Latent Factors of Executional Elements Influencing Commercial Likeability: An Exploratory Study of Super Bowl Commercials

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국마케팅과학회
· 수록지 정보 : Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science(마케팅과학연구) / 21권 / 2호 / 83 ~ 92페이지
· 저자명 : 김기한, Yunjae Cheon

초록

Academic researchers have focused very little on television advertising execution since the mid-1990s despite the fact that television remains one of the most powerful media in advertising. This study try to fill this gap by investigating the executional elements adopted in recent television commercials, while attempting to resolve some of the weaknesses found in the prior research. Prior research in advertising execution has predominantly focused on analyzing the presence or absence of individual executional elements. This approach has helped us expand our understanding of advertisers’ usage of various executional elements and is easy to implement. However, the binary nature of the data has limited researchers’ analyses to simplistic comparisons between the ads with and without certain executional elements, making it difficult to address complex relationships that may exist among various executional elements and important advertising response measures.
In order to overcome such limitations, this study took a factor analytic approach to identify the latent factors underlying the numerous executional elements identified in the previous research using a convenience sample of Super Bowl commercials. The effects of each latent factor on commercial likeability were then examined across two product categories determined by product category involvement, which provides advertising practitioners with insights with respect to the relationships among multiple executional elements and their influence on commercial likeability, one of the fundamental advertising response measures. Specifically, it is predicted that the latent executional factors will exert significantly greater effects on commercial likeability for the low- rather than high-involvement products. This is because, from the perspective of elaboration likelihood model, the advertising executional elements act as peripheral cues as they pertain to the method of message presentation rather than to the product-relevant message, which tend to exert greater persuasive power when the involvement with the product is low rather than high.
In particular, the main data analyses consisted of two parts: exploratory factor analyses followed by multiple regression analyses. Using Mplus 5.2, a series of exploratory factor analyses were performed on a set of 99 dichotomous variables, drawn from the previous research, indicating the presence or absence of various executional elements. The factor analyses resulted in a six-factor structure encompassing 18 executional elements that explain approximately 75% of the total variance among the items. These factors include the female, usage situation, affective appeal, time-elapse, divergence, and music factors.
Specifically, Factor 1, female appeal, corresponds to the degree to which the commercial portrays female characters in the foreground of the commercial. Factor 2, usage situation, corresponds to the degree to which the commercial uses a setting relevant to the purchase or product usage. Factor 3, affective appeal, refers to the degree to which the commercial uses strategies designed to elicit affective responses. Factor 4, time-elapse factor, corresponds to the amount of time that elapses in the commercial before the brand or key message is identified. Factor 5, divergence factor, refers to the degree to which the commercial contains elements that are perceived to be novel, different, or unusual. Finally, Factor 6, or music factor, refers to the degree to which the commercial relies on music or dancing elements in the commercial.
Following the exploratory factor analyses, a hierarchical regression analysis was run using SPSS 18 to examine the relationship between the latent executional factors and commercial likeability. The factor scores of the six latent executional factors were regressed on commercial likeability along with product category (i.e., low- vs. high-involvement products) and product-by-execution interaction terms. The overall findings support the notion that the effects of advertising execution depend on the type of products. The influences of five of the six latent factors (i.e., female, affective, time-elapse, divergent and music factors) were greater when the advertised product was low- rather than high-involvement products. On the other hand, the usage situation factor did not show any systematic relationship to commercial likeability, which suggests that usage situation factors do not have a consistent pattern of relationship to commercial likeability.
This study offers several important contributions to the theory and practice of advertising. In terms of research method, this study is one of the few studies that use a factor analytic approach to examine advertising execution. Compared to the studies that analyze a large number of executional elements, this approach reduces a large number of executional elements to a parsimonious set of latent factors, making it much easier to draw meaningful implication from the findings. For practitioners, the factor analytic approach used in this study allows a top-down approach to developing the advertising execution strategy. That is, advertisers can first determine which latent factor to focus on and then select executional elements that would exert the desired effects. This contrasts the generally suggested bottom-up approaches that focus on the performance of numerous individual executional elements and their various combinations, which often leads to unpredictable outcomes.
In addition, the findings that executional elements exert much greater influences for low-involvement products than for high-involvement products suggests that advertisers should pay a great deal of attention to the execution side of ad creation when dealing with low- rather than high-involvement products. Finally, the results of this study can serve as a useful benchmark in planning future television advertising campaigns by identifying the execution strategies that have enhanced commercial likeability in recent years.

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