Interest has been shifting from how consumers choose brands to how they use brands. The authors focus on how advertising can best encourage consumers to use a mature brand in a new situation. They develop a schema congruity framework that integrates comparison advertising with substitution-in-use research. The framework suggests that situation comparison ads favorably affect usage attitudes, but have no advantage over product comparison ads in enhancing a person's ability to recall the target brand in the target situation. The authors’ empirical study shows increases in brand usage. The authors conclude with implications for brand managers and researchers.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AakerDavid, BatraRajeev, and MyersJohn G. (1992), Advertising Management, 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
2.
AndersonJohn R. (1990), Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications, 3d ed. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.
3.
AssaelHenry (1995), Consumer Behavior and Marketing Action. Cincinnati, OH: South-Western College Publishing.
4.
BanduraAlbeit (1969), Principles of Behavior Modification. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
5.
BarsalouLawrence W. (1983), “Ad hoc Categories,” Memory and Cognition, 11 (3), 211–27.
6.
BatraRajeev and RayMichael L. (1986), “Situational Effects of Advertising Repetition: The Moderating Influence of Motivation, Ability, and Opportunity to Respond,” Journal of Consumer Research, 12 (March), 432–45.
7.
BelkRussell W. (1975), “Situational Variables and Consumer Behavior,” Journal of Consumer Research, 2 (September), 157–64.
8.
BettmanJames R. and SujanMita (1987), “Effects of Framing on Evaluation of Comparable and Noncomparable Alternatives by Expert and Novice Consumers,” Journal of Consumer Research, 14 (September), 141–54.
9.
BoushDavid M. and LokenBarbara (1991), “A Process-Tracing Study of Brand Extension Evaluation,” Journal of Marketing Research, 28 (February), 16–28.
10.
CassidyClaire Monod (1981), “Collecting Data on American Food Consumption Patterns: An Anthropological Perspective,” in Assessing Changing Food Consumption Patterns, Food and Nutrition Board National Research Council, ed. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 135–54.
11.
ChattopadhyayAmitava and AlbaJoseph W. (1988), “The Situational Importance of Recall and Inference in Consumer Decision Making,” Journal of Consumer Research, 15 (June), 1–12.
12.
DeightonJohn, HendersonCaroline, and NeslinScott (1989), “Scanner and the Framing Effect,” Marketing & Media Decisions, (October), 112.
13.
EhrenbergAndrew S. C. (1972), Repeat Buying. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
14.
FishbeinMartin and AjzenIcek (1975), Belief, Attitude, Intention and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
15.
FiskeSusan T. (1982), “Schema-Triggered Affect: Applications to Social Perception,” in Affect and Cognition: The 17th Annual Carnegie Symposium on Cognition, ClarkeMargaret S. and FiskeSusan T., eds. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 55–78.
16.
FiskeSusan T. and PavelchakMark A. (1986), “Category-Based Versus Piecemeal-Based Affect Responses: Developments in Schema-Triggered Affect,” in Handbook of Motivation and Cognition: Foundations of Social Behavior, SorrentinoRichard M. and HigginsE. Tory, eds. New York: Guilford Press, 167–203.
17.
FiskeSusan T. and TaylorShelley E. (1991), Social Cognition. New York: McGraw-Hill.
18.
GoodsteinRonald C. (1993), Category-Based Applications and Extensions in Advertising: Motivating More Extensive Ad Processing, Journal of Consumer Research, 20 (June), 87–99.
19.
FolkesValerie S. and KielserTina (1991), “Social Cognition: Consumers' Inferences About the Self and Others,” in Handbook of Consumer Behavior, RobertsonThomas S. and KassarjianHarold H., eds. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice–Hall, 281–315.
20.
JohnsonMichael D. and HorneDavid A. (1988), “The Contrast Model of Similarity and Comparative Advertising,” Psychology and Marketing, 5, 211–32.
21.
KahnemanDaniel and MillerDale T. (1986), “Norm Theory: Comparing Reality to its Alternatives,” Psychological Review, 93 (April), 1136–13.
22.
KellerKevin Lane (1991), “Cue Compatibility and Framing in Advertising,” Journal of Marketing Research, 28 (February), 42–57.
23.
KellerKevin Lane (1993), “Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Managing Customer-Based Brand Equity,” Journal of Marketing, 57 (January), 1–22.
24.
LutzRichard J. and KakkarPradeep (1975), “Toward a Taxonomy of Consumption Situations,” in Marketing in Turbulent Times, MazzeEdward M., ed. Chicago: American Marketing Association, 206–10.
25.
MacKenzieScott, LutzRichard, and BelchGeorge (1986), “The Role of Attitude Toward the Ad as a Mediator of Ad Effectiveness: The Test of Competing Explanations,” Journal of Marketing Research, 23 (May), 130–43.
