Effects of Multiscreening on Advertising Outcomes in a Soccer Match Context
Student Name: Jinghan Cai Student Number: 11367903 Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication
Master’s programme Communication Science Supervisor: Ewa Maslowska
ABSTRACT
Multiscreening is a condition of media use in which people engage in multiple screens simultaneously. The effects of multiscreening on advertising have been studied in recent years. It is accepted that engaging in multi-screen has a negative effect on cognitive outcomes and a positive effect on attitudinal outcomes of information processing and advertising content, yet, the effects of multiscreening have rarely studied in a soccer match context. In this study, the researcher compared single-screening condition, multi-screening with a match-related task condition and multi-screening with a match-unrelated task condition, aiming to find the multiscreening effects on advertising in a soccer match setting. An online experiment (N=82) with three media use conditions were conducted. The result showed that neither multiscreening nor none-multiscreening has an influence on brand recognition or brand attitude. Further studies in soccer context could try to test multiscreening effects in a full-match setting or a stadium setting.
INTRODUCTION
In contemporary worlds, when people are watching or browsing, the number of the digital device is not limited to only one. Rather than that, users increasingly combine using more than one media devices simultaneous (Voorveld, Segijn, Ketelaar, & Smit, 2014). For instance, an audience might watch TV programme while searching for programme related information online, checking the email on iPad, or texting friends on the mobile phone. Studies demonstrated that people consume about 25% to 50% of their media use time with more than one devices (Voorveld et al., 2014; Voorveld & Van der Goot, 2013). The simultaneous usage of multiple media screens is known as multiscreening, which is becoming a daily practice (Segijn, Voorveld, & Smit, 2016, Segijn, Voorveld, Vandeberg, Pennekamp, & Smit, 2017).
Multiscreening has changed the way of watching soccer matches. Industry statistics had proved that smartphone, as a convenience second-screen device, has indeed changed fans ’ habits during
watching a soccer match. In 2010 World Cup, only 18% of game-related information searches were done on mobile devices, while in 2014 UEFA Champions League, this number had increased to 63% (2014 World Cup: What a Difference 4 Years Makes, 2014), which means that there are more and more fans watching matches with a phone in hand. User’s motivation for engaging in
multi-screening behaviours can be understood by the Use and Gratification theory (Dias, 2016), which explains that users choose to engage in multi-screening behaviours for seeking for gratification because this behaviour satisfies their needs in a certain way (Katz, Haas & Gurevitch, 1973).
In recent years of persuasion communication studies, researchers have found that multiscreening could both facilitate and hinder users’ processing of persuasive messages (Segijn, 2017). Most of
memory, brand recall, brand recognition) of advertising (Angell, Gorton, Sauer, Bottomley & White, 2016; Kazakova, Cauberghe, Hudders & Labyt, 2016; Jeong & Hwang, 2016; Segijn et al., 2016; 2017) and positively influence affective outcomes (e.g. brand attitude) of advertising (Kazakova, et al., 2016; Jeong & Hwang, 2016; Segijn et al., 2016; Segijn et al., 2017). The degradation of the brand memory was widely explained by the Limited Capacity Model (Lang, 2000), which revealed that human has finite cognitive resources to process information. Mutiscreening has the potential to dispersion cognitive resources, weaken information processing and result in worse memory. At the same time, since viewers’ cognitive resources are dispersed by
multiscreening, they tend to be less critical to the advertising content, thus lead to more positive attitudes toward the brand.
In industry, brands investment a large proportion of budget in advertising during soccer event (Burnett, Menon & Smart, 1993). Multiscreening and its consequences seem to post marketers a big challenger (How to respond to marketings biggest challenges, 2013). However, how multiscreening influence the effectiveness of advertisements in a soccer match context was rarely studied. Based on current knowledge, only the cognitive effect of multiscreening on advertising had been tested after a television soccer match between England and Germany. The result of the study was in line with the theory and showed that multiscreening led to worse ad memory (Angell et al., 2016). This current research was trying to find out whether multiscreening effects (both cognitive and attitudinal) on advertising exist in a soccer match context. Multiscreening with relevant tasks could enhance uses’
viewing experiences by supplying more information into the main content (Segijn., 2016), especially in sports programme which requires viewers knowing more events or match related information (Gantz, Wang, Paul & Potter, 2006). Hence, I introduced task relevance into the current study to compare if related or unrelated multiscreening would influence cognitive and attitudinal advertising outcome in a soccer match. In addition, this study included two important
soccer-related elements: match involvement and fan identification. I assumed that match involvement can be a mediator of multiscreening on cognitive advertising effect, and different level of fan identification can be a moderator of the attitudinal effect of multiscreening on advertising.
