The Impact of Message Sequencing in the New Product Introduction Process: Boosting Message Retention and its Impact on Product Attitude

This investigation focused on providing a more nuanced understanding of the message retention-attitude (cognition-affect) relationship in new product introductions. Using advertising and publicity as independent and combined promotional tools, this investigation focused on determining an effective approach to boost the strength of the retention-attitude relationship as well as the level of new product information retention and, through it, the attitude toward the product. To that end, a two-phase experiment was conducted involving 423 participants. The results revealed that in general publicity, compared to advertising, was a more effective strategy in boosting retention and that the publicity-publicity sequence strategy was the most effective in boosting the attitude toward the product as its consistent message content and format produced both direct and mediated effects of message retention on the product attitude.