The Smartphone Affect: The Effect of Smartphone Attachment on Adolescents’ Susceptibility to Brands in Mobile Advergames
Zeph M. C. van Berlo
Master’s Thesis
Research Master’s programme Communication Science Supervisor: Eva A. van Reijmersdal
Date of Completion: 06/24/2016
Author Note
Zeph M. C. van Berlo, Graduate School of Communication, University of Amsterdam This research was supported in part by a compensation offered by the Graduate School of Communication at the University of Amsterdam and a generous donation of stimulus material by Esther Rozendaal, Radboud University.
Correspondence concerning this thesis should be addressed to Zeph M. C. van Berlo, Student number: 10795286, University of Amsterdam. Contact: zeph.vanberlo@student.uva.nl
Abstract
Despite the acknowledgement of the academic world that prevalence of smartphone attachment among adolescents is high, little is known about its effects. Therefore, this study examined the effect of smartphone attachment on the susceptibility of adolescents to brand placement of unfamiliar and familiar brands in mobile advergames. Susceptibility was measured by
considering brand attitude and persuasion knowledge. An experiment among adolescents age 13 to 19 (N = 81) showed that both familiar and unfamiliar brand placements did not affect brand attitude directly. Familiar brand placements showed a positive effect on persuasion knowledge activation, and a positively mediated effect on brand attitude by persuasion knowledge. No effect on persuasion knowledge, nor an indirect effect on brand attitude were found for the unfamiliar brand placement. Smartphone attachment showed a positive effect on persuasion knowledge for unfamiliar brand placements, but not for the familiar ones. No overall effect of smartphone attachment was found on adolescents’ susceptibility to advertising in mobile advergames. Firstly, this study underlines the importance of considering brand familiarity when studying the effects of smartphone attachment. In addition, these findings suggest that adolescents are highly
susceptible to brand placement of familiar brands in advergames, especially when the persuasive intent is identified.
Keywords: advergames, adolescents, smartphone attachment, persuasion knowledge, brand attitudes, brand familiarity, brand placement
The Smartphone Affect: The Effect of Smartphone Attachment on Adolescents’ Susceptibility to Brands in Mobile Advergames
Smartphones are an important part of everyday live for many adolescents. Whether they use their smartphones to connect to their social network (Xie, 2014), as a source of entertainment (Martí Parreño, Sanz-Blas, Ruiz-Mafé, & Aldás-Manzano, 2013), or simply as a status symbol (Vanden Abeele, Antheunis, & Schouten, 2014), many adolescents indicate that they cannot picture a world without their smartphones anymore (Walsh, White, & Young, 2008). Separation distress when being separated from their smartphones (Walsh, White, & Young, 2007) and the fact that some adolescents even perceive their smartphones to be an extension of themselves (Walsh, White, Cox, & Young, 2011) imply that some of them experience strong feelings of attachment to their smartphones.
Despite the prevalence of smartphone attachment among adolescents, few studies have actually looked into its effects. One of the handful of studies that did, found that for adolescents, smartphone attachment increases their acceptance of mobile advertising (Sultan, Rohm, & Gao, 2009). From this study it remains unclear however if the increase in acceptance of mobile advertising also increases adolescents’ susceptibility to this type of advertising. Given that almost all adolescents own a mobile phone, and nearly 75% of them use their phones to connect to the internet (Van der Schors, Madern, & Van der Werf, 2013) where they are likely to come across mobile advertising, it is important to consider the effects of smartphone attachment in the context of adolescents’ susceptibility to mobile advertising.
A popular tool for advertisers to reach adolescents on their smartphones are advergames. Advergames are simple online or mobile games that have brands embedded in the content of the game (Redondo, 2012). A report by MediaScience (2014) indicated that more than five percent
of the top 500 companies in the Netherlands have one or more advergames included in their marketing strategy.
Since it is not always clear to adolescents that advergames are advertisements in disguise, created to persuade rather than just to entertain, they are considered covert advertising (Evans & Park, 2015). Advergames have proven to be especially effective when targeted at adolescents, for adolescents can be impulsive and therefore more susceptible to this type of advertising (Harris et al., 2013).
Most studies that have examined the effects of advergames have focused primarily on advergames played on a computer or on a tablet. In the context of the increasing use of and attachment to smartphones among adolescents, it seems important however to study specifically the effects of mobile advergames on adolescents. This study examines the effects of smartphone attachment on brand placement in mobile advergames for both familiar and unfamiliar brands. Differentiating between these two types of brand seems important, as studies on other forms of advertising (e.g., Phelps & Thorson, 1991; Mau, Silberer, & Constien, 2008) have shown that people respond differently to familiar brands than to unfamiliar ones.
The aim of this study is to examine the effect of smartphone attachment on the susceptibility of adolescents to brand placement of familiar and unfamiliar brands in mobile advergames. In the first part of this study the effect of brand familiarity will be discussed in the context of mobile advergames, after which the effects of smartphone attachment on both types of brand are tested. Since little is known about the effects of smartphone attachment, insights from classical and brand attachment theory will be used as a reference. Indicators of susceptibility that are considered in this study are brand attitude and persuasion knowledge activation, since these
have been proven to be effective indicators of advertising susceptibility in the past (Terlutter & Capella, 2013).
This study is the first study that empirically tests the effects of smartphone attachment on adolescents’ susceptibility to persuasion in the context of mobile advergames. Its findings will therefore contribute greatly to the theoretical understanding of the effects of smartphone attachment on adolescents. In addition, they could offer valuable insight for advertisers that are considering incorporating advergames into their marketing mix.
Brand Familiarity and Brand Attitude
Positive effects on brand attitude for brands embedded in advergames are often attributed to affect spillover from the advergame to the brand (Cauberghe & De Pelsmacker, 2010). The positive affect evoked by playing advergames is believed to spill over to the embedded brand, resulting in a more positive attitude toward this brand (Waiguny, Nelson, & Marko, 2013). Martí-Parreño, Aldás-Manzano, Currás-Pérez, and Sánchez-García (2012) refine this assumption by stating that besides positive (entertainment) affect, also negative (irritation) affect can be experienced when playing advergames. They claim that both types of affect contribute toward a person’s brand attitude.