This study started at reviewing relevant literature and theories, followed by proposing hypotheses about different multiscreening behaviours and its effects on brand recognition and brand attitude. Hypotheses were tested in a soccer match context imitate in an online experiment setting and the following questionnaire. After reporting the results, the study concluded with discussing limitations and implications of the findings.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Description of Multiscreening
The simultaneous usage of multiple screens, such as a TV, smartphone, laptop, and tablet, is known as multiscreening (Segijn et al., 2017, p.779). Before starting to discuss what influences multiscreening could have on human’s information processing system, it is necessary to know what
people are doing when they are on the second screen. Industry practicers from Microsoft had provided a report based on 3586 users, generas of multiscreening: 68% of users agreed that the initial purpose of using separate screens is for distraction, 57% of users combined the main screen with other screens for simultaneous information discovery, while 46% of users will intentionally seek information on the other screen after the main screen’s content, and 39% of users engaging in
other screens for simultaneous content sharing and social connection (Microsoft, 2013). Through this report, we can learn that the goal of multi screening could be for distracting, information
seeking and social connecting, the contents in different screens could be related or not related to each other, and tasks in different screens could happen simultaneous or sequential.
Multiscreening and Cognitive Outcomes in Advertising
Multiscreening was considered to have a suppression effect on the cognitive process (Segijn, et al., 2016; Angell et al., 2016; Voorveld, 2011; Jeong & Hwang, 2012 et al., 2016). A prevalent explanation of the suppression effect was the Limited Capacity Model, a fundamental theory to understand information-processing. This theory explained that information processing requires cognitive resources (Lang, 2000), and people, as information processors, have only a limited amount of those cognitive resources to expend on the tasks of perceiving, encoding, understanding, and remembering the world they live in (Lang, 2006, p.59). The cognitive resources could be allocated to one thing or two, or even more, but they will be eventually used up. When users are engaging in one screen, their cognitive resources can be entirely used to process the content on the only screen, while when they are engaging in more screens, the finite amount of cognitive resources will be divided and reallocated among different screens. As a consequence, the metal resources which were concentrated on the main screen will be allocated, and the cognitive effects on the main screen will be reduced subsequently (Jeong, Hwang & Fishbein, 2010). The dispersion and disturbance of cognitive resources may fail people’s performances on memory. According to the
theory of limited capacity, there are three significant sub-processes of information processing: encoding; storage; and retrieval (Lang, 2000, p.47). Since multiple screens divide the limited cognitive resources, the ability of information encoding, storing and retrieving are divided accordingly (Segijn et al., 2016), which makes it more difficult to memorize information.
The same principle applies to the way of processing advertising content which is big component of media information. Brand memory is an important factor in the dimension of the cognitive effect of
advertising. Many studies had supported that multiscreening diminishes brand memory. Researchers had conducted an experiment to compare users’ performances on brand recognition in one media
condition of only watching TV and the other condition of combining watching TV and using tablet simultaneously, and the result showed that people in the multi-screen condition showed worse brands recognition afterward (Segijn et al., 2016). Another study created two media multitasking conditions in laboratory settings, one was combing watching TV programme and browsing a website, and the other was combing TV programme and online news. Researchers compared both of them with the single media condition, and the result also implied that performing media multitasking resulted in worse brand memory of TV commercials (Kazakova et al., 2016). The cognitive effects of multiscreening on advertising had also been studied in a football context, which is similar to the topic of this study. Researchers asked participants to recall the soccer match that they had watched last night, and their multi-media uses during the game (in a naturalistic setting), and found that multiple uses of media devices would lead to worse embedded advertisements recognition and even worse ads recall (Angell et al., 2016). All these findings were consisted with a meta-analysis result that multitasking behaviours reduce cognitive outcomes (Jeong & Hwang, 2016), and they can be understood by the theory that multiscreening poses difficulties to information processing. Recognition represents an earlier stage of memory (Kazakova et al., 2016; Lang, 2000). I adapted brand recognition to test the cognitive effect in this study.
The first hypothesis was generated as:
H1(a): People who use the second screen would show worse brand recognition than those who do not use the second screen (for either a match-related or match-unrelated task).
