The Effect of Type of Elaboration on Advertisement Processing and Judgment

Abstract

The authors examine the effect of type of elaboration on information processing and product judgments. Research participants were shown print advertisements promoting a camera in which the pictorial material depicted either product features mentioned in the copy (attribute-focused condition) or people, objects, or usage occasions captured by the camera (image-focused condition). These advertisements were presented in the context of advertisements for competing brands of cameras or for products in categories unrelated to cameras. When the context was composed of competing cameras, the attribute-focused advertisement resulted in more favorable target camera judgments than did the image-focused advertisement, whereas when products unrelated to cameras served as the context, the image-focused advertisement prompted more favorable judgments. These results are interpreted as evidence that product judgments are more favorable when an advertising message receives two types of elaboration, item-specific and relational, than when only one of these types of elaboration is dominant.