Podcast & transcript on the topic “Advertising psychology”

Introduction:

Dear listeners, hello and welcome to the first episode of the podcast series Advertising Psychology in Theory and Practice. My name is Larissa, and together with a few experts I would like to introduce you to a very important part of advertising and marketing, namely advertising psychology.

The entire podcast is intended to convey both the theoretical foundations of advertising and consumer psychology and to provide practical insights into the exciting field of advertising communication. In this way, your know-how of classic marketing and online marketing is optimally complemented, as the psychological background to human behavior represents a really important part and content of the whole, which unfortunately has so far received too little attention, especially in practice.

First, I will introduce you to some scientific and practice-oriented definitions from specialists. You will also get an impression of what advertising psychology deals with, what its field of application is, how consumer behavior has changed in recent years and what challenges this poses for advertising and marketing.

First, we will look at some advertising impact models which I will present to you in order to then find out how people are reached with advertising. I also ask my experts which advertising impact model makes the most sense from their point of view and convinces purchasing behavior.

Finally, we give you a conclusion for the future importance of advertising psychology, especially for use in marketing and communication departments of companies.

Definition of the term “advertising psychology”

Let’s start with the definitions in a relaxed manner. The term advertising psychology is made up of the words advertising and psychology, which are closely related.

According to Georg Felser, the aim of advertising is to make what is being advertised appear attractive. Similarly, the task of advertising is to influence people’s behavior to such an extent that demand for a product or service increases.

Applied psychology, defined by Staudinger as “the science of human experience and behavior”, investigates not only human behavior itself in relation to advertising, but also the motives that lead to a certain behavior.

If we now combine these two terms, we get the following definition. “Advertising psychology is concerned with researching the impact of advertising on the behavior and experience of potential consumers. It is therefore concerned with analyzing the advertising buying process in terms of experience and behavior”.

Presentation of the expert panel

In today’s episode, Ms. Friederike Baum, Ms. Christine Stamatis and Mr. Martin Heubel are present as experts and interviewees, I warmly welcome you all in this sense and I am very pleased about your presence, despite the difficult circumstances of the existing Covid-19 situation.

Ms. Stamatis: Thank you very much for the invitation.

I would also like to thank you and will now ask you questions one after the other so that you, dear listeners, can gain first-hand insight and knowledge, starting with Ms. Baum. She holds a degree in psychology and is an employed lecturer in advertising psychology. I ask you how you personally would define the term advertising psychology.

How do you define the term “advertising psychology”?

Ms. Baum: My favorite definition of advertising psychology is from the book Markt- und Werbepsychologie by Hans Mayer and Tanja Illmann and reads: ” Advertising psychology researches the effect of advertising on the experience and behavior of consumers by examining the effects or consequences of advertising and its design.

Ms. Stamatis, who is also a qualified psychologist and managing director of GoVersity, a private study center, now gives us her explanation of the concept of advertising psychology.

Ms. Stamatis: I see advertising psychology as a sub-area of business psychology. So this is about the effect of advertising on the experience, often also on the behavior of the buyer. These include, for example, effects on purchasing motives and also on purchasing decision processes. So why do I choose a particular product or not? And what factors play a role in this?

Mr. Martin Heubel is also a member of the expert panel. He has already worked in marketing at Bayer and is the author of several articles on marketing management and business development. Mr. Heubel, how would you describe the concept of advertising psychology?

Mr. Heubel: For me, advertising psychology is defined as a branch of psychology that overlaps with marketing. In other words, how do consumers behave and how do they make purchasing decisions after being exposed to a certain advertising message?

And that quickly becomes very exciting, as you can of course target specific customers and consumer groups with digital advertising via social channels. This not only forms an opinion in the customer’s mind, but also creates certain associations with a brand, which are then clearly reflected in the consumer’s purchasing decision behavior.

The definitions of Ms. Baum, Ms. Stamatis and Mr. Heubel agree on the core point. It is about the impact research of advertising in relation to the experience and behavior of consumers.

Where exactly is advertising psychology used?

Ms. Baum: I think that’s a very good question. There is no precise regulation for this.

I would like to see this used in the practice of advertising psychology whenever advertising or marketing measures are planned or designed.

In practice, however, this does not necessarily have to be the case. There are many professions that deal with this topic.

So in this respect, I think it is very laudable and desirable when knowledge of advertising psychology is taught and applied in a variety of ways, including in the context of communication sciences or marketing.

How would you answer the question about the field of application of advertising psychology, Ms. Stamatis?

Ms. Stamatis: In marketing, for example in advertising agencies, that’s where advertising psychology comes into play, i.e. when it comes to how I can optimally advertise and sell a product. But also in product development and product design, i.e. what influence certain product features such as color, shape or even the name may have on the target group. Market research comes to mind as another area of application, as it is more about finding out more about customer needs and attitudes. Market research also provides us with valuable information for innovation and product development.

