Annoyance in Ads and Repetition

Annoyance in Ads and

Repetition

The Power of Annoyance: Is it a recommendable entrance strategy?

Annoyance in Ads and

Repetition

The Power of Annoyance: Is it a recommendable entrance strategy?

Master Thesis

Master Marketing: Marketing Management Department of Marketing

Faculty of Economics and Business University of Groningen

Management Summary

As marketing managers may be troubling with breaking through the fast growing clutter of advertisements it becomes more important to find ways to attract the consumer’s attention for the products they are selling. Zalando, a company in the fashion industry, is an example from practice about how this could be achieved, namely by using annoyance in advertising. Traditionally, marketers have been reserved in using annoyance in advertising. On the one hand this is due to the initial negativity that surrounds annoyance and on the other hand due to current research in this area, which say that annoyance in advertising may harm attitudes towards the brand. When marketing managers are about to launch a new brand they may be searching for a technique to harvest short term benefits in term of brand awareness and thereby not withstanding long term consequences in terms of brand attitude.

Now, annoyance could be a way to harvest these short term benefits but long term effects can only be researched when consumers are exposed multiple times to the annoying advertisement. That is what this study was about, finding out whether repeated exposure to an annoying ad versus a neutral ad results in higher brand awareness and if it indeed leads to a lower brand attitude for a new brand.

The results of this study show that in general an annoying advertisement will lead to a faster growing brand awareness than for a neutral advertisement. Moreover, after the first two exposures to the annoying advertisement brand attitudes even increase, where brand attitudes for neutral advertisements decline. Thus, initial brand attitudes from the annoying ad are negative but are likely to increase along the number of exposures, probably due to deeper processing of the actual message of the brand after the first few exposures to it.

Preface

This thesis is the final step of my Master of Science degree in Marketing, specialized in Marketing Management. The courses of my Master Program gave me a broad overview of the Marketing domain. I followed a few Marketing Intelligence courses which enabled me to get a deeper understanding of the intelligence part of Marketing. This thesis combines the knowledge from the courses with new insights from literature. As the thesis topic ‘The Effectiveness of Repeated Exposure to Annoying Advertising’ was my first choice, I enjoyed writing a thesis for this main topic. After all, this thesis is a satisfying accomplishment of my Master Marketing and also of being a student at the University of Groningen.

First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Debra Trampe for her time and feedback sessions which supported me in writing the thesis by offering a helping hand at times I needed it. Besides, I would like to thank my fellow students, and especially Femke Bosch and Jan Tiebot, for their help during the past months. Moreover, I would like to thank all participants who participated in the survey. In spite of the length of the survey they patiently answered the questions to their best. Within these group I have to mention my friends, my family and acquaintances, because finishing my Master was not possible without their contribution and support.

Michel Smink

Table of Contents

Research Questions & Hypotheses ... 8

Repetition ... 8

The influences of brand familiarity and annoyance ... 9

Methodology ... 12

Pretest ... 12

Participants and Design ... 13

Procedure…………..………..………13

Independent variables……….14

Dependent variables ... 15

Results ... 15

Discussion ... 22

Limitations & Recommendations for Future Research ... 23

References ... 25

Introduction

In the last quarter of 2010 Zalando entered the Dutch market for online fashion. As Zalando was a new player in the online fashion market, they lacked brand awareness. The marketing department of Zalando decided to unfold a massive ad campaign, both online and offline, to reach higher levels of brand awareness. A year later, 2011, they saw their turnover increase to an estimated 60 million Euros. In 2012, the total turnover of Zalando Netherlands tripled to nearly 200 million Euros. This large growth rates may seem interesting in itself, but the more interesting is the fact that they realized this with help of advertisements that were seen as highly irritating. Zalando won two awards in 2011 and 2012 for having the most annoying ad of the year (www.trosradar.nl). The example of Zalando demonstrates the successful use of an annoying ad by a new brand, where an annoying ad is described as one that is provoking, causing displeasure and momentary impatience (Aaker and Bruzzone 1985). Existing marketing literature describes different theories about the effectiveness of an advertisement regarding the content of that advertisement. Gelb and Pickett (1983) researched the effect of humor in ads on ad effectiveness. Their findings show that there is a relationship between the perception of humor in the ad and the liking of the advertisement. This also holds for creativity in advertising as was found by Lehnert, Till, and Carlson (2013). Creativity, which was defined as being divergent and to contain elements of newness and differences, had shown to have a significant positive effect on brand recall. Whereas creativity and humor are seen as positive in itself, annoyance is initially expected to lead to negative attitudes. Here arises a discrepancy between the negativity that surrounds annoying advertisements and the phenomenon (positive effects on awareness/attitude) as seen in the presented Zalando case.