Strong pre-existing brand attitudes are believed to mitigate the effect of affect spillover, and are assumed to be the reason when no positive effects on brand attitude are found for familiar brands (Machleit & Wilson, 1988). According to Fazio, Powell, and Williams (1998) people have many associations with familiar brands based on prior experience with the brand, which can be retrieved from memory. When retrieved, these associations are believed to be considered during the evaluative process that preceded brand attitude change after being confronted with a persuasion message (Campbell & Keller, 2003). Because people have no
associations with unfamiliar brands, they cannot be retrieved from memory. This results in weaker and less stable attitudes for unfamiliar brands, when compared to familiar ones (Fazio et al., 1998). This would imply that for unfamiliar brands, brand attitudes are more easily affected by affect transfer than for familiar brands.
Literature on the effects of brand familiarity on brand attitude in the context of
advergames is scarce. This effect has been studied extensively however, in the context of other forms of advertising (e.g., television commercials, in-game advertising). Two studies (Machleit & Wilson, 1988; Phelps & Thorson, 1991) on television advertisements have indicated that commercials for unfamiliar brands have a positive effect on brand attitude toward a brand, where the findings were mixed for familiar brands. Mau et al. (2008) found similar results for
unfamiliar brands in the context of in-game advertising. They did however find a negative effect on brand attitude for familiar brands.
Overall, the literature supports predicting a positive effect on brand attitude for unfamiliar brands. For familiar brands however, the evidence is inconclusive and sometimes even supports a negative effect on brand attitude. When taking into account the likely strong pre-existing attitudes toward familiar brands, it seems unlikely that affect transfer will have an effect on familiar brands in advergames. The following hypothesis is therefore proposed:
H1. Brand placement has a positive effect on brand attitude for unfamiliar brands in mobile advergames, but no effect for familiar brands.
Persuasion knowledge
Even though pre-existing attitudes might explain the absence of an effect for familiar brands, they do not explain negative effects found for familiar brands on brand attitude in for example the study by Mau, et al. (2008). An alternative approach, rooted in the idea that
consumers resist to persuasive attempts (Knowles & Linn, 2004), would therefore be more appropriate.
This assumption is not new, and in the advergame literature both irritation (Martí-Parreño, Aldás-Manzano et al., 2012) and persuasion knowledge (Van Reijmersdal, Rozendaal, & Buijzen, 2012) are mentioned as coping mechanisms that explain negative effects of familiar brand placement on brand attitude. Because both concepts are rooted in the same general idea, that users will resist to a persuasive attempt once they recognize the persuasive intent of the message, this paper will primarily focus on the concept of persuasion knowledge.
Friestad and Wright (1994) suggest that once a person recognizes the persuasive intent of a message, persuasion knowledge is activated. Persuasion knowledge activation triggers a more critical processing of persuasive messages, which is generally believed to result in increased skepticism and a more negative attitude toward a brand. In other words, persuasion knowledge mediates the negative effect of brand placement on brand attitudes (Boerman, Van Reijmersdal, Neijens, 2012).
The sheer exposure to a brand can trigger persuasion knowledge, for brands imply a persuasive intent (Laran, Dalton, & Andrade, 2011), however there are exceptions. Brands in advergames are generally integrated as part of the game, and the persuasive intent of the brand is thus purposely hidden. Studies on other forms of covert advertising, like product placement on television, have shown that people sometimes fail to recognize the persuasive intent of embedded brands when this is not disclosed (Boerman et al., 2012).
Like for other covert marketing techniques, it is likely that the persuasive intent of a brand placement in an advergame is harder to recognize than it would be in regular advertising. Brands attract less attention as a result of being embedded into an advergame, and therefore the
persuasive intent is not always identified (Cauberghe & De Pelsmacker, 2010). Redondo (2012) showed that for a familiar brand placement persuasion knowledge was activated only after extended exposure in advergames. No studies have examined persuasion knowledge activation for unfamiliar brand placements in advergames. It seems however likely that unfamiliar brands are less prone to be recognized as brands, and more likely to be considered part of the advergame than familiar brands.
Lee and Faber (2007) showed that recognition of a brand requires cognitive resources. They found that in the context of advergames these resources are primarily allocated to processing the game, rather than to processing the embedded brands. Recognizing familiar brands however, requires less cognitive effort than recognizing unfamiliar brands (Campbell & Keller, 2003). Unfamiliar brands are thus less likely to be recognized, as a result of limited availability of cognitive resources; due to allocation of resources toward processing of the game. If a brand is not recognized, the persuasive intent of the brand is less likely to be identified, and persuasion knowledge activation might thus not occur (Laran et al., 2011). This means that, contrary to what was found for familiar brand placements in the literature (e.g., Rendondo, 2012), unfamiliar brand placements in advergames will not lead to persuasion knowledge activation; the following hypotheses are proposed:
H2. Brand familiarity has a positive effect on persuasion knowledge activation for familiar brands in mobile advergames, but not for unfamiliar brands.
H3. Persuasion knowledge mediates the effect of brand placements on brand attitude for familiar brands in mobile advergames, but not for unfamiliar brands.
Smartphone Attachment
Contrary to the main body of research done on advergames, this current study focusses specifically on mobile advergames. The main difference between the two is the medium that is used to play the advergame. Where some apparent differences between the two media (i.e., smartphones & desktop computers) can be identified in terms of for example mobility of the medium (smartphones enable a greater mobility than desktop computers) and screen size (smartphone screens are smaller than desktop computer screens), this study focusses on one specific novel concept which is mobile specific; smartphone attachment. Studying the effect of smartphone attachment on adolescents is important, because the literature suggests smartphone attachment is especially high among this group (e.g., Walsh et al., 2007, 2008, 2011).
Smartphone attachment is defined as an emotional attachment to one’s own smartphone (Vincent, 2006); or in other words the strength of the bond between people and their
smartphones. Where classic attachment theory focused primarily on certain aspects of
interpersonal relationships between humans (Bretherton, 1985), this theory has been used more recently to describe the relationship between humans and non-human entities, such as
smartphones. A popular example from contemporary scientific marketing literature is brand attachment, which aims to describe the strength of the relationship between humans and brands (Park et al., 2010). Park et al. define two conceptually different indicators of brand attachment: self-connection (i.e., how well does one feel connected to the brand?) and prominence (i.e., how prominent, or top-of-mind, is the brand?). They found that taking into account both indicators of brand attachment resulted in the most positive effects on several indicators of persuasion (i.e., need share, purchase intention, actual purchase). The same two-indicator framework could be applied to smartphone attachment.