Although multiscreening may have negative influences on cognitive information processing, this phenomenon is still meaningful because the content in the second screen could be a perfect addition to the main screen (Segijn, 2016). The most common combination of the second screen usage is with TV content. In fact, when users are watching TV, they not only use second screens for distractions but also for more deeply involved in what they’re watching (Nielsen, 2013). People in
naturalistic settings had been shown to engage in media multitasking toward the same general goal or related subgoals (Wang, Irwin, Cooper & Srivastava, 2015, p.110). This phenomenon can be understood by the idea that the second screen has a potential for being a good complement of the content on the first screen. The industry report also supported that half of the tablet owners look up information which is relevant to what they’re watching (Nielsen, 2013).
Sports programme seems an ideal genre of TV content for multiscreening, because sports fans were more likely to integrate previous and follow-up information of the game, the event and players into the viewing experience (Gantz et al., 2006; Anstead et al., 2016). For examples, an audience could be watching a soccer match between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona while searching previous results of encounters between these two teams, searching for information about the play Cristiano Ronaldo’s performance in this season, or texting his or her soccer fans friends to discuss the
situation on the pitch, etc. In this scenery, the content on the second screen would be considered as relevant with the first screen. Meanwhile, audiences could also check emails or do online shopping on their mobile devices or laptops when they are watching a soccer match, which would be considered as irrelevant tasks on the second screen.
Researchers defined task relevance as “whether the tasks involved in media multitasking serve
considered playing a facilitating role in adverting outcomes when multitasking. The different level of relatedness of different screens is assumed to be affect information processing and ads effects when multicreening.
Task Relevance and Cognitive outcome
It was argued that compared with relevant multiscreening, irrelevant multiscreening would weaken cognitive performance even more. Researchers explained this idea based on the Theory of Threaded Cognition (Segijn et al., 2017; Van Cauwenberge, Schaap & Van Roy, 2014). Theory of threaded cognition (Salvucci & Taatgen, 2008) supposed that cognition maintains a set of active goals that produce threads of goal-related processing across available resources (Salvucci & Taatgen, 2008, p.107). Although different threads exist at the same time, cognitive resources, which is assumed to be limited, are operated sequentially to serve each thread. The procedural processing will follow the order of focusing attention on task-relevant rules and away from task-irrelevant rules (Salvucci & Taatgen, 2008, p.107). The thread containing relevant tasks is considered to be less cognitively demanding than the thread containing irrelevant tasks, and at the same time, it receives cognitive resources prior to that with irrelevant tasks. Considering people's cognitive capacity is limited, the thread with relevant tasks is more likely to be better served by cognitive resources than that with irrelevant tasks. Taking this theory into multiscreening content, it can be assumed that cognitive resources will be better allocated when it is relevant multiscreening than irrelevant multiscreening, and therefore result in better information memory in the relevant multiscreening condition (Segijn et al., 2017).
Although there was no study focusing on task relevance and multiscreening in sports programme viewing, task relevance had been studied in other media information fields. A previous experiment tested media multi-tasking and its effect on news learning. This study supported that the use of the
second screen led to a lower factual recall; however, no significant differences were found between relevant and irrelevant media multitasking among news viewers (Van Cauwenberge et al., 2014). Segijn and colleagues (2017) conducted two experiments to test the relation between multiscreening (compared with single-screening), task relevance and advertising effect. In the online experiment, all participants had to watch a clip of the entertaining show. Multiscreening conditions were achieved by split-screen and asking participants to solve anagrams that appeared under the video content. Participants in the relevant task group were exposed to anagrams with words that were related to the video clip and those in the irrelevant task group were exposed to words that were unrelated to the video content. In the laboratory experiment, participants were exposed to the same video content as the first study. Media multitasking was manipulated by asking participants to follow instructions that appeared on their main screens and text chat messages. The text messages were either related to the video content or unlearned. Both of two experiments confirmed that in general, multiscreening decreased brand memory. And more than that, the result proved that multiscreening with relevant tasks led to more efficient advertising memory. This finding was explained as relevant multiscreening would lead to more attention on programme content, and subsequently higher level of programme involvement, thereby information with relevant multiscreening would be better processed than with irrelevant multiscreening. Adapt previous findings to this study, I generate the hypothesis as:
H1(b): People who use the second screen for a match-unrelated task would show worse brand recognition than those who use the second screen for a match-related task.
