Animated commercials' effects on low-effort routes to persuasion: Classical conditioning approach

The motivation of the study was to examine the effects of animation and its relationship to human cognitive and affective processes by categorizing the different types of animation and live action featured in television commercials. This study also assessed the impact of animation in commercials through a series of classical conditioning experiments. A 3 (types of commercials (clay, cartoon and real human based commercials) x 2 (degree of involvement: high versus low) between-subjects factorial design was employed on dependent variables in the first experiment.; A 2 (experimental vs. control group) x 2 (high versus low involvement with the product) between subjects factorial design was performed on two different conditions on linear combinations of all dependent variables in the second experiment. In this experiment, advertised products have been treated as a conditioned stimulus while the different types of animation have been treated as potential unconditioned stimuli.; This study significantly contributes to our understanding of the relationship between animated commercials and human cognitive and affective processing. Animated commercials can more effectively provide visual demonstrations and recall testimonies for products. Also implication from this study is that animated ads should take into account the influence of lower-level peripheral processing routes on viewer persuasion.; This study demonstrated that awareness leads to favorable perception of the ad about the target attribute and favorable brand attitudes. The experiment in this study reexamined the degree to which awareness of the CS/US contingency plays a role in classical conditioning. The result of this study was that awareness is enhanced by involvement. In addition, involvement influences attitude formation through classical conditioning procedures with affect and belief formation acting as mediators. The study demonstrated benefits of the effective animated advertising stimuli. Through evidence for classical conditioning experiment, it can be provided the opportunity to better understand how classical conditioning can be used as a framework for affecting attitude toward the brand. The study confirmed that the classical conditioning method would be more effectively working under the low level personal relevant involvement toward the stimuli.; Understanding the relationship between animated commercials and how they stimulates viewers or effect their emotional responses and behavioral expectations, provides valuable information to practitioners who designs animation ads when they create effective animated commercials. Animation has become an important design tool in recent graphic interfaces because they motivate consumer actions and draw viewers' attention to specific product features.