RESEARCH STREAM ONE: FOCUS ON EXPOSURE, SALIENCE, AND FAMILIARITY

Introduction of Exposure

Advertising exposure is a presentation of an advertisement to the consumer. Advertisers--ranging from agencies to small-business owners--attempt to estimate the number of exposures necessary to achieve their objective. The general advertising objective is to motivate consumers to buy or use your product or service, change their thinking about your brand, or build excitement. Examples of advertisements include print ads, radio and television commercials, infomercials, advertorials, and billboards and kiosks--both of which may be stagnant or interactive.

Pros

The goal of advertising is targeted audience exposure. Your choice of advertising mediums and venues should support this goal. Small-business marketing teams should focus on venues frequented by your target audience. A small dry cleaner chain may have a local commercial, an ad in the local newspaper (on and/or offline), and a deal with another local business to trade advertising; for example, they may work out a deal with a pizza chain where the dry cleaner supplements the cost of pizza boxes in exchange for using its logo on the box or providing coupons on the menu.

Introduction of Salience

According to the salience model, the more it resides at top-of-mind, the greater the likelihood that the brand is purchased.

 This has implications on both the nature and the quantum of advertising. Brand awareness or salience increases with higher frequency of advertising and the use of brand cues. i.e. shortcuts that link to the brand via visuals, sounds or expressions. A brand name, icon, mascot, slogan, music, jingle, colour, celebrity etc. can serve as a cue. Coca-Cola, for instance, uses multiple cues including its brand name, logo, mnemonic, red colour, the shape of its bottle, and a slew of slogans over the years, such as “It’s the real thing”.

Advertising memorabilia is littered with catchy slogans that bring the brand they represent to mind. For example: “A diamond is forever”, “Just do it”, “Have a break”, “Because you're worth it”, “Eat fresh”, “Be stupid”, “Think small” and many more.

Salience is likely to be important in low involvement, habit driven categories where consumers are less likely to make comparative assessments. In the context of behavioural loyalty, awareness is also important wherever purchases are made over the counter, as is the case with traditional retail channels in many developing countries.

Brand Salience is the degree to which your brand is thought about or noticed when a customer is in a buying situation. Strong brands have high Brand Salience and weak brands have little or none.  This helps explain to some degree why big brands are big and small brands are small.

Introduction of Brand Familiarity

Brand familiarity is a one-dimensional construct that is directly related to the amount of time that has been spent processing information about the brand, regardless of the type or content of the processing that was involved.

Thus, brand familiarity is the most rudimentary form of consumer knowledge. Moreover, this definition specifically assumes that brand familiarity is context-independent and is affected in more or less the same way by advertising exposures, purchase behavior, and product consumption or usage. This seems to be the simplest definition possible and is therefore a reasonable starting point for our investigation. In the remainder of this paper we examine two principal ways in which brand familiarity might affect brand choice: (1) by increasing the likelihood that the brand is included in the evoked set, and (2) by contributing to brand preference.

A related view of the exposure effect suggests that repeated exposure creates a conscious sense of familiarity with the brand, which then causes liking. The concept here Is that familiar, known objects are evaluated more highly than are un-known objects with associated uncertainty. Perhaps uncertainty creates a tension, which is undesirable. Or, familiarity may create positive feelings of comfort, security, ownership, or intimacy.