MARKETING PRINCIPLES & PLANNING

Marketing Principles & Planning

Marketing Principles & Planning

1. Introduction to the Project

Consumers in modem society are frequently required to make healthcare decisions that involve grave potential risk. Discussing risks and benefits of treatment or healthcare options has become an increasingly important part of healthcare communication. For a long time, consumer researchers and public health campaigners try to figure out if there are specific optimal ways for information presentation that can be adopted to maximize the effectiveness of message for well-informed communication and what kinds of manipulations of risk and benefit information may increase message persuasiveness because of people's subjective interpretation of information (Kahneman, Slovic and Tversky, 2008; Fischhoff, Bostrom and Quadrel, 2003; Naus et al., 2002; Lowe and Ferguson, 2003; Gurmankin, Baron and Armstrong, 2004:45-50).

An individual's judgments and decisions are influenced greatly by how information is presented or framed (for a review paper, see Levin, Schneider and Gaeth, 2008:41). A 50% chance of survival (positive frame) is logically equivalent to a50% chance of mortality (negative frame). However, each statement influences differently on the attitudes formed, and decisions made by the message reader (Moxey et al., 2003:36). Positive labelling of probability leads to an encoding of the information that tends to evoke favourable associations in memory while negative framing of the same probability tends to cause unfavourable associations (Levin and Gaeth, 2008:10). This phenomenon has shown to extend on medical and healthcare scenarios (Edwards et al., 2001:98) and diversified consumer purchase contexts (e.g., Levin and Gaeth, 2008:65).

The objective of present study was to investigate moderators of information formats of Nivea skincare product efficacy on framing effectiveness in advertising contexts. Using appropriate message frames could increase the persuasiveness of messages to consumers, thereby increasing sales. Understanding of framing effects may provide direct applications in creative and effective execution of advertising copy and layout. This research tested the idea that consumer responses to a new product advertisement could be influenced by message framing and presentations of graphs and statistics, and determined whether different graphic illustrations and different statistical presentations described in a message modified framing effects. The question cantered in this research was: "could different statistical formats about product efficacy and graphic displays influence consumers' evaluations and attitudes?"

2. Advertising Campaign Objectives

This study provides new insights into information formats when interpreting numeric efficacy information presented in different formats and graphic displays used in Nivea advertising communication. A picture could be worth a thousand words when appropriate statistical formats are chosen. In addition to the purpose of persuasion, statistical formats should be chosen to optimize consumer understanding and ability to use the information effectively. For general public, we would be able to look beyond the scene regarding advertising campaigner' framed messages. After all, it makes little mathematical difference how information is expressed. It does, however, make a psychological difference.

It is expected that statistical formats would affect the way people interpret information and influence message persuasion. When a frequency format is presented in a positively framed message, frequency with a ...