.95) than the absence of terminol-ogy for the participants with low product knowledge (M = 3.03, SD = 0.76; t(58) = 2.98, p \ 0.05) However, the use of terminologies (M = 3.13; SD = 0.92) did not result in a significantly more favorable brand attitude than

Table 3 Results of two-way

ANOVA—attitudes toward

advertisements

* p \ 0.1; ** p \ 0.05;

*** p \ 0.01

Terminologies 9 consumer product knowledge**

Table 4 Means of the attitudes toward advertisements of each

treatment

Terminologies were used

Terminologies were not used

Average

Low consumer

Product knowledge

3.76 (n = 30)

3.27 (n = 30)

3.52

High consumer

Product knowledge

3.23 (n = 30)

3.06 (n = 30)

3.15

3

3.1

3.2

3.3

3.4

3.5

3.6

3.7

3.8

used

Low Consumer Product Knowledge High Consumer Product Knowledge

Fig 1 Interaction of terminologies and consumer product knowledge

on advertisement attitude

Table 5 Results of two-way

ANOVA—attitudes toward

brands

* p \ 0.1; ** p \ 0.05

Terminologies 9 consumer product knowledge**

Table 6 Means of the attitudes toward brands of each treatment

Terminologies were used

Terminologies were not used

Average

Low consumer Product knowledge

3.70 (n = 30)

3.03 (n = 30)

3.37

High consumer Product knowledge

3.13 (n = 30)

3.10 (n = 30)

3.13

the absence of terminology (M = 3.1; SD = 1.13) for the

participants with high product knowledge (t(58) = 0.125,

p[ 0.05) Consequently, Hypothesis 4 was supported

Discussion

The study shows that the use of terminologies in

adver-tisement has significant impact on adveradver-tisement and brand

attitudes However, if consumer product knowledge was

used in the experiment as a moderator, an interaction

occurs between terminology and consumer product

knowledge When consumer product knowledge is low, the

use of terminologies creates better advertisement and brand

attitudes than not using terminologies In contrast, when

consumer product knowledge is high, no significant effect

because of including terminologies in advertisement is

observed We gauge that when consumers are low in

product knowledge, i.e., they are less familiar with

spe-cialized information that is relevant to an advertised

product, consumers’ attitude toward brands would be

enhanced by using terminologies in advertisements

How-ever, when consumers are high in product knowledge, i.e.,

they have already possessed certain product knowledge,

and therefore the use of terminologies in advertisements

does not improve advertisement or brand attitudes

The use of terminologies has become popular across

varied product categories, such as the GPRS system of

mobile phones, the ABS system of vehicles, the ZPT

ingredient of anti-dandruff shampoos, and PITERA in

facial care products Hong (2002) investigated the effects

of terminologies across different levels of innovative

products and indicated that terminologies caused better

advertising effectiveness for the less innovative products

compared with the more innovative ones

According to Petty and Cacioppo (1986), consumers in low involvement would not devote many resources to process the message, but consumers in high involvement would When consumers dedicate more resources to noticing and processing the advertising messages, resul-tantly the advertisements would be more persuasive Generally, consumers are low involved when shopping commodities They consume commodities very often and even purchase them habitually They would not dedicate to process messages of advertisements with terminologies Besides, commodities are fairly simple and easily under-stood by most people, and most consumers might be knowledgeable about commodities In this study, we found that terminologies do not cause better attitudes toward advertisements and brands in the case of low consumer product knowledge Thus, for commodities, we suggest that there would be no significant effects of terminologies

on advertising effectiveness However, it deserves further research across varied product categories

This study has a specific implication for practitioners The interactive effects of message-level variables, such as terminology, and consumer-level variables, like consumer knowledge, are of prime importance The effectiveness of using terminologies depends on the levels of consumer product knowledge Understanding consumer-level vari-ables of target market before making any advertising decision is very significant As data-mining and psycho-graphic profiling techniques improve, it is conducive

to realize the target consumers better for advertising managers

Limitations and Future Research

One of this study’s limitations is that the participants were asked to read leaflets and answer the questionnaire in a limited period of time Thus, it is not easy to accurately measure their attitudes toward advertisements and brands

in real-life situation Moreover, the sample size was small and there was only one experiment object; future research should improve on these two aspects and continue to build the theory

In addition to consumer product knowledge, consumer lifestyle and personal traits could serve as moderators to explore a wider range of possible variables Furthermore, this study used only print media as a means of advertising, and future studies could use dynamic advertisements that contain sound and images to ascertain whether the effects

of terminology and consumer product knowledge would be different

Acknowledgments The authors like to thank George A Neuman as well as the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

used

Low Consumer Product Knowledge High Consumer Product Knowledge

3

3.1

3.2

3.3

3.4

3.5

3.6

3.7

3.8

Fig 2 Interaction of terminologies and consumer product knowledge

on brand attitude

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