addressed by Pechmann and Stewart (1989). In their findings an advertisement that was initially perceived as rather neutral, may cause the arousal of feelings that are related to irritation when the number of exposures increased. This phenomenon is called wear out and is described as the point where an additional exposure causes no longer an effect on consumer attitude or may even cause a negative effect on consumer attitude.

The above suggests that repeated exposure of an individual to the advertisement (stimulus) may elevate the attitudes toward it till a saturation point (wear out point) after which it declines. Lehnert, Till, and Carlson (2013) researched this effect for advertisements that were creative, as mentioned earlier. They found that for a creative ad, wear out starts later and wear in starts earlier compared to an advertisement that was rather neutral. This may imply that advertisements that differentiate from neutrality have different levels of effectiveness. And this may especially occur for a type of advertisement that is initially perceived as negative.

When discussing advertising repetition and the important factors that may influence its outcomes the work of Campbell and Keller (2003) suggests another distinction to be made. In their article they distinguish between unfamiliar brands and familiar brands and their findings show that the relationship between repetition and attitude toward the ad is moderated by the novelty of the brand. Attitude toward the ad increases with repetition but declines when repetition keeps going. However, for familiar brands the first repetitions have a positive but smaller effect. Important to notice is that the effects do not immediately decline when repetition increases. They found that the level of processing the ad was dependent on the level of familiarity. An unfamiliar brand is processed more extensively with repetition because the customer’s focus is more on learning than on updating its current knowledge. As marketers want attention for their products when they are first launched an annoying advertisement in itself might attract attention, but the effectiveness of the advertisement might be elevated when the consumer combines the attention with more extensive processing and therefore might lead to an accelerated increase in brand awareness for the first repetitions.

This research might be interesting for marketing managers or advertisers who try to launch a new brand and are troubling with breaking through the clutter of advertisements. It might be helpful in setting up advertising campaigns that contribute to a higher level of brand awareness, whereas annoyance is used instead of an advertisement that is perceived as rather neutral to attract the attention of the consumers. In the remainder of this research the literature on the effects of annoyance in advertising on brand awareness and brand attitude will be reviewed (1), the repetition effect in advertising is analyzed (2), the role of brand familiarity in this setting will be discussed (3), a conceptual model and the corresponding set of hypotheses will be presented (4), the hypotheses will be tested using an online questionnaire and using TV commercials (5), the results will be presented and discussed (6), while considering the limitations of this research and providing directions for future research (6).

Research Questions & Hypotheses

Repetition

getting the attention of the targeted consumer it might be possible that wear in occurs faster for annoying advertisement when compared to neutral advertisements. Therefore, the following hypothesis is composed:

H1: Repetition causes wear in to occur faster for annoying ads than for neutral ads.

Wear in is about the first two exposures if there is a significant increase in attitudes (Pechmann and Stewart 1988). However, the initial attitudes that are formed may erode or may change substantially over time. Wear out as an effect of additional exposures has been researched widely (Cacioppo and Petty 1979; Pechmann and Stewart1989;Campbell and Keller 2003) and studies generally show that the effect of the stimuli decreased when the number of exposures increased. Pechmann and Stewart (1988) divided repetition effects into two stages, where the first stage is known as wear in. The second stage can be described as wear out and they suggest that it occurs around the fourth exposure to an (neutral) advertisement. At this point the consumers get feelings of annoyance, tedium and boredom because they already processed the information in the communication several times. This may result in consumers that become saturated with the information and may cause counter arguments to arise. This will lead to a decline in the persuasiveness of the advertisement. For annoying advertisements it is more likely that annoyance, tedium and boredom occur earlier since the advertisement may be less likely to be processed extensively by the consumer because of the advertisement’s intrusive character.