Programme Involvement as a Mediator
Program involvement is defined as “an active, motivated state, signifying interest and arousal
people get involved in a programme content depends on how arousal or interesting the contents are, for example, if the soccer match is suspenseful or boring. Program involvement had been widely considered as a factor to influence the recall of commercial messages (Matthes, Wirth, Schemer & Pachoud, 2012; Moorman et al., 2007; Segijn et al., 2017). It also had been discussed as an important mediator in consumer behaviours (Mitchell, 1979, p.195). One study carried on a naturalistic match-watching setting has found that higher programme involvement cause higher level of ads exposure among viewers, thus exerts positive effects on the commercial recall (Moorman et al., 2007). A later study, which was also conducted in a soccer match content, has found that programme involvement has a positive effect on embedded advertising recall (Moorman, Willemsen, Neijens & Smit, 2012).
The level of programme involvement was relateed to cognitive attentions (Moorman et al., 2007). As discussed before, multiscreening had the potential to disturb the cognitive information processing by dividing and allocating limited cognitive resources on different screens and subsequently each screen would receive less cognitive attention to process the information on it. It is possible that the restraint of concentration on one screen will, therefore, reduce the level of programme involvement. Meanwhile, it is also argued that information will be better processed when multiscreening with relevant tasks than that with irrelevant tasks because when many goals are needed to be achieved parallelly, cognitive resources will be initially allocated to the goal that demands related tasks to accomplish (Segijn et al., 2017). Therefore, it is reasonable that relevant multiscreening will lead to higher programme involvement compared to irrelevant multiscreening. In turn, the higher level of program involvement would arouse more cognitive attention on the screen to process information, which subsequently causes a greater cognitive outcome in information processing, for example, the advertising memory (Moorman et al., 2012).
Considering programme involvement as a facilitator between different media conditions and advertising effects, Segijn and colleagues (2017) had compared single-screen condition, multi-screen condition with relevant task and multi-multi-screen condition with irrelevant task. The result indicated that multiscreening would eventually reduce brand memory via lowering viewers ’
attention on the TV programme and subsequently weaken programme involvement. This study also confirmed that compared with multiscreening with relevant tasks, irrelevant tasks were more likely to decrease programme attention and subsequent programme involvement, and lastly decrease brand memory.
H1(c): People in multiscreening condition (for either a match-related or match-unrelated task) would get less involved in the match content and low involvement would negatively affect brand recognition.
H1 (d): People in a match-unrelated task would get less involved in the match content and low involvement would negatively affect brand recognition.
Multiscreening and Attitudinal Outcomes in Advertising
Although multiscreening was considered to have a bad influence on cognitive outcome (e.g., brand memory, brand recall) in processing advertising content, it had a potential to the attitudinal outcome in advertising (Chinchanachokchai, Duff & Sar, 2015; Kazakova et al., 2016; Segijn et al., 2016; Segijn et al., 2017). The attitudinal outcome can be understood as viewers’ evaluation of the
advertising content. It is considerable in advertising effect because it is closely related to persuasion outcome (such as advertising effect).
The positive influence of multiscreening on the attitudinal outcome was always explained by the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion which was devised by Richard Petty and John Cacioppo in 1986 (Jeong & Hwang, 2016). ELM explained that there are two ways for consumers to process and respond to persuasive messages: central route and peripheral route. Central route of information process illustrates that when people have, for example, higher level of information involvement, more intellectual resources, or more opportunities to process the persuasive content, they will pay close attention to the persuasive message content (such as ads), then struct their own arguments and criterions to evaluation the quality of the message. If those arguments support the message content, people will tend to have favourable attitudes towards the message. Conversely, if viewers’ arguments do not support the message content, counterarguing occurs and results in less
favourable attitudes. Peripheral route domains when people don’t have many intellectual resources
or opportunities to process persuasive information, or when they are less involved to the message content, which causes people putting less effort to the in detailed information processing or message evaluation. In this situation, people tend to have fewer counterarguments towards the persuasive message and are more likely to maintain favourable attitudes (Belch & Belch, 2015).
As mentioned before, engaging in multiscreening would distract and allocate limited cognitive rescues and as a result, people have less effort to put in evaluating advertising content. It could be assumed that it is peripheral route taking control in the information processing when people are multitasking, which reduces critical processing and counterarguing, and contributes to positive attitudinal outcomes accordingly.