Smartphone attachment has recently seen some empirical application in relation to adolescents (Katz & Aakhus, 2002; Sultan et al., 2009; Vanden Abeele et al., 2014). Although most of these studies merely identified smartphone attachment as being prevalent among adolescents, studies examining the actual effects of smartphone attachment are still scarce. The studies described in Katz and Aakhus, Sultan et al., and Vincent (2006) all imply a high self-connection between adolescents and their smartphones, indicating that adolescents personalize their smartphones (e.g., by installing wallpapers and ringtones) in order to represent one’s self. In addition to these findings, Walsh et al. (2011) found that some adolescents even take this one step further and indicate that they perceive their smartphones not just as a representation of themselves, but rather as an extension of themselves. These findings all underline the important role of self-connection when examining the relationship between adolescents and their phone.
The study by Sultan et al. (2009) is one of the few studies that tested the effect of what they called personal attachment [to one’s smartphone]. They found that an increase in personal attachment leads to greater mobile activity on three levels: providing information to firms in a mobile setting, sharing content with others in a mobile setting, and accessing content in a mobile setting. These in turn mediate the positive effect of personal attachment on the acceptance of mobile advertising. Their operationalization of smartphone attachment however, is based on only one smartphone attachment indicator, smartphone self-connection, ignoring smartphone
prominence.
Proof that smartphone prominence, top-of-mind awareness of a person’s smartphone, is prevalent among adolescents can be found in a recent study by Vanden Abeele et al. (2014). They showed that one third of the adolescents are, what they define as, Trendy [smartphone] users. Trendy users are considered adolescents that have a strong devotion to all aspects of their
mobile device and use their smartphone extensively in their social, practical, and emotional interactions (Vanden Abeele et al., 2014). These findings imply that at least a third of the adolescent smartphone users show a high smartphone prominence. This offers support for including smartphone prominence as a smartphone attachment indicator when examining the effects of smartphone attachment on persuasion.
Taking into account both indicators of attachment (i.e., self-connection & prominence) as proposed in the psychological attachment (Bretherton, 1985) and brand attachment literature (Park et al., 2011) seems therefore most appropriate when examining the effects of smartphone attachment on adolescents.
Effects of Smartphone Attachment on Persuasion
Empirical evidence for the effects of smartphone attachment on the effectiveness of persuasion is scant. The study by Sultan et al. (2009) however, showed that the self-connection dimension of smartphone attachment has a positive effect on acceptance of mobile advertising. A positive effect on acceptance of mobile advertising could imply that smartphone self-connection has a negative effect on persuasion knowledge activation, however this claim lacks true
empirical support. Since there is no empirical evidence to infer from, examining the central ideas of psychological attachment theory might help with predicting the possible effects of smartphone attachment on persuasion.
Attachment theory is grounded in the idea that people search for security, and that in order to find this security, they engage in interpersonal relationship with others that one identifies with (Bretherton, 1985). This results in relationships in which the other guides interpretation and behavior. When applied in a non-human to human setting, which is the case with smartphone attachment, this implies that the non-human entity (i.e., smartphone) would be
the other; and would thus guide interpretation and behavior. In line with this assumption, a high smartphone attachment then implies an increased feeling of security when processing
information presented by the smartphone to the person; information which could be anything ranging from social media messages, to brand placements in mobile advergames.
Where the attachment literature implies that a strong smartphone attachment leads to a heightened perception of security, one could hypothesize that an increase in smartphone
attachment will therefore decreases the persuasive intent perceived when being confronted with brand placements in mobile advergames. The findings by Sultan et al. (2009) are in line with this assumption, and support a possible negative effect of smartphone self-connection on persuasion knowledge activation. Similar effects are expected for smartphone prominence, based on the brand attachment literature (Park et al., 2010). The following hypothesis is proposed: H4. Smartphone attachment has a negative effect on persuasion knowledge activation.
Even though a decrease in persuasion knowledge would imply a positive effect on
persuasion (i.e., brand attitude), a final model is proposed to empirically test this assumption; see Figure 1. Unfamiliar brand placements in advergames are believed not to evoke any persuasion knowledge activation among adolescents. Smartphone attachment is therefore hypothesized to have an effect on adolescents’ susceptibility toward brand placements in advergames, only for familiar brand placements; and not for unfamiliar ones. The final hypothesis therefore states: H5. Smartphone attachment has a positive effect on brand attitude by moderating the mediation of the effect of brand placement on brand attitude by persuasion knowledge for familiar brands in mobile advergames, but not for unfamiliar ones.
Method Participants and Procedure
In order to test the hypotheses, an experiment with a one-factor between-subjects design (brand familiarity: no brand, unfamiliar brand, familiar brand) was conducted, with smartphone attachment measured as a second independent variable; the no brand condition served as control condition in this study. In addition, brand attitude was measured as dependent variable, and persuasion knowledge as mediating variable. From three high schools 81 adolescents were sampled. Six respondents were omitted from the analyses, because of impossible answers on multiple control variables; implying a lack of serious consideration for their answers.1 The schools were approached by email or phone and were asked for their participation by the
researcher. Respondents were drawn from three levels of the Dutch secondary education system (i.e., 37.8% vmbo b/k, 54.4% mavo and 6.8% havo). The age (Mage = 15.97, SDage = 1.37) of the respondents ranged from 13 to 19. In order to increase involvement a raffle was introduced; two randomly selected participants per school were awarded with a ten-euro gift card for their participation.
The experiment was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Amsterdam. Both the schools and the respondents were asked for their informed consent, prior to
participation. In addition, passive consent from the parents of the respondents was obtained. The parents were sent a letter, at least seven days before the experiment, in which the experiment was briefly discussed and the parents were offered the opportunity to withdraw their consent.
After a short introduction, the respondents were randomly assigned to one of the three brand familiarity conditions (i.e., no brand, unfamiliar brand, familiar brand) and were asked to play the mobile game for four minutes on their own smartphones. Afterwards the respondents
were asked to fill out a questionnaire on their smartphones, containing questions about their demographics, smartphone attachment, brand attitudes, persuasion knowledge, brand familiarity (manipulation check), and some control variables (i.e., body mass index, disposable income, purchase impulsivity, hunger); the full questionnaire can be found in Appendix A.2 After
finishing the questionnaire, the respondents were thanked for their participation and debriefed by the researcher. Because the stimulus material ran exclusively on Android, students that did not own an Android smartphone were not eligible to participate in the study.
