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Drink coca-cola, eat popcorn, and choose powerade: testing the limits of subliminal persuasion

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  • Laura Smarandescu
  • Terence Shimp

Abstract

Research by marketing/advertising scholars has yielded anything but definitive results when testing whether subliminal advertising is capable of persuading consumers. Recent research in social cognition has provided impressive evidence that subliminally priming brand names affects individuals’ attitudes, choices, and behaviors. In the spirit of replication and boundary-condition testing, we conducted three studies to examine whether subliminally priming brand names remains successful under more realistic marketplace conditions. Study 1 pits an underdog brand against a market share leader and demonstrates that subliminal priming significantly influences purchase intentions when consumers are in an active thirst state. Study 2 examines the boundary conditions of this effect on brand choice in a simulated store environment and also obtains a significant priming effect when consumers are in an active thirst state. However, this effect is nullified in study 3 that is structurally parallel to study 2 but which adds a 15-min time delay between the prime and the choice task. The resultant null effect questions the ability of subliminal priming to persuade consumers under more realistic marketplace conditions. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Laura Smarandescu & Terence Shimp, 2015. "Drink coca-cola, eat popcorn, and choose powerade: testing the limits of subliminal persuasion," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 26(4), pages 715-726, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:mktlet:v:26:y:2015:i:4:p:715-726
    DOI: 10.1007/s11002-014-9294-1
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    Cited by:

    1. Iana A. Castro & Anuja Majmundar & Christine B. Williams & Barbara Baquero, 2018. "Customer Purchase Intentions and Choice in Food Retail Environments: A Scoping Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-19, November.
    2. Hsu, Liwei & Chen, Yen-Jung, 2020. "Neuromarketing, subliminal advertising, and hotel selection: An EEG study," Australasian marketing journal, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 200-208.
    3. Soomro, Yasir Ali, 2018. "Does subliminal advertisement affect consumer behavior? An exploratory comparative analysis between marketing and non-marketing professionals," MPRA Paper 92124, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Manfred Bruhn & Andrea Gröppel-Klein & Manfred Kirchgeorg, 2023. "Managerial marketing and behavioral marketing: when myths about marketing management and consumer behavior lead to a misconception of the discipline," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 93(6), pages 1055-1088, August.
    5. Andrea Stevenson Thorpe & Stephen Roper, 2019. "The Ethics of Gamification in a Marketing Context," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 155(2), pages 597-609, March.

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