One previous study tested this concept by exposing participants to visual commercial contents and assigning them other screens to watch. This study confirmed that multiscreening conditions led to better advertising evaluations, and this result was explained by that multiscreening decreased the
level of attention that was paid to the content of the ad (Chinchanachokchai et al., 2015). Followed by this study, Segijn and colleagues (2016) conducted an experiment to test multiscreening and its effects on persuasive messages and found it had a positive impact on the attitudinal evaluation of advertising, explained by the underlying mechanism of reduced counterarguing. In Kazakova and colleagues’ (2016) study, researchers assigned participants a task of browsing a website to imitate
media multitasking condition and found that media multitasking was positively related to overall positive attitudinal responses towards television commercial block. This finding could be attributed to diminished counterarguments due to multiple media use (Kazakova, et al.,2016). However, no study has been conducted to test the effect of multiscreening on attitudinal advertising outcome in a sports setting. Following previous works, I generate the hypothesis as:
H2 (a): People who use the second screen would show better brand attitude than those who use the second screen (for either a match-related or match-unrelated task).
As argued before, irrelevant multiscreening was believed to be more distracting than relevant multiscreening for requiring more cognitive resources. Hence, people in the irrelevant multiscreening condition might be less capable of processing the advertising message, pay less attention and generate less counterargument to the advertising content accordingly, and therefore possibly maintain better attitudes towards advertising than those who are with relevant tasks.
However, the previous study about multiscreening and task relevance showed that people with manipulated relevant multiscreening tended to have better brand attitudes than people with manipulated irrelevant tasks. Researchers explained this result based on the argument that relevant multiscreening has the potential to increases brand attitude for under the influence of viewers’
attention to the programme (Segijn et al., 2017). This part of the study will not take a close look at the potential influence of the attention to the programme on advertising attitudes, so I will formulate
the hypothesis based on the assumption of a higher degree of distraction during irrelevant multiscreening.
H2 (b): People who use the second screen for a match-related task would show better brand attitude than those who use the second screen for a match-unrelated task.
Fan Identification as a mediator on attitudinal effect in multi screening
When doing a media effect study in a football context, the identification of being a fan is a factor which cannot be avoided. The identification of a sports fan is described as “a person's sense of
connectedness" to a team, an event or a sport (Madrigal, 2000, p. 14). Previous findings have supported the importance of the fan identification in marketing communication field. Highly identified fans were more likely to have positive attitudes towards sponsor’s brands (Gwinner, &
Swanson, 2003; Madrigal, 2001). American viewers with higher fan identification showed better attitudes and higher levels of acceptance towards sports commercials in NFL and NASCAR (Levin, Cobbs, Beasley & Manolis, 2013). Researchers explained that sports fans with higher fan identification might have better knowledge about events or teams and their sponsorships, so that they can better process the advertising during the match, and generate positive attitudes (Levin, Joiner & Cameron, 2001). To the best of knowledge, the moderating role of a social identification has not been investigated in a multiscreening context. We will introduce fan identification into this study to test if this identification will moderate the main effect between multiscreening and attitudinal outcomes. I generate the hypotheses as:
H2 (c): People who use the second screen would show better brand attitude than those who use the second screen (for either a match-related or match-unrelated task), and this effect would be stronger among people with higher level of fan identification.
H2 (d): People who use the second screen for a match-related task would show better brand attitude than those who use the second screen for a match-unrelated task, and this effect would be stronger among people with higher level of fan identification.
METHOD
Design
The hypotheses were tested by a between-subjects experimental design. Participants were randomly exposed to one of three media conditions: single-screen, main screen and a second screen with a relevant task, and main screen and a second screen with an irrelevant task. In all three media conditions, participants were asked to watch a video clip of a soccer match highlights. In two multiscreen groups, two different types of tasks were assigned by instructions embedded in subtitle to participants (see the description below).
Sample
Initially, 106 participants clicked through the link but 4 of them failed to complete the questionnaire. For the remaining 102 of participant, 10 of them quiet the questionnaire during the procedure. Participants who were in one of the two multitasking conditions, but answered the
manipulation check question about the multitasking instructions as “I don’t know if I received any
instructions when watching the video” were excluded (n = 7), and participants who didn’t provide
the right answer of the second manipulation check question regarding the task (1= “the birth year of
Dele Alli” for relevant-task group and 2= “the release year of the Avengers 3” for irrelevant-task
group) in two multi-screening conditions were excluded (n = 2). 1 participants who didn’t answer
the demographic questions was excluded.