26.
MaheswaranDurairaj and ChaikenShelly (1991), “Promoting Systematic Processing in Low-Motivation Settings: Effect of Incongruent Information on Processing and Judgment,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61 (1), 13–25.
27.
MandlerGeorge (1982), “The Structure of Value: Accounting for Taste,” in Affect and Cognition: The 17th Annual Carnegie Symposium, ClarkMargaret S. and FiskeSusan T., eds. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 3–36.
28.
Meyers-LevyJoan and SternthalBrian (1993), “A Two-Factor Explanation of Assimilation and Contrast Effects,” Journal of Consumer Research, 30 (August), 359–68.
29.
Meyers-LevyJoan and TyboutAlice M. (1989), “Schema Congruity as a Basis for Product Evaluation,” Journal of Consumer Research, 16 (1), 39–54.
30.
MuehlingDarrel D., StoltmanJeffrey J., and GrossbartSanford (1991), “The Impact of Comparative Advertising on Levels of Message Involvement,” Journal of Advertising, 19 (4), 41–50.
31.
NunnallyJum C. (1967), Psychometric Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company.
32.
OzanneJulie L., BrucksMerrie, and GrewalDhruv (1992), “A Study of Information Search Behavior During the Categorization of New Products,” Journal of Consumer Research, 18 (March), 452–463.
33.
PavelchakMark A. (1989), “Piecemeal and Category-Based Evaluation: An Ideographic Analysis,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56 (3), 354–63.
34.
PechmannCornelia and RatneshwarS. (1991), “The Use of Comparative Advertising for Brand Positioning: Association Versus Differentiation,” Journal of Consumer Research, 18 (September), 145–60.
35.
PechmannCornelia and StewartDavid W. (1990), “The Effects of Comparative Advertising on Attention, Memory, and Purchase Intentions,” Journal of Consumer Research, 17 (September), 180–91.
36.
RatneshwarS. and ShockerAllen D. (1991), “Substitution in Use and the Role of Usage Context in Product Category Structures,” Journal of Marketing Research, 28 (August), 281–95.
37.
RudellFredrica (1979), Consumer Food Selection and Nutrition Information. New York: Praeger Publishers.
38.
SrivastavaRajendra K., LeoneRobert P., and ShockerAllan D. (1981), “Market Structure Analysis: Hierarchical Clustering of Products Based on Substitution-in-Use,” Journal of Marketing, 45 (January), 38–48.
39.
StangorCharles and McMillanDavid (1992), “Memory for Expectancy-Congruent and Expectancy-Incongruent Information: A Review of the Social and Social Developmental Literatures,” Psychological Bulletin, III, 42–61.
40.
StaymanDouglas M., AldenDana L., and SmithKaren H. (1992), “Some Effects of Schematic Processing in Consumer Expectations and Disconfirmation Judgments,” Journal of Consumer Research, 19 (September), 240–55.
41.
SujanMita (1985) “Consumer Knowledge: Effects on Evaluation Strategies Mediating Consumer Judgments,” Journal of Consumer Research, 12, 31–46.
42.
SujanMita and BettmanJames R. (1989), “The Effect of Brand Positioning Strategies on Consumers' Brand and Category Perceptions: Some Insights From Schema Research,” Journal of Marketing Research, 26 (November), 454–67.
43.
vanRaaij, FredW. and VerhallenTheo M. M. (1994), “Domain-Specific Market Segmentation,” European Journal of Marketing, 28 (10), 49–66.
44.
WansinkBrian (1994) “Advertising's Impact on Category Substitution” Journal of Marketing Research, 31 (November), 505–15.
45.
WansinkBrian (1995), “Usage Expansion Advertising” in Advertising: An Encyclopedia, John PhilipJones, ed. New York: Garland Publishing, forthcoming.
46.
WansinkBrian and RayMichael L. (1992) “Estimating an Ad's Impact on One's Consumption of a Brand,” Journal of Advertising Research, (May/June), 9–16.
47.
WarlopLuk and RatneshwarS. (1993), “The Role of Usage Context in Consumer Choice: A Problem Solving Approach,” in Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 20, McAlisterLeigh and RothschildMichael L., eds. Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 377–82.
WilkieWilliam L. and FarrisPaul W. (1975), “Comparative Advertising: Problems and Potential,” Journal of Marketing, 39 (October) 7–15.
50.
WintersPatricia (1989), “Cola Companies Are All Abuzz Over ‘Cold Caffeine’ Products,” Advertising Age, (September 4), 3.
51.
WyerRobert S.Jr., and GordonS. E. (1982), “The Recall and Information about Persons and Groups,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 72 (18), 128–64.
