The impact and effectiveness of advertisements in a sports arena

Explores the effects of advertising in a sports arena on message recall, purchase intentions, and actual purchase behavior. The findings from this study suggest that consumers can recall at least some of the ads they are exposed to in these captive situations but most do not produce any lasting memory trace. The data also indicate that several independent variables, most notably frequency of exposure to the advertising message, are positively associated with recall, purchase intentions and actual purchasing behavior. The findings from this study indicate that advertisements in this setting can have an impact on the behavior of consumers. However, more research is needed in this setting to identify specific execution variables which differentiate between ads which create an impact, and those that do not. Introduction Over the last several decades, advertisers have been facing a fragmenting mass media which has forced them, at times, to consider alternative methods for communicating with consumers. Marketers have noted that in some situations consumers spend extended time, almost as captives, in a particular setting and have been using these extended situations as a means for exposing these consumers to advertising messages. In this context, a captive service setting is characterized by an extended stay in a service facility or place where consumers cannot normally leave before the service has been performed, or they are reluctant to do so. In addition, when a person enters this setting they are often involuntarily exposed to advertising messages. In a rare study of captive audiences, Brand and Greenburg (1994) studied the effects of commercial messages aimed at middleand high-school students in the classroom. Other examples of captive settings include airport terminals, bus and subway stations, and sports arenas. Like most other marketing facilities these environments can be cognitively complex. Most of the atmospheric or environmental research in marketing has occurred in more traditional retail stores, and an extensive review of this literature has shown that consumers react to, and are influenced by, the atmosphere they are in (Turley and Milliman, forthcoming). In these captive settings the ads must compete for attention with the other aspects of the atmosphere which is created by the facility, and the other people who are in it. However, since consumers often spend extended time, up to several hours, these ads can received prolonged or repeated exposure even though they are often in the background. From a marketing perspective, the ultimate questions are how much processing of these ads is occurring by people in these types of environments, and what effects, if any, do these ads have on attitudes and consumer behavior? The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emerald-library.com Fragmented mass media