Tedium and boredom are possible effects of repetition. Campbell and Keller (2003) suggest another important effect of repetition that is called ‘habituation’. Habituation is described as the process by which initial negativity or uncertainty to an unfamiliar stimulus object is reduced (Berlyne 1970). Campbell and Keller (2003) suggest that the respondent could experience negative uncertainty toward both the novel ad and the novel brand. Together with the findings of Aaker and Bruzzone (1985), that the initial attitude toward an annoying ad is negative, we might suggest that this initial negativity may cause wear out to occur faster, leading to the following hypothesis:

H2: Repetition causes wear out to occur faster for annoying ads than for neutral ads.

The influences of brand familiarity and annoyance

Brand familiarity. This research’s goal is to test whether an annoying advertisement is better

may not be that vulnerable to the use of an annoying advertisement. However, it is important to notice the differences between the effects of unfamiliar brand versus familiar brand on ad effectiveness.

Campbell and Keller (2003) researched the relationship between brand familiarity and repetition effectiveness. Their findings show that consumer’s responses are different when the advertised brand was familiar versus unfamiliar. As supported by Cox and Cox (1988), message effectiveness is higher in the initial levels of exposure, because they reduce the negative uncertainty that surround the novel stimulus object. Since a familiar brand already has less uncertainty about the brand, initial exposures will result in a lower increase in message effectiveness. When the number of exposures increases the effects of familiarity turn around, that means the effectiveness of a familiar brand increases along the number of exposures because the consumer’s willingness to process the information of the familiar brand.

The findings of Campbell and Keller (2003) give important insights on the responses of the consumer to familiar and unfamiliar ads. Unfamiliar brands are processed more extensively because the consumer has no current knowledge and has to learn about the brand from the advertisement. The consumer needs less processing capacity for learning the information in an advertisement of a familiar brand, as they only have to update their existing knowledge on the brand. When using an annoying advertisement this may lead to a strengthened effectiveness, as annoyance was first used to capture the attention of the consumer and the newness of the brand may cause the consumer to process the underlying message deeper. As counter arguments arise for unfamiliar brands when repetition increases, this deeper processing might result in more negative attitudes and thus wear out occurs. Compared to the research by Campbell and Keller (2003) this research focuses on incorporating annoyance in explaining the relationship between familiarity and repetition. Furthermore, this research distinguishes between effects on brand awareness and brand attitude and not solely on brand attitudes.

Annoyance, brand attitude and Awareness. Aaker and Bruzzone (1985) define an annoying

the contents, of causes of annoyance since the way the brand is presented is the only thing the advertiser can change (annoyance through repeated exposure occurs not at the same time for each consumer and may happen to each ad type).

But why then have marketers been using annoyance in advertising from the past till the present? Marketers intentionally use the factors as described by Aaker and Bruzzone (1985) to capture the attention of the consumer. Annoyance can be utilized in the same way as creativity and humor, that is, to break through the clutter of advertisements. So annoyance could promote cognitive processing and might cause higher advertising effectiveness. Silk and Vavra (1974) suggest that liked and disliked ads have greater influence on the relationship between attitude towards the ad and attitude towards the brand than neutral ads have. They found that liked ads increased brand attitude and that disliked ads are more likely to decrease the attitude towards the brand. It is important to keep in mind the effects on brand attitude as it may influence the long term sales of the firm as brand attitude shows how consumers think about a particular brand. As noted above, ad repetition is expected to have positive effects up to a certain number of exposures. For marketers this point might be essential in establishing short term increases in brand awareness and the protection of long term attitudes.

Chakrabarty and Yelkur (2005) researched the effect on brand attitude for annoying advertisements. In their study they controlled for factors that might influence the effects of annoyance in the ad such as feelings at the moment of the interview, prior brand attitude and attitude towards advertising in general. They scaled their advertisements on the level of perceived annoyance and found that even for the brand that was perceived as ‘most annoying’ there was no significant correlation with brand attitude (notice: repetition effects were not included in their study). As brand attitude is a good predictor for purchase intentions (Mackenzie, Lutz and Belch, 1986) it might not harm sales, when annoying ads are used.

