Immediate and Delayed Effects of Television Commercial Repetition Moderated by Advertising Message Involvement

In advertising literature, repetition and involvement are among the most frequently subjected research issues. Evidently, two most debated issues, too. Moderating effects of advertising message involvement over repetition effects were extremely confusing subject. It took for a long time to combine the previous research, and to construct a comprehensive theoretical framework. There are several conceptual definitions of involvement, and that much operationalizations of the concept. Choosing the appropriate one, which was advertising message involvement, required a substantial amount of time and work. Literature of repetition includes several theories and models explain its effects. Instead of choosing a single theory, I sought the common grounds of them. Eventually, the tripartite model of attitudes helped me to categorize major repetition theories under the subtitles of affective, cognitive, and conative responses. Unlike the hierarchy of effects models, tripartite model of attitudes proposes that affect, cognition, and conation are not hierarchically different, but they are separate components of attitudes. This explanation seems to have more face validity than any other theoretical explanations. A combination of major theory categorizations became the baseline from which hypotheses were derived. An experiment consisted of a 2 x 2 x 3 factorial design was conducted to measure immediate and delayed effects of repetition moderated by advertising message involvement on the attitudes. While advertising repetition served as a within-subjects treatment, level of involvement (high vs. low) and time of the posttest (immediate vs. delayed) served as the between-subjects treatments. ii Overall results of experiment indicated several degrees of interaction among the independent variables. Specifically, the level of advertising message involvement showed significant effects on the cognitive, affective, and conative responses of subjects. This research not only combined the different theories of repetition into the attitude components, but also provided evidence that advertising message involvement is an important moderating variable on the attitude formation resulted from exposure to television commercials