Consumers' attitudes and reactions to expressive and utilitarian products presented in advertisements and catalogs

This study investigated how affective and cognitive types of involvement influence the ways in which consumers form brand attitudes in response to print advertisements. To understand the influence of these two types of involvement (which spring from either expressive or utilitarian types of motivation), the study used two types of apparel as representative consumer products, because the various styles and different functions of apparel can satisfy either expressive or utilitarian motives.;In part one, an experiment was designed to investigate the process of brand attitude formation for these representative products at varying levels of involvement (low vs. high) with different advertising appeals (informational vs. emotional). The results show that the different types of involvement lead to two different processes of attitude formation. In each case, only the responses related to the underlying motives were sensitive to the variations of involvement levels and advertising appeals: for expressive products, the affective component of ad attitude and expressive brand-related responses were sensitive, whereas for utilitarian products, the cognitive component of ad attitude and utilitarian brand-related responses were sensitive.;In part two, an experiment was conducted in which verbal claims made in the copy of advertisements were either strong or weak and background pictures were either attractive or unattractive. These advertisements were presented for the two products in either high or low involvement conditions. As involvement level increased, utilitarian brand-related responses and the cognitive component of ad attitude, both of which were sensitive to claim strength, played primary roles in forming brand attitudes toward the cognitive involvement (utilitarian) product; at the same time, expressive brand-related responses and the affective component of ad attitude played primary roles in forming brand attitudes toward the affective involvement (expressive) product.;The results of both parts of the study demonstrate that understanding the motivations behind attitudes can enhance our knowledge of the ways that consumers form brand attitudes at varying levels of involvement and in response to specific print advertising elements and different types of appeal. The study, therefore, broadens the current knowledge about attitude formation, which had looked only at variations caused by different levels of involvement.