Age differences in preference and memory for advertisements: the roles of advertisement type and product type

Previous research has examined how motivational goals influence decision-making in advertising for both older and younger adults, and the findings support the proposal of socioemotional selective theory (SST), which suggests that older adults pursue emotionally-meaningful goals. However, such studies are limited in providing cross-cultural evidence, and the relevance of health-related goals in the contribution to age differences in preference and memory is underexplored. This study aimed to fill those research gaps, and investigated preference and memory, in Chinese younger and older adults, for emotionally-meaning and knowledge-related advertisements, for functional and general food products. Young adults (115 aged 18–26) and older adults (113 aged 60–86) were asked to indicate their purchase intentions for products, their liking of advertisements, and their recall of the advertisements they had viewed. For general food products, older adults showed more intention to purchase, and also better recall for emotionally-meaningful advertisements compared with young adults. However, both old and young adults showed an increased preference and memory for knowledge-related advertisements for functional food products, and this effect was greater for the older adults. The findings indicate that any default in older adults to focus on emotionally meaning information can be overridden when product information is directly related to individual health benefits. Thus, the SST may only apply when there is no personal investment in the decision to be made and hence these findings challenge the influential SST in its traditional form.