Stimulus Material
The casual mobile game used as stimulus material for this study was developed by a professional game designer at the request of the Radboud University.2 Three different versions of the game were available, differing in the degree of brand familiarity (i.e., no brand, unfamiliar brand, familiar brand) of the brand embedded in the game. The aim of the game was to pick the right combination of toppings for a pizza from a conveyor belt, while discarding the wrong ones. The game starts off slowly and became gradually more difficult as the speed of the conveyor belt increased. In the familiar brand condition, the logo of one of the leading pizza brands in the Netherlands was prominently shown in the middle of the screen; both on the pizza boxes and on the background wall. For the unfamiliar brand condition, a fictional brand was created and was used instead. Both logos took up about one either of the screen. No logo was shown on the pizza boxes or the background wall in the control condition; see Appendix B for examples of the stimulus material for the unfamiliar branded and the control condition (Figure 1B).
Measures
Brand familiarity. Three versions of the mobile game were used in this study (i.e., no brand, unfamiliar brand, familiar brand). The manipulation of brand familiarity was measured by
asking the respondents to indicate on a seven-point scale ranging from 1 (not familiar at all) to 7 (very familiar) how familiar they were with both of the brands used in this study (Waiguny et al. 2013).
Smartphone attachment. Smartphone attachment was measured by a seven-item adaption of the brand attachment scale by Park et al. (2010). The scale included items on both indicators of attachment, three for smartphone self-connection (e.g., “My smartphone is part of who I am”, “I have a personal connection with my smartphone”), and four for smartphone prominence (e.g., “I think about my smartphone all the time”, “I always carry my smartphone on me”). The smartphone self-connection items were measured on seven-point scales ranging from 1 (Totally disagree) to 7 (Totally agree), and the smartphone prominence items on seven-point scales ranging from 1 (Never) to 7 (Always). All scores were averaged and one measure for smartphone attachment was created (EV = 3.66, R2 = .52, Cronbach’s α = .75, M = 4.55, SD = 1.26).
Brand attitudes. Brand attitude was measured (both for the familiar and the unfamiliar brand) by asking the respondents to indicate their attitude toward the brand based on six
attributes (i.e., Good, Stupid, Boring, Fun, Great, Bad) measured on seven-point Likert scales. The scales were based on an attitude scale used in Van Reijmersdal et al. (2012). For both brands the scores were averaged, resulting in a reliable measures of brand attitude for both the familiar brand (EV = 2.64, R2 = .44; Cronbach’s α = .71, M = 5.16, SD = 1.14) and the unfamiliar brand (EV = 2.61, R2 = .43; Cronbach’s α = .71, M = 3.96, SD = 1.39).
Persuasion knowledge. Persuasion knowledge was measured by an adaption of a four item persuasion knowledge scale used by Tutaj and Van Reijmersdal (2012). The respondents were asked to indicate on seven-point scales, ranging from 1 (Totally disagree) to 7 (Totally
agree), how much they agree with the statements measuring cognitive persuasion knowledge (i.e., “the mobile game contains advertising”, “the mobile game is an advertisement”). All scores were averaged and a reliable measure for persuasion knowledge was created (Cronbach’s α = .91, M = 3.01, SD = 1.93).
Covariates and demographics. Four covariates were recorded (i.e., body mass index, disposable income, purchase impulsivity, and hunger), in addition to the demographics. The respondents were asked to indicate both their length (m), and their weight (kg) for the researcher to be able to calculate their body mass indexes (M = 20.46, SD = 3.17, range: 15.06 – 30.12; Christopher, 2015).4 Note that these, and the questions on disposable income, could be
considered sensitive questions, and that the respondent were thus allowed to skip these questions; no other questions could be skipped. Disposable income is measured by two open questions: “How much allowance do you get from your parents per month?”, and “How much money do you earn yourself per month?”. These answers were added up and a single measure for
disposable income was created (M = 28.78, SD = 47.30 range: 1.00 – 202.00; Elpidoforos.
Soteriades, & DiFranza, 2003).5 Purchase impulsivity (M = 3.50, SD = 1.46) was measured using a scale by Rook and Fisher (1995). Nine items on purchase impulsivity (e.g. “I usually buy things out of the blue”, “I contemplate very well before I pay something”) were included. The respondents were asked to indicate on seven-point scales, ranging from 1 (Totally disagree) to 7 (Totally agree), how much they agree with the purchase impulsivity statements. All scores were averaged and a single reliable measure for purchase impulsivity was created (EV = 5.32, R2 = .59; Cronbach’s α = .86). Hunger (M = 3.07, SD = 2.08; Folkvord, Anschütz, Wiers, & Buijzen, 2015) was measured by a seven-point single item question (i.e. “How hungry are you right
now?”) ranging from 1 (Not at all hungry) to 7 (Very hungry). In addition, age, gender (47.7% female), and level of secondary education was recorded.
Results Manipulation Check
A paired-samples t-test was used to test whether the manipulation of brand familiarity was successful. The results indicated that that the familiar brand (M = 5.91, SD = 1.83) was considered significantly more familiar than the unfamiliar brand (M = 1.34, SD = 0.93), t (73) = -19.71, p < .001. This finding indicated that the brand familiarity manipulation was successful. Randomization
To test whether the sample data was distributed equally across conditions, several randomization checks were performed. Analyses of variance were performed for the variables age (F (2, 70) = 0.10, p = .902), purchase impulsivity (F (2, 68) = 0.02, p = .984), body mass index (F (2, 52) = 1.89, p = .161), hunger (F (2, 72) = 0.61, p = .941), and disposable income (F (2, 29) = 0.69, p = .934). A chi-square test was used to check for equal distribution across conditions for the level of secondary education (χ2 = 8.85, p = .182), and for the variable gender (χ2 = 2.57, p = .227). These results indicated that there were no issues with the distribution of the sample data.
Preliminary analyses
Prior to testing the hypotheses, preliminary contrast analyses were conducted for the two dependent variables (unfamiliar brand attitude, familiar brand attitude) and the mediator variable (persuasion knowledge). The results of the contrast analyses will aid the interpretation of effects found with the mediation models that were used to test the hypotheses of this study; the results are displayed in Table 1.