Finally, there were 82 participants being included in the final data analysis. The participants were with different nationalities. The majority of them were from China (n=50). form the Netherlands and % form other countries), aged from 21-71 years old (M=25.95, SD=6.02, N= 82). 40 of them were male and 42 of them were female.
Participants were randomly assigned by the online study software Qualtrics into three experiment conditions: single-screen group (n=25, coded in 3), multi-screen group with related task (n=27, coded in 1) and multi-screen group with unrelated task (n=30, coded in 2).
Procedure
First, participants read the introduction and signed the consent form.
In the first part, participants in all experiment conditions were asked to imagine that they are about to watch a football match and they were informed that the video material was a clip of a football match highlights. All participants were informed about the date (Wednesday 01 November 2017), the event (UEFA Champions League 2017-2018) and the fixture (Tottenham Hotspur vs Real
Madrid) of the match. In no-multiscreen group, participants were informed by the prior instructions to concentrate in the video content for all the time and refrain to use other devices during watching. In two multiscreen groups participants were reminded to prepare their mobile devices and were informed that they would be assigned a task in the video and they would need to follow the task instructions when they appeared in the subtitles.
After the video and media uses, participants were asked to finish a questionnaire based on what they had seen. The variables were measured in the following order: brand recognition, brand familiarity, brand attitude, match involvement, fan identity, control variables, manipulation check and demographic questions.
Material
Video content on the main screen. A computer was required as the main screen considering participants would take part in this study online. Participants in all three conditions were exposed to the identical video material. The material lasted for 4minutes and 40seconds and it was clipped from the match between Tottenham Hotspur and Real Madrid in the group stage of the UEFA Champions League 2017-2018. The date of that match was Wednesday 01 November 2017. The video included lineups of both teams, four scores, shots and other competition scenes and highlights on the pitch with live audio commentary. The billboard ads of sponsor brands could be seen around the playing field in the video. The researcher selected an UEFA Champions League match instead of a league match to ensure a certain level of familiarity of sponsor brands otherwise the brands would be too strange for participants to know.
Billboard ads around the playing field. The billboard ads around the playing field in the video were appearing in the following sequence: UniCredit, PS4 and Gran Turismo Sport, Lay ’ s,
Gazprom, MasterCard and Priceless, Nissan, UniCredit (once more), Adidas, Heineken, Pepsi Max, Heineken (once more).
Manipulated task on the second screen. Smartphone, which is considered as the most frequent companion device during multi-screening (Google, 2012), was selected to be the second screen. Both of two multi-screening manipulations happened at 2:02 of the video after the second goal were scored. The manipulation appeared as gestural information embedded in the subtitle and lasted for 48 seconds, ensured that participants has enough time to finish the task.
For the relevant task group, the gestural information instructed participants to use their mobile phone and Google the birth year of the striker Dele Alli who scored two goals in that match by searching three keywords: “Wikipedia”, “English” and “Dele Alli”. This task was aimed to imitate
the actual information searching behaviours when spectators are watching a match. A report about American Google users’ information searching behaviours indicated that in 2014 UEFA games,
most of searches for games, players and teams happened when goals were scored (2014 WORLD CUP: What a Difference 4 Years Makes, 2014). For the irrelevant task group, the gestural information instructed participants to use their mobile phone and Google the release year of Marvel’
s movie the Avengers 3 by searching the keywords: “Wikipedia”, “English” and “the Avengers 3”.
This task was aimed to imitate the situation in which spectators ’ minds were drifting off.
Considering most of our experiments participants would be young adults, the researcher assumed that thinking of a popular movie could be a possible theme when their mind was wondering off.
The researcher chose Wikipedia as an information source because the website surface of Wikipedia contained no commercial or banner, so that to prevent having participants exposed to other ads
which might have a potential to contaminate the experiment result. Wikipedia also ensured that participants who were in the same group would be exposed to the same second-screen content.
Dependent Variables
Cognitive effect. The cognitive effects were measured by brand recognition. Each participant was given a list of randomly distributed pictures of ads banners that have appeared around the playing field in the video (Jeong, 2017). There were 11 banners in total. All banners were adjusted in the same size and were kept resembling the banners around the playing field. The recognition of each brand was assessed on a 7-point scale (Cronbach’s alpha = .96, M = 18.33, SD = 5.73), asking
participants to what extend did they remember the brand on the billboards around the playing field during the match (1= Not at all, 7 = Very much).
