How and When Advertising Can Influence Memory for Consumer Experience

HOW AND WHEN ADVERTISING CAN INFLUENCE MEMORY FOR CONSUMER EXPERIENCE
Journal of Advertising, Winter 2004 by Braun-LaTour, Kathryn A, LaTour, Michael S, Pickrell, Jacqueline E, Loftus, Elizabeth F

ABSTRACT: Recent "paradigm shifting" research in consumer behavior dealing with reconstructive memory processes suggests that advertising can exert a powerful retroactive effect on how consumers remember their past experiences with a product. Building on this stream of research, we have executed three studies that incorporate the use of false cues with the aim of shedding new light on how post-experience advertising exerts influence on recollection. Our first experiment investigates an important but yet unexplored issue to advertisers who are perhaps reticent about embracing this paradigm: Does the false cue fundamentally change how consumers process information? After finding that when the false information goes undetected it is processed in a similar manner as more "truthful" cues, we use this paradigm to shed light on the pictorial versus verbal information debate in advertising. We discuss the implications of our findings for those interested in managing consumer experience and for advertising researchers seeking indirect measures of the influence of advertising.
Remember your childhood visit to Disneyland-Cinderella 's castle glistening, the cartoon characters laughing, grouping for photos, the many rides with their height requirements, the smells of freshly cooked food, and Bugs Bunny shaking your hand? As you bring that experience to mind, you may have the feeling you are reliving it, seeing your childhood pass through your mind 's eye, much like reviewing a videotape. But the way human memory works is very different from that of a video tape recorder-our memories are actually reconstructions of bits and pieces of information we have obtained over time. Sometimes those reconstructions are very similar to what we experienced; other times we are "tricked"

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