Competitive Interference Effects in Consumer Memory for Advertising: The Role of Brand Familiarity

Although consumers often encounter ads for familiar brands, previous advertising interference studies have used ads for low-familiarity brands. The authors focus on brand familiarity's role in increasing ad memorability and moderating competitive interference. They conducted a factorial 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, subjects displayed substantially better recall of new product information for familiar brands. Their findings suggest that established brands have important advantages in advertising: Consumers should be more likely to recall ad information, and their memory should be less affected by exposure to competitors’ ads. The authors conclude with implications for the marketing of new and mature brands.