Attitudinal effects. Attitudes toward each brand were measured by four items on a 7-point scale (Cronbach’s alpha = .91, M = 205.54, SD = 33.34). Participants were showed a list of randomly
distributed picture of banners that did appear in the video and asked to indicate their feelings toward each brand by defining the brand was Not valuable/Valuable, Unfavourable/Favourable,
Unpleasant/Pleasant and Negative/Positive (Segijn, Voorveld, & Smit, 2017; Simonin & Ruth,
1998; Li, Daugherty & Biocca, 2002; Pelsmacker & Geuens, 1999).
Mediator
Game involvement. Game involvement was measured by eight items on a 7-point scale. Participants were asked to rate their overall experience of watching the video by evaluate following statements from strongly disagree to strongly agree: (1) “I was fascinated by the match.”; (2) “My
thoughts wandered off during the match” (reverse); (3) “I thought the the match was exciting.”; (4)
“I was distracted during the match.” (reversed score); (5) “I thought the match was boring.”
(reversed score); (6) “I paid attention to the match.”; (7) “I thought of other things during the match.”
(reversed score); and (8) “I think the match was interesting.” (Cronbach’s alpha = .872, M = 39.82,
SD = 9.24). These items were taken from a study on effects of programme involvement in a
broadcast soccer match (Moorman et al.,2007). The scores of item (2), (4), (5) and (7) were calculated reversely.
Moderator
Fan Identity. The identity as a football fan was measured with four items on a 7-point scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 7 = Strongly agree) by asking participants to evaluate four statements: (1) “Football is very important to me”; (2) “I watch football whenever I can”; (3) “I think of my
favourite team as part of who I am”; and (4) “Traits that define fans of my favourite team apply to
me as well”. The first two items were adopted from a study of the impact of fan identification on
sponsorship outcomes (Gwinner & Swanson, 2003). (Cronbach’s alpha = .92, M = 14.20, SD =
7.09). The last two items were taken from a research on factors which might influence the development of team identification.
RESULT
In order to test whether randomisation of participants to three different media conditions was successful, a Oneway Anova test and two Chi-square tests were conducted.
Results revealed no differences between three groups with regard to age (M=25.80 years, SD = 4.63 in single-task group; M = 25.41 years, SD = 2.44 in relevant-task group; M = 26.95, SD = 8.79 in irrelevant-task group, F (2,79) = .27, p = .764); gender, p = .461; and mother tongue, p = .621.
Manipulation Check
The manipulation was checked by two steps. At first, participants were asked to provide what instructions did they receive when they are watching the video (1= the birth year of Dele Alli, 2 = the release year of Marvel the Avengers 3, 3 = I didn't receive any instructions, and ‘I don’t know
option. Next, the participants who were assigned to relevant multi-screening group (who chose 1) and irrelevant multi-screening group (who chose 2) were asked to answer the birth year of the player and the release year of the movie respectively.
The manipulation check was conducted by a one-way ANOVA to see whether participants perceived the instructions or not. Results indicated for non-task group: M = 2.96, SD = .20; for relevant-task group: M = 1.00, SD = .00; and for irrelevant-task group: M = 2.03, SD = .41. The result showed that there was a significant difference between three groups, F (2, 79) = 333.40,
p<.001, and the Post Hoc test revealed that there were significant differences between each two
groups (all p<.001).
To test the main effects: H1(a), H1(b), H2(a) and H2(b), the researcher conducted a MANOVA test with brand recognition and brand attitude as dependent variables, and three different media use conditions (1= multi-screen condition with match-related task, 2= multi-screen condition with match-unrelated task, 3= single-screen condition) as independent variables. The analysis result showed that there was no significant difference between three different media conditions on brand recognition (F (2, 79) =1.03, p=.362), neither on brand attitude (F (2, 79) =.15, p= .866). Participants in the single-screen condition and the multi-screen condition (both match-related and match-unrelated) performed no significant difference on brand recognition or brand memory. Participants in the multi-screen condition with the match-related task and the multi-screen condition with the match-unrelated task performed no significant difference on brand recognition or brand memory. Hence, H1(a), H1(B), H2(a) and H2(b) are rejected.
