Sarcherzhou

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1355-5855.htm The effects of positive and negative ad-evoked associations on brand attitude
Sandra Praxmarer
School of Management and Marketing, Marketing Research Innovation Centre,
University of Wollongong, Australia, and

Heribert Gierl

The effects of ad-evoked associations
507
Received February 2009
Revised June 2009
Accepted June 2009

Department of Marketing, University of Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to research on the cognitive capacity theory.
The paper aims to examine the effects of advertising recipients’ positive and negative associations, that is their memories and fantasies evoked by the advertising stimulus, on brand attitude for advertisements that require little effort to process; focusing on positively framed advertisements.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper suggests a model on the effects of positive and negative association on brand attitude and tests it using partial least square. Advertisements that are easy to process were selected in a pre-test.
Findings – It is shown that if advertisements are easy to process, the effects of consumers’ associations depend on their favourableness: positive associations have a positive effect and negative associations have a negative effect on brand attitude. These findings are an extension of knowledge on the effects of associations, because for informational advertisements previous research has demonstrated that associations generally have a negative effect on brand attitude.
Practical implications – Results of this study suggest that evoking positive memories and fantasies in the target group enhances the effectiveness of advertisements that require little effort to process. Originality/value – Effects of associations on brand attitude have not been studied for advertisements that require little effort to

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