PLEASE INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE
Main analyses
In order to test the first three hypotheses, two mediation models (Hayes’ model 4) with a multi-categorical independent variable were estimated (Hayes, 2014). For both models, brand familiarity was included as independent variable and persuasion knowledge as mediating variable. The dependent variable differed between the two models. The unfamiliar brand model was estimated with attitude toward the unfamiliar brand as dependent variable, and the familiar brand model was estimated with attitude toward the familiar brand as dependent variable. For all mediation models estimated in this study 10,000 bootstrap samples with biased corrected
confidence intervals of 95% were used.
The version of PROCESS (2.15) that was used to estimate the first two mediation models automatically created dummy variables for two of the three categories of brand familiarity (unfamiliar brand & familiar brand); the third category (control) served as reference category. Manual dummy coding was therefore not required when estimating these models. One
respondent was omitted from the analyses due to missing data.
PLEASE INSERT FIGURE 2 ABOUT HERE
The results of the unfamiliar brand mediation model, as illustrated in Figure 2, showed non-significant effects for brand placement of an unfamiliar brand on both brand attitude, b = 0.02, SE = 0.40, t (71) = 0.06, p = .954, and persuasion knowledge, b = -0.18, SE = 0.50, t (71) = -0.35, p = .725, and for persuasion knowledge on brand attitude, b = 0.03, SE = 0.09, t (70) = 0.36, p = .719. These results indicate that the respondents in the unfamiliar brand conditions did not differ in their brand attitudes or persuasion knowledge activation from the ones in the control
condition; see Table 1 for means and standard deviations. In addition, the results indicated that persuasion knowledge did not affect brand attitude toward the unfamiliar brand. Because a positive effect on brand attitude was expected Hypothesis 1 is rejected.
Evidently, no indirect effect was found for brand placement of an unfamiliar brand on brand attitude, b = -0.01, SE = 0.05, 95% CI [-0.160, 0.053], meaning that persuasion knowledge does not mediate the effect of brand placement for unfamiliar brands on brand attitude.
PLEASE INSERT FIGURE 3 ABOUT HERE
Different results were found with the familiar brand model, as illustrated in Figure 3. Even though a negative effect was found for brand placement of a familiar brand on brand attitude, b = -0.14, SE = 0.32, t (71) = -0.43, p = .671, positive effects were found for the brand placement of a familiar brand on persuasion knowledge, b = 1.48, SE = 0.50, t (71) = 2.95, p = .004, and for persuasion knowledge on brand attitude, b = 0.19, SE = 0.07, t (70) = 2.29, p = .025. These findings indicate that respondents in the familiar brand condition showed a higher persuasion knowledge activation than the ones in the control condition, even though their brand attitudes did not differ; means and standard deviations can be found in Table 1. The results also showed that persuasion knowledge positively affects brand attitude toward the familiar brand. Because only brand placement of a familiar brand yielded a positive effect on persuasion knowledge, and brand placement of an unfamiliar brand did not, Hypothesis 2 is accepted.
In addition, the results showed a positive indirect effect for brand placement on brand attitude, b = 0.25, SE = 0.13, 95% CI [0.060, 0.624], indicating that persuasion knowledge positively mediates the effect of brand placement for familiar brands on brand attitude. Because a negative mediation effect was expected Hypothesis 3 is rejected.
Smartphone attachment. To test whether smartphone attachment has a negative effect on persuasion knowledge activation (H4) a series of OLS regressions were estimated. The first regression, with smartphone attachment as independent variables and persuasion knowledge as dependent variable, was used to test for an overall effect of smartphone attachment on persuasion knowledge. A non-significant effect for smartphone attachment on persuasion knowledge was found, b = 0.04, SE = 0.19, t (66) = 0.22, p = .825, indicating that smartphone attachment does not affect persuasion knowledge overall.
That there is no overall effect for smartphone attachment does not necessarily mean that smartphone attachment does not affect persuasion knowledge for either familiar or unfamiliar brands. Similar regression models were estimated with different dependent variables on subsections of the sample. The first regression model was estimated for respondents in the unfamiliar brand condition. The results indicated that for unfamiliar brands, smartphone
attachment positively affects persuasion knowledge activation, b = 0.74, SE = 0.32, t (18) = 2.33, p = .031. No significant effect was found for the respondents in the familiar brand condition, b = 0.13, SE = 0.36, t (17) = 0.36, p = .726. These findings indicate that for unfamiliar brands smartphone attachment has a positive effect on persuasion knowledge activation, where for familiar brands there was no effect. These findings are not in line with the predictions however, and Hypothesis 4 is therefore rejected.
The two mediation models (unfamiliar brand model & familiar brand model) that were estimated earlier were extended with smartphone attachment as moderator variable in order to test the conceptual structure as presented in Figure 1 (H5). For these analyses Hayes’ Model 7 (Hayes, 2013) was used. Since currently PROCESS does not support multi-categorical
independent variables for this model, brand familiarity was manually dummy coded following a procedure outlined in Hayes (2014).
The results indicated non-significant indexes of moderated mediation for both models. This implies that smartphone attachment neither moderates the mediating effect of persuasion knowledge on brand attitude for unfamiliar brands, b = 0.04, SE = 0.09, 95% CI [-0.124, 0.245], nor for familiar brands b = 0.03, SE = 0.08, 95% CI [-0.121, 0.215]. These results were not in line with the predictions and Hypothesis 5 is therefore rejected.
Discussion
The aim of this study was to examine the effect of smartphone attachment on the susceptibility of adolescents to brand placement of unfamiliar and familiar brands in mobile advergames. The study indicates that brand familiarity positively affects persuasion knowledge activation. Contrary to what was expected, the study shows that persuasion knowledge activation does not necessarily lead to negative brand attitudes for adolescents. No evidence was found for an overall effect of smartphone attachment on adolescents’ susceptibility to mobile advertising. The study did find however, that smartphone attachment facilitates the activation of persuasion knowledge for unfamiliar brand placements.
Effects of Brand Familiarity
The results of this study indicated that brand familiarity does not directly affect brand attitudes in the context of mobile advergames. No effect was found for the familiar brand placement on brand attitude, which is in line with earlier findings by Cauberghe and De
Pelsmacker (2010). The effects of unfamiliar brand placement on brand attitude in advergames were unknown. Studies on in-game advertising (Mau et al. 2008) and brand placement on television (Boerman et al., 2012) however, suggested that unfamiliar brand placements can have
a positive effect on brand attitude as a result of affect transfer. This study found no evidence supporting that assumption in the context of advergames.