Mediator Effect
The mediation effect of programme involvement was tested by PROCESS Model-4, to exam if the programme involvement would play a mediator role in the effect of three different media conditions on brand recognition. The researcher chose PROCESS to test the mediating and moderating effect because both the programme involvement and the fan identification were measured by 7-scale questions. Since PROCESS only accepts variables with measurement level higher than nominal, the researcher computed independent variables into new values to represent three media conditions.
To test H1(c), the researcher computed single-screen condition=1, multiscreening with match-related task =0 and Multi-screen with match-unmatch-related task = 0. No significant effects were found for multiscreening and brand recognition (F (2,79) =.71, SE= 2.66, p= .303, 95% LLCI=-2.74; ULCI= 8.93), which means involvement had no significant mediator effect on the main relationship between multiscreening and brand recognition. H1 (c) is rejected.
To test H1(d), the researcher computed multiscreening with match-related task =1, multiscreening with match-unrelated task =0. No significant effects were found for task relevance and brand recognition (F (1,80) =.71, SE= 2.80, p= .738, 95% LLCI=-4.63; ULCI=6.50), which means involvement had no significant mediator effect on the relationship between task relevance and brand recognition. H1(d) was rejected.
Moderator Effect
A PROCESS Model-1 was used to test if different levels of fan identification would moderate the effect between different media conditions and brand attitudes. The variables that were created for testing H1(c) and H1(d) were continuing being used to test H2(c) and H2(d).
There was no significant moderator effect of fan identification on multiscreening and brand attitude (F (3,78) =.20, R2= .09, p=.894). H2(c) was rejected. There was no significant moderator effect on task relevance brand attitude (F (3,78) =1.65, R2=.25, p=.185); H2(d) was rejected.
CONCLUSION
The aim of this study is to test if multiscreening and the variance of task relevance would affect advertising outcome cognitively and attitudinally in a soccer context. The result indicated that when watching a soccer match, no matter people were multiscreening with a related task, a match-unrelated task, or only focus on the game, they performed no difference in brand recognition or brand attitude. Neither involvement nor fan identification played a role in the relation. The current research result should be reassuring to industry advertisers since media multiscreening haven ’t
The result of the current study is inconsistent with previous literature might be due to the different perceptual modalities of advertising. In previous studies, the advertising message was showed in video (auditory and visual) version (Segijn, et al.,2017; Kazakova, et al.,2016), while the advertising in this study were all in visual versions. Researchers believe that people process auditory and visual information in two separate systems (Kazakova et al.,2016), thus might differ the effect of information processing.
Moorman and colleagues (2012) have suggested that the memory of advertising around sports fields is possibly hindered when viewers are highly involved in matches due to the limited cognitive capacities.Viewers may be too involved in the actions on the field to notice and memorize advertisings in a televised soccer match setting. This suggestion could help the researcher of the current study to partly understand the reason of people neither with nor without multiscreening performed no difference in brand recognition and brand attitude. Since the video martial used in this study mostly included intensive competitions, it is very likely that participants were engaged in the match during watching so that to pay less attention to the advertising banners. It is difficult for people to generate attitude without processing the advertising information. In future studies, the eye-tracking system could be used to capture viewers’ attention during a match.
The experimental condition in this study was fundamentally different from real-life settings. Normally, the length of a football match is 90 minutes (exclude the halftime), while in this study, participants were exposed to the video match content for only 4 minutes and 40seconds. Advertising banners around the field are appearing repeatedly in a soccer match. The limited duration of watching might restrict viewers’ exposure to the advertising content. The mere-exposure
being exposed to the stimulus repeatedly (Zajonc, 1968). Hence, more exposure to brand banners might generate more positive attitude towards the brand.
Moreover, in the online experiment condition, participants tended to be less concentrated in the study because of the lack of supervision, which might influence the study result. Furthermore, the online experiment condition did not ensure that all participants were in the same environment during the experimental procedure. The variance of surroundings might lead to consequences that are hard to estimate.
In this experiment setting, multiscreening behaviours were not spontaneous but manipulated. The purpose of engaging in multiscreening and the time of using the second screen could be far different in a real soccer match setting. Sports programme is a suitable scenery for views making use of the second screen, yet, there are rare studies about multiscreening and its influence on advertising outcome in a soccer context. It is necessary for future researchers to test the multiscreening effects on advertising around sports field both in a TV live match contest and in a stadium condition.
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