H3: The effect of an annoying advertisement versus a neutral advertisement for a new brand on brand attitude is negative.

H4: The effect of an annoying advertisement versus a neutral advertisement for a new brand on brand awareness is positive and stronger.

Combining the four hypotheses, the following conceptual model is proposed (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Conceptual model

Methodology

Pretest

The advertisements that were used in the questionnaire were pretested on 10 respondents before the actual questionnaire was distributed in order to check the manipulation of the advertisements. The participants in this pretest where all marketing students or former marketing students at the University of Groningen within the age range 22-24. A single factor design with two levels (neutral versus annoying) was performed. The participants were approached via email which contained a link to the two minute lasting online survey which includes both the target ad and the control ad.

a clear and calm voice and in general it explains how the site works. A further explanation for these two ads can be found under ‘Independent variables’. The dependent variable is ‘perceived irritation’ which was measured on a 7-points Likert scale, from 1= not annoying to 7= extremely annoying and measures the level of annoyance in the advertisement as perceived by the participant.

To test whether the average perceived annoyance of the target ad (ikwilvanmijnautoaf.nl) is different from the average perceived annoyance of the control ad (nieuweautokopen.nl) an independent samples t-test with ad type and perceived annoyance was performed. The independent samples t-test was significant, t(18) = 8.38, p < .01. The average score on perceived annoyance for the annoying ad (M=5.8) is significantly higher than the average for the neutral ad (M=2.3) and thus the annoying ad is perceived as more annoying.

Participants and Design

The goal of this research is to study the effects of repeated exposure to annoyance in an advertisement on the brand awareness and brand attitude of an unfamiliar brand. A 3 (one, two or four exposures to the ad) x 2 (annoying versus neutral ad) mixed-subjects factorial design was executed. A total of 76 respondents participated in the 11-minute study in exchange for a chance for a €10,- gift voucher. About half of the sample were Marketing students at the University of Groningen, collected via a mailing. The other half were selected online (Facebook) within the age group ranging from 18-60 with an average age of 26,7 years. 50 percent of the sample was female (see Table 2 for more information on group descriptives per exposure condition). All participants were asked to participate voluntary. Since the advertisements presented were in Dutch, only participants with Dutch as their native language were asked to join the study. This was done in order to avoid misunderstanding of the advertisement and their possible negative influence on the reliability of this study.

Procedure

was split in two blocks separated by two filler tasks (Lehnert, Till, and Carlson 2013) in order to clear the minds of the respondent to a certain extent (as exposures follow up rather fast compared to exposure in a real environment, filler task are used to clear the minds to some extent). The first filler task asks the participant to read some words in mind, where the words are colors. These words are colored differently from what the meaning of the words denotes which requires high level cognitive processing (see Appendix B). The second filler task consists of a text in which only the first and the last character of the words are in the right place. The human brain can read the text, but may use a little more processing capacity than a normal text (see Appendix C). After the groups were exposed to the second commercial block they were exposed to a single filler task which asked the participant to sum the total value of the Dutch word ‘zon’ (where A=1, B=2,……., Z=26) after which the questionnaire continued (see Appendix D). For each of the two target advertisements two recall and a recognition question was addressed. This was followed by 7 measures on brand attitude. At the end the manipulation check was included, where respondents had to rate perceived annoyance, informative function of the ad and the perceived humor on a 7-points Likert scale to hide the actual purpose of the study. At last the respondent is thanked for the participation in the questionnaire.

Independent Variables

Repetition. The subjects were randomly divided over the three exposure conditions that are

suggested by Batra and Ray (1986), which are one, two and four times. Each group was exposed to the same advertisements but the exposure condition assigned to that particular group determined the number of exposures to the annoying and neutral advertisement as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Groups and Exposures per Ad Type

Cacioppo and Petty (1979) and Pechman and Stuart (1988) suggested that the point of wear out is estimated to be around the fourth exposure and wear in is expected to occur between the first and second exposure if present. After this point a consumer is less likely to process the advertisement of an unfamiliar brand extensively (Campbell and Keller 2003). Because of this, the study focuses on the first four exposures to the advertisement and the ‘three exposures – condition’ is left out because the above literature suggest differences between two and three exposures to be limited.