One explanation for these results could be the relatively low attitude toward the game reported by the adolescents. Successful affect transfer requires positive affect associated with the vehicle (advergame) that contains the brand placement in order to transfer this affect to the brand (Van Reijmersdal, Smit, & Neijens, 2010). In this study there was no positive affect associated with the game reported, it seems therefore plausible that, contrary to what was expected, no effective affect transfer has occurred for the brand placement of an unfamiliar brand.
A positive effect of brand familiarity on persuasion knowledge activation was found, meaning that familiar brand placements in advergames resulted in persuasion knowledge
activation where unfamiliar brand placements did not. A positive effect on persuasion knowledge activation for familiar brands was suggested by Redondo (2012). The current study shows that for unfamiliar brands, persuasion knowledge activation does not occur. This could be explained by referring to the product placement literature (Boerman et al. 2012). There they state that the persuasive intent of an embedded brand can sometimes be difficult to identify, meaning that persuasion knowledge is not activated. The persuasive intent of unfamiliar brands might thus be hidden, and too subtle to trigger any persuasion knowledge activation when these brand
placements are embedded in mobile advergames.
Contrary to what was expected, persuasion knowledge activation did not lead to a decrease in attitudinal responses toward the brand (i.e., brand attitude). For the familiar brand placement, persuasion knowledge even showed a positive effect on brand attitude. Similar results have been found in other studies for both adults (Wei, Fischer, & Main, 2008) and children (Van Reijmersdal, Rozendaal, & Buijzen, 2015) in the context of different types of advertising. Wei et
al. found that in the context of radio advertising familiar brand placement lead to positive changes in brand attitude. They suggested that prior positive experience with the brand, led to attitude bolstering after recognizing the persuasive intent of the radio message. Where prior brand attitudes were not measured in the current study, this assumption cannot be confirmed.
Van Reijmersdal et al. (2015) found a positive mediating effect for persuasion knowledge on brand attitude for boys when confronted with advertising in magazines. They suggested children’s limited emotion regulation and poor regulatory control to be the reason for this findings. Emotional, entertaining, and engaging advertising formats, like advergames, are therefore believed to result in positive brand attitudes, rather than negative ones, when
persuasion knowledge is recognized (Van Reijmersdal et al., 2015). The results of the current study show similar effects for adolescents, suggesting that also adolescents might have trouble regulating their emotions in the context of emotional, entertaining, and engaging advertising formats.
Effects of Smartphone Attachment
This study showed that smartphone attachment does not have a negative effect on persuasion knowledge activation. On the contrary, the analyses indicated that for unfamiliar brand placements smartphone attachment has a positive effect on persuasion knowledge activation. This implies that a higher smartphone attachment facilitates the activation of
persuasion knowledge for unfamiliar brands. This could be explained by considering the limited-capacity model of motivated mediated message processing (Lang, 2000). This model suggests that humans have a limited cognitive capacity to allocate when processing information. Lee and Faber (2007) applied this theory and suggested that when playing advergames the saturation of stimuli hinders other cognitive processes.
Smartphone attachment might decrease the cognitive resources required to play advergames on a smartphone. This would then enable allocation of the excess cognitive resources to other cognitive processes, like identifying the persuasive intent of the brand placement. Campbell and Keller (2003) suggested that for familiar brands lowers levels of cognitive resources are required to recognize the brand, when compared to unfamiliar ones. The results indicate that enough cognitive resources were available to activate persuasion knowledge for familiar brand placements in the current study. The fact that enough resources were already available for familiar brands, might explain why only a positive effect was found for smartphone attachment on unfamiliar brand placement.
No evidence was found in this study for an effect of smartphone attachment on
adolescents’ susceptibility to mobile advertising (i.e., brand attitude). One explanation could be found in the effect size of the smartphone attachment effect on persuasion knowledge activation for unfamiliar brand placements. The effect might have not been strong enough to evoke
sufficient persuasion knowledge activation to subsequently affect brand attitude. Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research
Where the current study is among the first studies to empirically test the effects of smartphone attachment, it has its limitations. Due to technical limitations only adolescents owning an Android smartphone were able to participate in the study. This means that all
adolescents owning an Apple or Windows device were excluded from participation. Taking into account that Vanden Abeele et al. (2014) indicated that about a third of the adolescents are Trendy [smartphone] users, and use their smartphone as status symbol, it seems likely that by excluding Apple devices from the sample, the portion of Trendy users in the studied sample is smaller than that of the general teenage population; for Apple primarily produces high-end
smartphones, where Microsoft and Android also offer low-end devices which are arguably less likely to be used as a status symbol. It is unknown what implications this might have had on the results, for there are no empirical studies examining the effects of different types of smartphone users.
It should be noted however, that the study by Vanden Abeele et al. (2014) found a high smartphone prominence, or top-of-mind awareness of smartphones for Trendy [smartphone] users. Because this is one of the indicators of smartphone attachment, it is possible that by not including Apple users, the average smartphone attachment found in the sample is deflated. Future studies should be mindful for possible differences in smartphone attachment between users of different smartphone operating systems. The easiest, and most cost effective, way to circumvent this problem would be to create stimulus material that is accessible on a browser, instead of directly from the device. By creating online stimulus material all smartphone users that have access to the internet would be able to access it, regardless of their operating system.
A direct implication of only including Android users however, is the limited sample size of this study. Sampling twelve classes (200+ students) resulted in participation of only 81 respondents. The fact that smartphone attachment as moderator yield no effect in the moderated mediation models that were tested could therefore possibly also be attributed to the limited sample size for this type of analysis. A follow-up study with a larger sample size, to increase power, seems therefore recommended to verify the findings of this study.
This study implies that smartphone attachment only moderates the effect of unfamiliar brand placements on persuasion knowledge activation in mobile advergames. It seems therefore advisable to focus on unfamiliar brand placements in future research to the effects of smartphone attachment. In order to examine effects of smartphone attachment on advertising susceptibility,
persuasion knowledge activation is required. Where it is unclear why in this study the unfamiliar brand failed to evoke any persuasion knowledge activation, running a similar study in the context of a different type of mobile advertising seems advised. The persuasive intent of mobile
advergames is believed to be more difficult to perceive than for more traditional forms of mobile advertising (e.g., banners, pop-up ads, online commercials). A study in the context of more traditional forms of mobile advertising would therefore facilitate testing the effects of
smartphone attachment on advertising susceptibility; like persuasion knowledge activation and brand attitude.
