Advertising Strategies to Increase Usage Frequency

Interest has been shifting from how consumers choose brands to how they use brands. The authors focus on how advertising can best encourage consumers to use a mature brand in a new situation. They develop a schema congruity framework that integrates comparison advertising with substitution-in-use research. The framework suggests that situation comparison ads favorably affect usage attitudes, but have no advantage over product comparison ads in enhancing a person's ability to recall the target brand in the target situation. The authors’ empirical study shows increases in brand usage. The authors conclude with implications for brand managers and researchers.