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Persuasion Intent And Advertising Skepticism In Health Advertorials: An Information Processing Approach Using Lexical Decision Tasks
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Abstract:
Advertorials, advertisements disguised as an editorial, often mislead readers into perceiving the advertisement as an objective source. Two experiments examined whether health advertorials, which typically start with useful health information and promote a product in the end, circumvent the triggering of advertising schema relative to regular advertisements. In Study 1, response time in a Lexical Decision task (LDT) for persuasion-related words (e.g., promote) was shorter after viewing a regular advertisement compared to an advertorial, suggesting that advertising schemas had lower levels of activation after viewing advertorials relative to typical advertisements (H1). Labels on the advertorials, however, reduced the LDT response time, suggesting that labels may be effective for activating advertising schema (H2). Advertorials were most successful at circumventing advertising schema activation when the reader had low prior knowledge of advertorials (H3). Regardless of the type of advertisement, the more negative their category affect toward health advertisements, the more likely participants noticed the persuasive intent of the message (H4). Participants with longer LDT responses showed positive message attitudes and increased behavioral intention to adopt suggested behaviors. Study 2 examined the impact of structural aspects of advertorials by comparing infofirst with ad-first advertorials. Participants who viewed info-first advertorials showed longer latency responses toward skepticism related words on an LDT than those who viewed regular advertisements (H1). When people know about advertorials, LDT latency responses were significantly longer after reading info-first advertorials but shorter after reading ad-first advertorials. People with positive category affect toward health advertisements tend to have longer LDT latency responses toward skepticism related words. The SEM in Study 2 reported that behavioral intention was predicted by message attitudes, positive category affect, and low prior knowledge about advertorials, but there were no indirect or direct effects from LDT latency responses. The LDT latency responses were predicted by experimental conditions and positive category affect. Taken together these results suggest that advertorials enhance persuasion, compared to regular advertisements, because they reduce a reader's typical response to advertising, especially by obscuring the persuasive intent towards the advertisement. ii
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Keyword:
advertising skepticism; health advertorials; lexical decision tasks
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URL: https://hdl.handle.net/1813/36171
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