Predicting the Effectiveness of Different Strategies of Advertising Variation: A Test of the Repetition-Variation Hypotheses

Two strategies for varying the content of ads over repeated presentations are distinguished, and the effectiveness of these strategies are examined at two different levels of consumer motivation to process the ads. Consistent with the hypothesis, experiment 1 found that a cosmetic variation strategy (variation in nonsubstantive features of an ad across multiple presentations) had greater impact on attitude when motivation to porcess the ad was low (as induced by low personal relevance of the product). Experiment 2 found thata substantive variation strategy (variation in relevant product attributes across multiple presentations) was more influential when motivation to process the ad was high. These results are consistent with the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion.