THE EFFECT OF TYPE OF ELABORATION ON ADVERTISEMENT PROCESSING AND JUDGMENT

The authors examine the effect of type of elaboration on information p rocessing and product judgments Research participants were shown print advertisements promoting a camera in which the pictorial material dep icted either product features mentioned in the copy (attribute-focused condition) or people, objects, or usage occasions captured by the cam era (image-focused condition). These advertisements were presented in the context of advertisements for competing brands of camel as or for products in categories unrelated to cameras. When the context was comp osed of competing cameras, the attribute-focused advertisement resulte d in more favorable target camera judgments than did the image-focused advertisement, whereas when products unrelated to cameras served as t he context, the image-focused advertisement prompted more favorable ju dgments. These results are interpreted as evidence that product judgme nts are more favorable when an advertising message receives two types of elaboration, item-specific and relational, than when only one of th ese types of elaboration is dominant.