Just as you just mentioned, the author Georg Felser also sees a central function of advertising psychology in the field of market research, if we now take up the field of market research in relation to advertising, the study of consumer behavior and its development would also be relevant.

How do you think consumer behavior has changed in the last ten years?

Ms. Stamatis: Yes, that is also a very interesting question when you think about it. What did our everyday lives look like ten years ago? To be honest, you’re more likely to notice such technological changes.

Back then, we were still at the very beginning of the mobile revolution. Smartphones already existed, but they were of course much less widespread and so was the use of social media.

This already existed with Facebook and the like, but the extent to which social media is used as an advertising platform has increased massively in recent years.

You can actually see a clear trend towards online marketing and therefore also towards online consumer behavior. Older people are also more likely to shop online than they were ten years ago, which is why traditional department stores and retailers have lost much of their importance.

We are absolutely used to getting the best price for a product directly from our cell phone. What I also see is a much higher level of interaction between consumers and companies. For example, by using digital marketing, companies can now measure much more precisely which advertising measures are effective. In detail, this means how often it was clicked, how long the interested party spent on it or how much time passed between the first search and the purchase. Ten years ago, at least in this form, that was not so much the case.

Ms Baum: In my opinion, consumer behavior has hardly changed in the last ten years, but what has changed is the environment. And psychology is always about the relationship between the environment on the one hand and internal individual processes on the other.

So this question of what is environmental and what is innate or genetically determined or individually determined, so to speak, is always an eternal question in psychology. So the environment in particular has changed massively in the last ten years and a very big factor that you have to take into account is all the stress, so to speak, that is also caused by smartphones.

The fact that we are constantly flooded with information, in every situation, in every free minute. More than we want to and can process in a given period of time, which puts a lot of people under a lot of pressure and makes our attention a particularly scarce resource and requires us to make conscious decisions and concentrate.

This makes the topic of advertising communication much more complicated than it used to be, because you have to realize that advertising communication is basically never the topic that consumers are actually interested in and enthusiastic about. They have other things on their minds almost all the time and have other things going on in their lives. And despite all the information and entertainment options that surround them all the time, so to speak, from the company’s point of view the advertising messages must of course still get through to the consumers, against their will, so to speak. And this has of course become an ever greater challenge in recent decades.

Mr. Heubel: Well, there are various streams that we have now seen, and of course the coronavirus pandemic has also shown us that consumers are more concerned with sustainability issues.

You want to buy products that are sustainable (sustainable), i.e. they come from sources where you can trace which raw materials are used and ideally that the manufacturers also pay their employees well, especially in softlines, i.e. in the fashion sector, we have now often seen this and here you have to be very careful, as brands are of course very keen to design their marketing messages in such a way that this fair trade or these fair conditions in production are clearly achieved. And I believe that consumer behavior has changed a great deal in terms of the fact that purchasing decisions are often influenced by how both larger and smaller brands position themselves in this area.

To reiterate: According to the assessment, the behavior has changed, especially due to the changed environmental influences.

What challenges do these changes pose for advertising and marketing?

Ms. Baum: Well, I think the biggest challenge for marketing and advertising today is not consumer behavior, but these circumstances, this constant information overload that everyone is constantly suffering from. The challenge is to get through anyway. And that means you have to pull out all the stops to stand out and catch people’s eyes. And it all starts with which means can be used to reach which target group at which point in time and how well, and in which way they are most likely to feel addressed, so that you then use the right stimuli, so to speak, to actually appeal to the target group. These may have to be very specifically tailored to this target group and possibly also to the situation and this means of communication.

Definition of known advertising impact models

Now we go further into the depths of advertising impact.

There are various models that are used to measure how advertising achieves its effect. Among other things, this allows advertising objectives to be justified and advertising success to be measured, explains Georg Felser.

According to Felser and Klaus Moser, the best-known advertising impact models include the SR or SOR theories and the AIDA model.

I will briefly explain these models to help you understand them.

SR theories originate primarily from consumer psychology. The S stands for stimulus and the R for reaction or response.

The idea behind this model was the assumption that behavior depends on certain stimuli. In this case, however, we are talking about all observable stimuli that are relevant for behavioral research.

According to this theory, advertising always triggers a certain behavior. In the SOR theory, the organism was added between stimulus and reaction, as it is assumed that other internal mental processes exist from the stimulus to the reaction.

The AIDA model is one of the hierarchical models of advertising impact. These are individual levels that must be achieved in order to accept the next level. The letters AIDA stand for the individual elements of a sequence A means attention, i.e. the reaction begins with attention. I stands for interest, i.e. the interest generated by the attention. D for desire, i.e. the desire for a product for which interest has been expressed. And finally A for action, whereby a purchase transaction is actually completed.

With the AIDA model, however, it is unclear exactly whether advertising has the same effect or whether advertising should have the same effect. It is relatively unrealistic to assume that advertising always has this effect.