Number of Exposures per ad type

Annoying ad Neutral ad

Group 1 1 4

Group 2 2 2

Ad type. The choice of which advertisement to use was dependent on several factors. First,

both the annoying and the neutral advertisement should be unfamiliar to the respondents in order to measure the changes in brand awareness. The target commercials were distracted from Dutch local broadcasting stations. Second, to avoid differences in product involvement by the consumer, the product category chosen in the two advertisements were identical. Third, as some product categories are more annoying in itself, like toothpastes (Aaker and Bruzzone 1985), an advertisement was chosen that was more neutral according to the product category and annoying according to the way the product/brand was presented. Last, to avoid inference with other commercials in the commercial break, product categories used in the compounded commercial break were distinct and different. The target ads that were chosen for the test were related to the car industry. Besides, both the focus ad and the filler ads have been randomly ordered to avoid possible primacy effects (Lehnert, Till, and Carlson 2013).

Dependent variables

Brand attitude. To measure the attitude towards the advertised brands, the scale bySpears and Singh (2004) was used. This will result in 7 measures on a 7-points scale on unappealing/appealing, bad/good, unpleasant/pleasant, unfavorable/favorable, unlikable/likable, unsatisfactory/satisfactory, disagreeable/agreeable. These 7 measures will be combined to one variable labeled as ‘brand attitude’.

Brand Awareness. In this study brand awareness is subdivided into brand recall and brand

recognition. Brand recall was measured with two questions. First the respondent was asked which brand came first to mind when thinking of a website were one could sell his car or buy a new one. This question was followed by a question which required the respondent to name all brands he knows in the particular category. If the respondent names the target ad or the control ad in one (or both) of the recall questions the respondent is seen as ‘aware of the brand’. Brand recognition was measured through a list of 9 competing brands and 3 fictional brands from which the respondent had to pick the brands he/she recognized.

Results

related to the commercial block. Furthermore, there were no missing values for the participants that completed the survey. Therefore a total of 76 completed surveys were submitted . This resulted in 152 measures divided over the three groups (based on the number of exposures). The sample is described as in table 2.

Table 2: Descriptives per Group

Category Gender Age

1 exposure 42% women* 26.38*

2 exposures 65% women 26.73

4 exposures 42% women* 26.38*

* Groups have same averages due to the set up of this study (see Table 1). As two groups see a commercial block with 4 exposures of the one type and 1 exposure of the other type, the averages are the same as in this table the descriptives are grouped by exposures instead of the original groups.

Manipulation Check. A two-way ANOVA was performed to analyze the influence of ad type

on perceived annoyance and to find out whether repetition has an effect on these outcomes. The main effect of ad type proved to be significant. The manipulated ad (ikwilvanmijnautoaf.nl) was perceived as significantly more annoying (M=5.3) than the control ad (nieuweautokopen.nl)(M=3.3), F(1,146)=65.55 , p < .01 . The main effect for exposures, as was expected, was not significant, F(2,146)=.41, p = .66 . So, repeated exposure to annoying ads does not lead to significant differences in perceived annoyance and contrast analyses show that there are no significant

Table 3: Differences between Exposure Conditions per Ad Type

Ad Type # of exposures # of exposures Mean Difference Sig.

Neutral 1 2 .643 .128 4 .520 .222 2 1 -.643 .128 4 -.123 .770 4 1 -.520 .222 2 .123 .770 Annoying 1 2 -.108 .798 4 -.200 .638 2 1 .108 .798 4 -.092 .826 4 1 .200 .638 2 .092 .826

Scale construction. To measure the brand attitude the scale by Spears and Singh (2004) was

used. To test the internal consistency a Cronbach’s alpha test was done. This revealed that the 7 scales measure the same underlying construct (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.92) and is labeled as brand attitude.

