Evaluating Persuasion‐Enhancing Techniques from a Resource‐Matching Perspective

This article examines how two ad execution characteristics intended to heighten persuasion can influence the resources required to process an ad under high and low motivation conditions. These ad execution characteristics include (1) whether the ad copy is narrative or factual and (2) whether the ad layout either physically integrates or separates the ad picture and ad claims. Results reveal that under low motivation, persuasion is unaffected by these two execution characteristics but instead is affected by heuristic aspects of the ad photo. Under high motivations whether persuasion is heightened or undermined appears to depend on the extent to which the ad execution characteristics render the resources needed to process the ad equal to, in excess of, or inadequate compared with those that motivated viewers have available for processing the ad. Copyright 1997 by the University of Chicago.