Of course, there are many other exciting models, not all of which can be considered and explained in this episode. The ones described here are the best known and most frequently used to date.

How do you think people can be convinced by advertising? So what are activating drives, advertising impact models to reach us?

Ms. Stamatis: Consumers are usually not particularly activated towards products. This is the task of advertising, to increase the level of activation, which works when consumers’ emotions, attitudes and motives are addressed. And advertising impact models deal with the question of how advertising achieves its actual goal. Put simply, how successful is an advertising campaign in terms of sales, because that’s what it’s all about.

A rather simple advertising impact model, for example, is the SR theory, where SR stands for stimulus and reaction. The idea is that behavior simply depends on certain stimuli or reactions. According to this theory, this behavior can be predicted if we know which stimuli it depends on. What happens between stimulus and response is not taken into account here.

This is also the point of criticism of these theories.

In addition to such classic advertising impact models, there are also other models that explain advertising impact using a hierarchical concept. For example, a very well-known model is the AIDA model, i.e. AIDA like the ship. Different stages or levels are passed through here. Namely attention, interest, desire and action. Attention, i.e. the reaction to a product begins with attention. Interest, only when I have reacted attentively can my interest in a product develop at all. And then desire, a desire to buy arises before the action, i.e. the act of consumption, the purchase of the product.

And these four stages are actually relatively easy to understand and also catchy. What is unclear with this model, however, is the question of how the advertising works or rather how it should work. And what the model assumes is that advertising always works in the same way. And that’s not so realistic in my eyes.

So you can actually say that the stage models still play a very important role for behavioral researchers today, even in practice they are still used, but in advertising practice the focus is more on the first two stages, i.e. attention and interest. The important thing is to attract attention.

Which advertising impact model do you think makes the most sense?

Ms. Stamatis: There is no general answer to that. Most models not only have advantages, but also disadvantages.

I can say that there are newer models, such as the GM model. And for the first time, they see product experience as very important and that product experience plays a central role in advertising impact. So do I have experience with a product or not? And emotional reactions, i.e. affective reactions, also play an important role in this model and I think this approach makes sense.

I generally like models that don’t have to go through all stages or all phases, as in the AIDA model, in order to make advertising effective. Rossiter and Percy’s five effects model is one such model. And this model sees advertising as a form of communication with the customer. The model also postulates prerequisites that must be fulfilled in order for a purchase or purchase action to take place. The approaches I have just mentioned are simply more dynamic and not as linear as the AIDA model I explained earlier.

Ms. Stamatis refers to the PEM model, which means perception, experience and memory. It is regarded as Hall’s non-hierarchical impact model, which, according to Siegler Schmidt 2008, takes into account the central importance of product experience.

Now Ms. Baum explains the advertising impact model that makes the most sense for you.

Ms. Baum: I particularly like Werner Kroeber-Riel’s advertising impact model of advertising impact paths, which is especially interesting because it allows for the fact that different advertisements generate different effects and does not lump all advertising measures together.

Depending on what kind of advertisement it is, it can have a different effect on the consumer’s mind.

Ms. Baum refers us to the Kroeber-Riel 2019 model of advertising impact paths, which is used particularly frequently in online marketing because, unlike the AIDA model, it also considers the interactions between the individual stages. The impact paths describe the path from the first advertising contact to the consumer’s behavior.

In the future, digitalization and diversity will make it increasingly important to design targeted and correct advertising. Various theories and models of advertising impact are suitable for this.

Which advertising impact model is the best choice remains controversial. As all models have their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, in terms of theory.

Can advertising psychology still be used to influence consumer behavior?

Ms. Stamatis: Yes, of course. I think advertising psychology is still a very important area of research. And as already mentioned, there are many psychological factors that influence consumers and their decisions.

The individual situation and the personality of the buyer also play a major role in my eyes. With this knowledge, you can develop targeted marketing measures that will hopefully or probably increase the purchase decision of undecided consumers, for example.

Ms. Baum: Yes, of course. I don’t think that has fundamentally changed. People sometimes overestimate how much the psyche or psychological contexts can change. It is also sometimes assumed that our environment has a certain influence on how our psyche functions. This is not the case, the psychological findings are still valid and will probably still be valid in 100 years’ time. They haven’t changed fundamentally because our environment has changed or the way we advertise has changed or because other communication channels have been added. This does not change the psychological principles, which still apply.

Farewell

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my experts for their time and support in conveying valuable content to you, dear listeners.

I hope I was able to give all students a theoretical supplement to the online marketing course. Since advertising psychology also plays a very important role in this.

Thank you, dear listeners, for your attention and I hope to welcome you again in the next episode of Advertising Psychology, “It goes into practice”.

Are you interested in a Bachelor’s degree in Business Psychology? Please contact us at study@goversity.de or call: 0721 619 301 90.