Table 4: Pairwise Comparisons: Differences in brand attitude between Exposures

# of Exposures # of Exposures Mean Difference in brand attitude Sig. 1 2 .209 .307 4 -.051 .800 2 1 -.209 .307 4 -.260 .319 4 1 .051 .800 2 .260 .349

Nevertheless, the interaction effect of ad type and number of exposures appeared to be significant, F(2,146)=4.64, p= .04. The pairwise comparisons of the interaction effect are shows in Table 5 and Table 6.

Table 5: Effect of Repetition on brand attitude per Ad Type

Table 6: Effect of Ad Type on Brand Attitude per Exposure Condition

Furthermore, the main effects of ad type and repetition (and their interaction) on brand recall have been analyzed with a two-way repeated measures ANOVA. The effect of ad type on brand recall is significant, F(1,25)= 19.82, p < .01 . And the main effect of exposures is significant as was expected, F(2,25)=16.0, p < .01. The interaction effect is not significant, F(2,25)= 1.0, P = .375 . The results of contrast analyses are shown in Table 7. The same analyses are executed on brand recognition. For brand recognition only the main effect of ad type was significant, F(1,25)=15.36, p < .01 .

Table 7: Pairwise Comparisons Between Repetition and Ad Type

Measure # of

exposures

Respondent count per type of ad Sig. Neutral Annoying Brand Recall* 1 12% 48% .004 2 42.3% 57.7% .450 4 52% 88% .004 Brand Recognition 1 36% 64% .070 2 42.3% 57.7% .161 4 48% 80% .018

*Brand Recall = the participant did recall the brand in one of the two recall measures.

Repetition, annoyance and wear in/wear out. Wear in effects are expected to be present

increasing (Pechmann and Stewart 1988). A two-way repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to test the hypotheses and the results in Table 5 revealed that in this study there was no wear in present since the difference between the first (M=3.66) and second exposure (M=3.71) to an annoying advertisement was not significant (p=. .97) and is graphically shown in Figure 2. This means that H1 is not supported and therefore it cannot be concluded that annoying advertisements wear in faster than neutral advertisements.

The pairwise comparisons between the different level of exposures to an neutral advertisement display a marginally significant decrease in brand attitude between the first exposure and the fourth exposure (Mean difference=0.541, p= .07). For annoying advertisements there is even an marginally significant (p = .06) increase in brand attitude between the first (M=3.7) and fourth (M=4.28) exposure to the advertisement. This suggests that wear out for annoying advertisements is not present within the first four exposures, but is more likely to wear out later than for neutral ads as neutral ads wear out around the fourth exposure. H2 should therefore be rejected, thus annoying ads do not lead to an earlier occurrence of the wear out effect than for neutral ads. In Figure 2 these results are shown graphically.

Figure 2: Effect of Type of Ad on Brand Attitude

Annoyance, brand attitude and awareness. As can be seen in Figure 2 brand attitude is

affected by the type of the ad. As the repeated measures ANOVA already proved, the main effect of ad type on brand attitude is significant. Therefore hypothesis H3 is supported and thus annoying

advertisements (M=3.9) lead to a lower average brand attitude than neutral advertisements (M=4.5) within the first four exposures.

The results of the second two-way repeated measures ANOVA support hypothesis H4 (see table 7). Annoying advertisements lead to a significantly higher brand awareness (in terms of recall and recognition) for the first and fourth exposure. The brand awareness was not significantly different for the ‘two exposure’ condition. Figure 3 and 4 graphically depict the development of brand recognition (Figure 3) and recall (Figure 4) by the number of exposures to the advertisement.

Figure 3: Effect of Type of Ad on Brand Recognition

Figure 4: Effect of Type of Ad on Brand Recall

Discussion

This research was focused on answering the question whether repeated exposure to an annoying ad versus a neutral ad results in higher brand awareness and a lower brand attitude for a new brand. According to the Zalando story it was expected that annoying advertisements and the repeated exposure to it would lead to an higher and faster increase in brand recall and recognition (brand awareness). That is what hypothesis H4 was tested for and the findings reveal that annoyance as the ad type causes both brand recall and brand recognition to be higher if compared to a more neutral advertisement. At least, at the first and fourth exposure condition the effect was significant. Although the second exposure condition is not statistically supported, the highly significant results at the first and fourth exposure make it more plausible that this may hold for the ‘two exposures’ condition too. As in the Zalando case, annoying ads enhance the effect of an advertisement on both brand recall and brand recognition. These finding imply that for marketing managers who are about building brand awareness (especially for new brands) could do so by using annoying ads instead of neutral advertisements. Since brand awareness increases faster when an annoying ad is used it might also help with cost control for the marketing department as the ad campaign could decrease the necessary number of exposures as compared to a neutral ad campaign.

