Processing TV Commercials
19
19
Discussions
This paper investigated the effects of production pacing, narrative structure and
their interaction on resource allocation, the three sub processes of information processing
(encoding, storage and retrieval) and also attitude (liking) and purchase intention. We
predicted that medium paced commercials would be encoded and stored better than slow-
and fast- paced commercials. The differences were not significant although fast pacing
was best for encoding and medium pacing was best for storage. The reason why we did
not find support for differences in encoding might be that the recognition test we used
was too difficult. We looked at the data and found a floor effect. Most of the participants
scored lower than 50%. To make the questions consistent across the three commercial
types, we attempted to draw questions from the product information which in many cases
appear at the end and is told relatively quickly. In addition, the four choice answers for
each question were not very distinguishable. However, as we predicted fast paced
commercials were rated as more likable and led to higher purchase intention.
We also predicted that story type commercials would result in better storage and
require fewer mental resources. As we predicted, story commercials were better for both
cued recall and free recall than image and informative commercials. However, we did not
find support for the prediction that story commercials would require fewer resources. We
used a preload task to measure available resources. Two reasons are possible for this.
First, both preloads (3 digits and 5 digits) could be too easy. Second, the participants
switched their attention to the secondary task damaging the performance for the primary
task. There was no strong manipulation done to the participants to make sure that their
primary task was viewing commercials and thus they needed to pay full attention to the
commercials (other than instructions). For liking and purchase intention, story
commercials were significantly favored more than non-story commercials and also led to
higher purchase intention.
The interaction between pacing and narrative structure was significant on free
recall. However, unlike we predicted, fast pacing induced cognitive overload for story
commercials. Processing story commercials was expected to be relatively cost free. But
this was not the case. Processing a story and processing a story commercial may be
Convention