Conclusion and Implications
This study examined the effects of smartphone attachment on the susceptibility of adolescents for unfamiliar and familiar brand placement in advergames. Five important
conclusions can be drawn from the results. First of all, a) neither familiar nor unfamiliar brand placement evokes direct attitudinal responses (i.e., brand attitude) in mobile advergames, b) persuasion knowledge is only activated when familiar brand placements are used in advergames, c) persuasion knowledge positively mediates brand placement in mobile advergames for familiar brands, where no mediation occurs for unfamiliar brands, d) smartphone attachment has a
positive effect on persuasion knowledge activation for unfamiliar brand placement, but not for familiar ones, and e) smartphone attachment does not affect advertising susceptibility indirectly (i.e., brand attitude). These findings have theoretical implications and implications for
advertisers.
Theoretically, the study found that in mobile advergames adolescents process brand placements that are familiar differently than unfamiliar ones. This underlines the importance of considering brand familiarity when examining the effects of mobile advergames on adolescents.
In line with Van Reijmersdal et al. (2015), this study showed that for this type of advertising (mobile advergames) persuasion knowledge activation might not necessarily lead to more critical processing of the message among adolescents, nor decrease their susceptibility to advertising. On the contrary, when adolescents recognize the persuasive intent of the brand, they seem to become more susceptible and show an increase in attitudinal responses (i.e., brand attitude).
Findings by Sultan et al. (2009), who found that smartphone attachment increases acceptance of mobile advertising, implied that smartphone attachment might increase
susceptibility to mobile advertising among adolescents. This study found no evidence however, supporting this notion. On the contrary, the positive effect of smartphone attachment on
persuasion knowledge activation for the unfamiliar brand placement implies that smartphone attachment could potentially aid adolescents in coping with mobile advertising messages from unfamiliar sources.
For advertisers who consider incorporating mobile advergames as part of their marketing strategy, it is important to acknowledge that they seem to be most effective when targeted at adolescents that are already familiar with the brand. The current study showed that for those adolescents, persuasion knowledge activation backfires and leads to a more positive evaluation of the brand. When targeting new consumers, it is important to take notice from the fact that smartphone attachment decreases their susceptibility to persuasion, and the persuasive intent of the brand is more easily identified. This implies that advergames might be more suitable for increasing brand attitudes among adolescents that are already familiar with the brand, than to increase awareness among adolescents that do not.
A debt of gratitude is owed to Dr. Eva van Reijmersdal, University of Amsterdam, for her feedback and supervision while writing this thesis, and to Dr. Esther Rozendaal, Radboud
University, for sharing her experience with conducting experimental studies on adolescents, and for the generous donation of the stimulus material. I thank the boards of the schools that
participated, the teachers, and the support staff that assisted me during data collection. In addition, I thank the Graduate School of Communication at the University of Amsterdam for their helpful monetary compensation. A special thanks goes out to Jos van Berlo and Marianne Braken who helped me tremendously by helping me finding schools. This study would have not been able to be conducted without the help of these people and institutions.
Footnotes
1 Sensitivity analyses were performed for all hypotheses, meaning that the analyses were run both with and without the omitted respondents. No differences were found. The results displayed in this report are the ones with the respondents omitted.
2 Several other variables (e.g., game attitude, irritation, entertainment) were measured in addition to the ones reported in this thesis. The complete survey with all measures included can be found in Appendix A.
3 Some compensation was offered for developing the third and final version of the game; the familiar branded version.
4 All scores of body mass index higher than 40 were omitted from the analyses, for these scores indicated an error in either the height or weight that was reported.
5 All scores of income higher than 1.000 euros per month were omitted from the analyses, for these scores indicated an error in either the allowance or income from a job that was reported.
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Tables Table 1
Descriptives and Simple Effects for Dependent Variables and Mediating Variable
Control
Unfamiliar brand placement
Familiar brand placement Attitude toward the
unfamiliar brand
4.12a (1.37) 4.14a (1.42) 3.60a (1.39)
Attitude toward the familiar brand
5.19a (1.16) 5.25a (1.06) 5.06a (1.23)
Persuasion knowledge 2.58a (1.60) 2.39a (1.68) 4.05b (2.17) Note. Means not sharing a subscript in the same row differ at p < .004.
Figures
Figure 1. Conceptual model. The dotted line represents the hypothesized model for unfamiliar brand placements, where the full lines represents the hypothesized model for familiar brand placements. Brand familiarity Persuasion Knowledge Brand attitude Smartphone Attachment
Figure 2. Results unfamiliar brand model. Estimations are made with 10.000 bootstraps and 95% bias corrected confidence intervals. Reference group for these estimations is the control group. All regression coefficients represented are unstandardized. Relative direct effect = 0.03, 95% CI [-0.765, 0.823]. Relative indirect effect = -0.05, 95% CI [-0.200, 0.382].
Brand familiarity Persuasion Knowledge Brand attitude
.03
-.18
.02
Figure 3. Results familiar brand model. Estimations are made with 10.000 bootstraps and 95% bias corrected confidence intervals. Reference group for these estimations is the control group. All regression coefficients represented are unstandardized. Relative direct effect = -0.39, 95% CI [-1.042, 0.271]. Relative indirect effect = 0.25, 95% CI [0.060, 0.624].
