Exploring Emotional and Cognitive Priming Effects in Mediated Sports Using Psychophysiological Measures: How Sport Program-Induced Emotions and Ad Schema Congruity Influence Effectiveness of Advertising

Abstract

The purpose of current study was to examine (1) the emotion transfer effect from sport programs and (2) program-ad congruity effects on the effectiveness of ads. A 2 (program-induced valence: pleasant, unpleasant) × 2 (program-induced arousal: arousing, calm) × 2 (advertising theme: sport, non-sport) within-subjects design, along with real-time psychophysiological measures, was employed to test the hypotheses. As predicted, an ad placed after a pleasant situation (favored team’s victory) was more effective than an ad placed after an unpleasant situation (favored team’s defeat). Also, an ad played after an arousing situation (close game) was more effective than an ad played after a non-arousing situation (lopsided game). Further, advertising effectiveness was greater for sport-themed ads (congruent) than non-sport-themed (non-congruent) ads. The findings suggest that the same ad can result in different persuasive impacts depending upon the emotional and cognitive context of the preceding sports program. The study offers new insights to existing sport marketing communication literature by examining emotional and cognitive priming effects in the context of sport media programing.

The effects of different billboard advertisement language on TV sports audiences’ recognition, recall and search intention of the sponsor signage

“…The observed preference for native language in search intention can also be explained by cognitive load theory. People are more likely to demonstrate positive attitudes toward an object when it matches their preexisting knowledge (Keller, 1993;Lee and Read, 2022)…”

“…The observed preference for native language in search intention can also be explained by cognitive load theory. People are more likely to demonstrate positive attitudes toward an object when it matches their preexisting knowledge (Keller, 1993; Lee and Read, 2022); searching and remembering information in their native language is easier to generate less cognitive load than in a foreign language (Lang, 2000; Sweller, 1988).…”