IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/mktlet/v26y2015i4p715-726.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • 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
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11002-014-9294-1
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11002-014-9294-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jonathan Schooler, 2011. "Unpublished results hide the decline effect," Nature, Nature, vol. 470(7335), pages 437-437, February.
    2. Tanya L. Chartrand & Joel Huber & Baba Shiv & Robin J. Tanner, 2008. "Nonconscious Goals and Consumer Choice," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 35(2), pages 189-201, April.
    3. Shimp, Terence A & Stuart, Elnora W & Engle, Randall W, 1991. "A Program of Classical Conditioning Experiments Testing Variations in the Conditioned Stimulus and Context," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 18(1), pages 1-12, June.
    4. Daniele Fanelli, 2012. "Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 90(3), pages 891-904, March.
    5. Bargh, John A, 2002. "Losing Consciousness: Automatic Influences on Consumer Judgment, Behavior, and Motivation," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 29(2), pages 280-285, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ozkara, Behcet Yalin & Bagozzi, Richard, 2021. "The use of event related potentials brain methods in the study of Conscious and unconscious consumer decision making processes," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    2. Fuduric, Morana & Varga, Akos & Horvat, Sandra & Skare, Vatroslav, 2022. "The ways we perceive: A comparative analysis of manufacturer brands and private labels using implicit and explicit measures," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 221-241.
    3. Kim, Aekyoung, 2022. "The paradox in happiness sales: How can happiness primes backfire?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 540-552.
    4. Anastasia Nedelko & Olga Lupova & Alexey Gorin & Alexandra Kuznetsova & Vasily Klucharev & Anna Shestakova, 2017. "An Analysis of Brand Association Perception Using N400 Evoked Potential," HSE Working papers WP BRP 77/PSY/2017, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    5. T. Poehlman & Ravi Dhar & John Bargh, 2016. "Sophisticated by Design: the Nonconscious Influence of Primed Concepts and Atmospheric Variables on Consumer Preferences," Customer Needs and Solutions, Springer;Institute for Sustainable Innovation and Growth (iSIG), vol. 3(1), pages 48-61, March.
    6. Gorin, Aleksei & Nedelko, Anastasia & Kosonogov, Vladimir & Vakhviyainen, Maria & Tugin, Sergey & Moiseeva, Victoria & Klucharev, Vasily & Shestakova, Anna, 2022. "N400 correlate of brand associations," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    7. Wörfel, Philipp, 2021. "Unravelling the intellectual discourse of implicit consumer cognition: A bibliometric review," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    8. Kirk, Colleen P. & McSherry, Bernard & Swain, Scott D., 2015. "Investing the self: The effect of nonconscious goals on investor psychological ownership and word-of-mouth intentions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 186-194.
    9. Komal Nagar, 2018. "Assessing the Impact of Online Retailer Models on Consumer’s Attitude and Purchase Intentions," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 7(1), pages 1-12, January.
    10. Victor Stango & Jonathan Zinman, 2014. "Limited and Varying Consumer Attention: Evidence from Shocks to the Salience of Bank Overdraft Fees," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(4), pages 990-1030.
    11. Augusteijn, Hilde Elisabeth Maria & van Aert, Robbie Cornelis Maria & van Assen, Marcel A. L. M., 2021. "Posterior Probabilities of Effect Sizes and Heterogeneity in Meta-Analysis: An Intuitive Approach of Dealing with Publication Bias," OSF Preprints avkgj, Center for Open Science.
    12. Dimos, Christos & Pugh, Geoff & Hisarciklilar, Mehtap & Talam, Ema & Jackson, Ian, 2022. "The relative effectiveness of R&D tax credits and R&D subsidies: A comparative meta-regression analysis," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    13. Byun, Kyung-Ah (Kay) & Duhan, Dale F. & Dass, Mayukh, 2020. "The preservation of loyalty halo effects: An investigation of the post-product-recall behavior of loyal customers," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 163-175.
    14. Ericson, Torgeir & Kjønstad, Bjørn Gunaketu & Barstad, Anders, 2014. "Mindfulness and sustainability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 73-79.
    15. Klesse, Anne-Kathrin & Goukens, Caroline & Geyskens, Kelly & de Ruyter, Ko, 2012. "Repeated exposure to the thin ideal and implications for the self: Two weight loss program studies," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 355-362.
    16. Carlson, Kurt A. & Tanner, Robin J. & Meloy, Margaret G. & Russo, J. Edward, 2014. "Catching nonconscious goals in the act of decision making," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 123(1), pages 65-76.
    17. Merchant, Altaf & Rose, Gregory & Martin, Drew & Choi, Sunmee & Gour, Mohit, 2017. "Cross-cultural folk-tale-elicitation research on the perceived power, humanistic and religious symbolisms, and use of money," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 113-119.
    18. Michael Barone & Karen Winterich, 2016. "Does Green Make You Greedy or Does it Make You Go Green? The Influence of Green Color Primes on Consumers’ Promotion Preferences," Customer Needs and Solutions, Springer;Institute for Sustainable Innovation and Growth (iSIG), vol. 3(1), pages 3-10, March.
    19. Long, James H. & Basoglu, K. Asli, 2016. "The impact of task interruption on tax accountants' professional judgment," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 96-113.
    20. Marcelo Vinhal Nepomuceno & Michel Laroche, 2017. "When Materialists Intend to Resist Consumption: The Moderating Role of Self-Control and Long-Term Orientation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 143(3), pages 467-483, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:mktlet:v:26:y:2015:i:4:p:715-726. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.