COMPETITIVE INTERFERENCE EFFECTS IN CONSUMER MEMORY FOR ADVERTISING -THE ROLE OF BRAND FAMILIARITY

Although consumers often encounter ads for familiar brands, previous a dvertising interference studies have used ads for low-familiarity bran ds. The authors focus on brand familiarity's role in increasing ad mem orability and moderating competitive interference. They conducted a fa ctorial experiment varying the familiarity of brands featured in test and competing ads. With differences in ad executions, prior exposure, processing objectives, and exposure time experimentally controlled, su bjects displayed substantially better recall of new product informatio n for familiar brands. Their findings suggest that established brands have important advantages in advertising: Consumers should be more lik ely to recall ad information, and their memory should be less affected by exposure to competitors' ads. The authors conclude with implicatio ns for the marketing of new and mature brands.