Then, as was initially expected, annoying advertisements could have an eroding effect on brand attitude (H3). The direct influence of annoying ads on brand attitude resulted in a significantly lower brand attitude than for neutral advertisements. This is consistent with findings of multiple researchers including Silk and Vavra (1974) who argue that an advertisement that is disliked results in a lower brand attitude for the advertised brand. However, what was found was that brand attitudes do increase along the number of exposures and might even surpass neutral advertisements as soon as four exposures. This is in line with the Zalando case in which Zalando appears to have no problems with its brand attitudes and the purchase intentions that are related to that which may be explained by a deeper processing of the core message of the advertisement after the initial exposure. For marketing managers this might be a relief to the extent that long term attitudes might not be harmed. As was hypothesized (H1) it was expected that wear in would occur earlier for the annoying advertisement than for the neutral one. Nevertheless, the wear in effect was not present in this study (according Pechmann and Stewart (1988) who argue that a wear in effect is present if the difference in brand attitude between the first en second exposure is significant and increasing). Interesting is the increase in brand attitude for annoying advertisement as early as the fourth exposure whereas the neutral advertisement is facing a decreasing brand attitude after the initial exposure. This may be related with the theory that Aaker and Bruzzone (1985) addressed regarding the initial attitude toward an annoying ad, that is negative. It seems that people only focus on the annoyance that is in the commercial and that only a few exposures later they start to process the message more intensively which results in a higher brand attitude after the second exposure. This in turn, implies that when executing an annoying ad campaign it is very important that the target group is reached for at least four times.

The presence of this interesting phenomenon is likely to be responsible for the fact that the study on wear out (H2) gives insignificant results for the annoying advertisements, as the wear out effect is visible and significant for the neutral advertisement.

As a result it may be concluded that repeated exposure to an annoying advertising is a more effective way in building brand awareness for a new brand and that the effects on brand attitude may not be that destructive as assumed in most of current literature on this topic.

Limitations & Recommendations for Future Research

results could be biased and therefore results might have limited generalizability. Further research using a more equally spread sample (regarding the age of the respondent) could validate the results in this study.

Second, for this study the number of exposures to the advertisement was limited to four exposures as was recommended by existing literature. However, the results of this study show that there might be relevant developments after the fourth exposure to the advertisement. This holds especially for the annoying advertisement. Further research could explorer the developments after the fourth exposure. And most important is that future research on annoyance in advertising includes repetition in its models since repetition is of great importance to the effectiveness and results of an annoying ad campaign.

Third, the target advertisements that were used in this study focused on one type of product category, namely the automobile industry. Participants in the survey were randomly assigned to one of the three commercials blocks, thereby not considering the participant’s attitude towards the product category. Future research could include different product categories or even use attitude toward product category as a separate variable.

Fourth, in this study the effect of an annoying advertisement on brand awareness is researched. The findings give information on the likability of remembering the advertised brand. However, what was not researched in this study was whether the content of the message was processed or remembered. Did the respondent know what the advertiser wanted to tell or did the respondent just remember the creator of the advertisement. Further research might explorer the field of annoyance in advertising and the accompanying level of processing a message’s contents.

Fifth, the sample size in this study was limited to 76 unique respondent. Each respondent was used to measure two conditions resulting in a total of 152 unique measures. At the two exposure condition the study did not find significant results. This could be due to the relative small sample size and therefore it is suggested that future research should use a larger sample in their research. Sixth, this study compared annoying advertisements to neutral advertisements. Results show that annoyance can be used in favor. Nevertheless, the study did not compare annoyance to humor and creativity and therefore this study cannot conclude that annoyance is the best way to go in breaking through the clutter. Further research is necessary to address this unknown area.

its annoyance (for example, pop-up’s) in the research, rather than only studying the offline effects of annoyance in advertising.

