June 2014
Article
Journal of Marketing Communications

Building Brand Knowledge Structures: Elaboration and Interference Effects on the Processing of Sequentially Advertised Brand Benefit Claims

By: Susan E. Heckler, Kevin L. Keller, Michael J. Houston and Jill Avery

Format:Print

Abstract

Two experiments are reported that examine the effects of an ad campaign designed to link two different benefit claims to a brand. The findings indicated that recall for a subsequently advertised claim depended on the strength of existing brand-benefit links in memory. If prior advertising strongly established a benefit claim in memory, then proactive interference effects inhibited recall of subsequently advertised benefit claims unrelated in meaning. Additional analyses suggested that these interference effects appeared to be a result of difficulties with encoding the newly advertised claims. If the original benefit claim was not as strongly established in memory, however, unaided recall of the subsequently advertised benefit claims was actually higher than if there had been no prior advertising at all. In fact, less accessible and memorable claims, whether they preceded or followed more accessible and memorable claims, enhanced recall of the stronger claims. Additional analyses suggest that these elaboration effects occurred because prior or subsequent advertising improved brand awareness and thus later brand claim recall as a result.