* p < .05 ** p < .005 Brand familiarity Persuasion Knowledge Brand attitude
.17
*1.48
**-.39
Appendix A Questionnaire
INTRO_0 Leuk dat je aan ons onderzoek wilt deelnemen. Het onderzoek zal bestaan uit twee delen. Allereerst zal je dadelijk gevraagd worden een spel te downloaden en te spelen, waarna je in het tweede deel hierover wat vragen beantwoordt. Onder de deelnemers die bij het spelen van de mobile game een minimale score van 1500 punten halen zullen per school twee cadeaubonnen van 10 euro worden verloot. Het is geen moeilijk spel dus dit zou geen probleem moeten zijn. Veel plezier met het invullen van de vragen en het spelen van de mobiele game! Je kunt de mobiele game vinden door op de link hieronder te drukken. Het is de bedoeling dat je wacht met het openen, en dus het spelen, van de mobiele game totdat de onderzoeker of je docent aangeeft dat je mag beginnen met spelen. Je mag nu wel alvast de mobiele game downloaden door op de link hieronder te klikken: http://goo.gl/TPhZ4w
INTRO_1 Leuk dat je aan ons onderzoek wilt deelnemen. Het onderzoek zal bestaan uit twee delen. Allereerst zal je dadelijk gevraagd worden een spel te downloaden en te spelen, waarna je in het tweede deel hierover wat vragen beantwoordt. Onder de deelnemers die bij het spelen van de mobile game een minimale score van 1500 punten halen zullen per school twee cadeaubonnen van 10 euro worden verloot. Het is geen moeilijk spel dus dit zou geen probleem moeten zijn. Veel plezier met het invullen van de vragen en het spelen van de mobiele game! Je kunt de mobiele game vinden door op de link hieronder te drukken. Het is de bedoeling dat je wacht met het openen, en dus het spelen, van de mobiele game totdat de onderzoeker of je docent aangeeft dat je mag beginnen met spelen. Je mag nu wel alvast de mobiele game downloaden door op de link hieronder te klikken: http://goo.gl/19vkZe
INTRO_2 Leuk dat je aan ons onderzoek wilt deelnemen. Het onderzoek zal bestaan uit twee delen. Allereerst zal je dadelijk gevraagd worden een spel te downloaden en te spelen, waarna je in het tweede deel hierover wat vragen beantwoordt. Onder de deelnemers die bij het spelen van de mobile game een minimale score van 1500 punten halen zullen per school twee cadeaubonnen van 10 euro worden verloot. Het is geen moeilijk spel dus dit zou geen probleem moeten zijn. Veel plezier met het invullen van de vragen en het spelen van de mobiele game! Je kunt de mobiele game vinden door op de link hieronder te drukken. Het is de bedoeling dat je wacht met het openen, en dus het spelen, van de mobiele game totdat de onderzoeker of je docent aangeeft dat je mag beginnen met spelen. Je mag nu wel alvast de mobiele game downloaden door op de link hieronder te klikken: https://goo.gl/MejgCU
FILL Bedankt voor het spelen van de mobiele game. In het volgende deel zal je gevraagd worden wat vragen in te vullen. Lees de vragen goed door voordat je ze invult, je kunt niet meer terug om je antwoorden te veranderen. Succes!
HNGR_1 Hoeveel honger heb je op dit moment? 1. Helemaal geen honger (1)
2. (2) 3. (3) 4. (4) 5. (5) 6. (6)
7. Erg veel honger (7)
School Op welke school zit je?
AGE_Y In welk jaar ben je geboren? 1998 (1) 1999 (2) 2000 (3) 2001 (4) 2002 (5) 2003 (6) 2004 (7) Anders: (8) ____________________
AGE_M In welke maand ben je jarig? Januari (1) Februari (2) Maart (3) April (4) Mei (5) Juni (6) Juli (7) Augustus (8) September (9) October (10) November (11) December (12)
GNDR Ben je een jongen of een meisje?: Jongen (1)
Meisje (2)
EDU Welk stroming doe je? Vmbo-b (1) Vmbo-k (2) Vmbo-t (3) Vmbo-g (4) Havo (5) Vwo (Atheneum) (6) Vwo (Gymnasium) (7) Anders namelijk: (8) ____________________
PP_ATT Geef met de volgende zes stellingen je mening over de mobiele game die je zonet gespeeld hebt. Klik op de bolletjes die jou mening het beste weergeven. Ik vind de mobiele game die ik net gespeeld heb ...
1. Helemaal niet (1) 2. (2) 3. (3) 4. (4) 5. (5) 6. (6) 7. Helemaal wel (7) Leuk (1) Stom (2) Saai (3) Grappig (4) Mooi (5) Lelijk (6)
INV Geef hieronder aan hoe graag een hoge score wilde halen, en hoe veel je je best hebt gedaan om deze score te bereiken:
1. Helemaal mee oneens (1) 2. (2) 3. (3) 4. (4) 5. (5) 6. (6) 7. Helemaal mee eens (7) Ik wilde graag een hoge
score halen (1)
Ik deed erg mijn best om een hoge score te
halen (2)
ENT De volgende vragen gaan over het speelplezier wat je had tijdens het spelen van de mobiele game: 1. Helemaal mee oneens (1) 2. (2) 3. (3) 4. (4) 5. (5) 6. (6) 7. Helemaal mee eens (7) Ik vond het spelen van
de mobiele game leuk (1)
Ik vond het spelen van de mobiele game
plezierig (2)
Ik vond het spelen van de mobiele game
spannend (3)
Ik heb me vermaakt tijdens het spelen van de
mobiele game (4)
PK Geef hieronder aan hoeveel je het eens bent met de volgende stellingen over de mobiele game die je gespeeld hebt.
1. Helemaal mee oneens (1) 2. (2) 3. (3) 4. (4) 5. (5) 6. (6) 7. Helemaal mee eens (7) In de mobiele game
wordt reclame gemaakt (1)
De mobiele game is een
vorm van reclame (2)
Het doel van de mobiele game is om ervoor te zorgen dat mensen een pizza van een specifiek merk gaan kopen (3)
Het doel van de mobiele game is om ervoor te zorgen dat mensen een bepaald merk pizza leuk
gaan vinden (4)
BR_RC_1 Heb je tijdens het spelen van de mobile game een logo van een pizza merk gezien? Ja (1)
Nee (2)
Weet ik niet zeker (3)
BR_RC_2 Als je een logo hebt gezien, welk logo heb je gezien? Image:Newyork (1)
Image:Dominos (2) Image:Nonnas (3) Image:Geenlogo (4)
If Als je een logo hebt gezien... Is Selected, Then Skip To End of Block
IRR Geef hieronder aan wat je vond van de aanwezigheid van een pizza merk in de mobiele game: 1. Helemaal mee oneens (1) 2. (2) 3. (3) 4. (4) 5. (5) 6. (6) 7. Helemaal mee eens (7) Ik vond de
aanwezigheid van een pizza merk in de mobiele game vervelend
(1)
Ik vond de aanwezigheid van een
pizza merk in de mobiele game irritant
(2)
Ik vond de aanwezigheid van een
pizza merk in de mobiele game misleidend (3)
Ik vond de aanwezigheid van een
pizza merk in de mobiele game verwarrend (4)
