Latent Factors of Executional Elements Influencing Commercial Likeability: An Exploratory Study of Super Bowl Commercials

Abstract

Academic researchers have focused very little on television advertising execution since the mid-1990s despite the fact that television remains one of the most powerful media in advertising. This study try to fill this gap by investigating the executional elements adopted in recent television commercials, while attempting to resolve some of the weaknesses found in the prior research. Prior research in advertising execution has predominantly focused on analyzing the presence or absence of individual executional elements. This approach has helped us expand our understanding of advertisers' usage of various executional elements and is easy to implement. However, the binary nature of the data has limited researchers' analyses to simplistic comparisons between the ads with and without certain executional elements, making it difficult to address complex relationships that may exist among various executional elements and important advertising response measures.ln order to overcome such limitations, this study took a factor analytic approach to identifY the latent factors underlying the numerous executional elements identified in the previous research using a convenience sample of Super Bowl commer'cials. The effects of each latent factor on commercial likeability were then examined across two product categories determined by product category involvement, which provides advertising practitioners with insights with respect to the relationships among multiple executional elements and their influence on commercial likeability, one of the fundamental advertising response measures. Specifically, it is predicted that the latent executional factors will exert significantly greater effects on commercial likeabiliη for the low-rather than high-involvement products. This is because, from the perspective of elaboration likelihood model, the advertising executional elements act as peripheral cues as they pertain to the method of message presentation rather than to the product-relevant message, which tend to exert greater persuasive power when the involvement with the product is low rather than high.In particular, the main data analyses consisted of two paπs:

The Market Responses to Super Bowl Advertising: The Role of Product Type and Multiple Executions

“…The observation that the effect of Super Bowl advertising does not manifest itself in the same way under varying levels of product involvement is consistent with previous studies. For example, Kim and Cheong [45] found that the influences of latent factors in Super Bowl commercials (i.e., female, affective, time-elapse, divergent, and music factors) on ad likability were greater when the advertised product was a low-rather than high-involvement product. It may be that the advantage of Super Bowl advertising is most beneficial for low-involvement product categories.…”

Exploring the influence of television sport on consumers' attitudes towards programme-embedded advertising using motivational responses generated by the game

“…On the Monday after the Super Bowl, USA Today publishes the Ad Meter scores. These scores have the advantage of ecological validity, in contrast to the measures typically used in laboratory environments (Kim & Cheong 2011a, 2011b. Just as the average Super Bowl viewer watches advertisements during the game, these volunteers evaluate actual commercials in real time during the telecast.…”

“…Consequently, previous studies on Super Bowl advertising have used these Ad Meter scores to measure attitudes towards Super TV sport and embedded advertising Bowl commercials (e.g. Kelley & Turley, 2004;Kim & Cheong 2011a, 2011bKim & Morrison, 2003;Tomkovick et al, 2001).…”

“…This study was conducted as part of a series of studies examining various aspects of Super Bowl ads. Other studies published based on the analyses of the same or similar set of sample commercials and/ or likeability measures include Kim, Cheong and Kim (2012), and Kim and Cheong (2011a;2011b). TV sport and embedded advertising findings Commercials Table 2 shows number of commercials and commercial likeability scores by time periods and product categories.…”

Comparing young adult responses to rational and emotional sports product advertisements: the moderating role of product type and gender

“…The increased partnerships between the sport industry and the media have led to a significant increase in sport advertising in both the traditional and modern media (Kim and Cheong, 2011). For instance, in the United States, companies spent $34.9 bn annually on sport IJSMS 22,4…”