RELATIONSHIPS AMONG AD-INDUCED AFFECT, BELIEFS, AND ATTITUDES: Another Look

In spite of a wealth of empirical attention directed at understanding the structural relationships among affect, cognition, and attitude, the tasks and settings in many of these studies may have inflated the relative impact of cognition in the persuasion process. The studies reported here use an affectively driven advertising context (i.e., television commercials void of product-relevant information cues) to demonstrate (1) that positive and negative forms of affect operate differently, and (2) that their direct and indirect effects on attitude are influenced by brand familiarity. Cognition played a less dominant role in the attitude formation process for an unknown brand compared to situations in which consumers held preexisting impressions (i.e., for well-known brands). A means-end model approach is used to link concrete and abstract forms of cognition (i.e., brand beliefs) and attitude.