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Appendices

Appendix A: Commercial Block Construction

Total # of ads Exposures First Block* Second Block*

Neutral Annoying Neutral Annoying Neutral Annoying

Group 1 17 4 1 3th, 9th, 7th 12th,

16th

Group 2 15 2 2 6th 3rd 11th 13th

Group 3 17 1 4 6th 3rd, 8th 12th,

16th

* The value in the corresponding column denotes which place the target ad was positioned

Appendix B: Filler task 1

Appendix D: Questionnaire (Dutch)

Allereerst, bedankt voor het beantwoorden van deze vragenlijst! Deze vragenlijst is opgesteld naar aanleiding van mijn Master Scriptie. Deze scriptie gaat over de effectiviteit van het gebruik van geanimeerde reclame ten opzichte van reclames met acteurs/actrices.

Nu zullen enkele algemene vragen gesteld worden en vervolgens zult u een filmpje te zien krijgen. Direct daarna volgen nog enkele vragen aangaande dit filmpje.

Q1: Geslacht: man/vrouw Q2: Wat is uw leeftijd? (in jaren) Q3: Waar woont u?

Via onderstaande link zult u worden doorverwezen naar een YouTube-filmpje. Het is van belang dat u het gehele filmpje afkijkt. Het filmpje duurt ongeveer 10 minuten. Daarna hoeft u nog slechts enkele vragen te beantwoorden wat hooguit 3 minuten in beslag neemt. Alvast bedankt voor het kijken van het filmpje.

Nogmaals bedankt voor het kijken van het filmpje. Er volgende nu enkele vragen over wat u zojuist heeft gezien.

Q4: Als u van plan zou zijn om een auto online aan te schaffen, welke website komt dan het eerst

in u op? (zowel nieuw als tweedehands)

Q5: Welke websites om een auto aan te schaffen kent u nog meer? (zowel nieuw als

tweedehands) Gebruik een komma om elke volgende website te noemen.

Q6: Als u van plan zou zijn om uw auto online te verkopen, welke website komt dan het eerst in u

op?

Q7: Als u van plan zou zijn om uw auto online te verkopen, welke websites komen dan nog meer in u op? (gebruik een komma om een volgende website aan te geven)

Q8: Wilt u aangeven welke van de onderstaande website u kent of weleens van gehoord heeft? Meerdere antwoorden zijn mogelijk.

nieuweautokopen.nl autokopen.nl

tweedehands.nl

Q9 In het filmpje dat u voorheen heeft gezien, zat een reclame van ikwilvanmijnautoaf.nl . Afgaande op wat u heeft gezien, hoe zou u dit merk (LET OP: het gaat hierbij niet om de commercial zelf, maar om het merk dat er achterzit) beoordelen op de volgende schalen: Aantrekkelijk - Onaantrekkelijk Geloofwaardig - Ongeloofwaardig Goed - Slecht Aangenaam - Onaangenaam Positief - Negatief Bevredigend - Onbevredigend Leuk - Irritant

Q10: In het filmpje dat u voorheen heeft gezien, zat een reclame van nieuweautokopen.nl .

Afgaande op wat u heeft gezien, hoe zou u dit merk (LET OP: het gaat hierbij niet om de commercial zelf, maar om het merk dat er achter zit) beoordelen op de volgende schalen: Aantrekkelijk - Onaantrekkelijk Geloofwaardig - Ongeloofwaardig Goed - Slecht Aangenaam - Onaangenaam Positief - Negatief Bevredigend - Onbevredigend Leuk - Irritant

Q11: Ik vind de advertentie van ikwilvanmijnautoaf.nl (1=Helemaal niet mee eens, 7= helemaal

mee eens): - Leuk - Irritant - Informatief

Q12: Ik vind de advertentie nieuweautokopen.nl (1=Helemaal niet mee eens, 7= helemaal mee

eens): - Leuk - Irritant - Informatief

Tot zo ver deze vragenlijst.

Hartelijk bedankt voor het invullen van de vragenlijst . Dankzij uw bijdrage ben ik weer een stap verder in het onderzoek.