Advertisement Effectiveness

Hypothesis 1a: With Instagram stimulation, participants will have a more positive sensory experience.

Hypothesis 1b: With Instagram stimulation, participants will have a more positive affective experience.

Hypothesis 1c: With Instagram stimulation, participants will have a more positive intellectual experience.

Hypothesis 1d: With Instagram stimulation, participants will have a more positive behavioral experience.

2.5 Advertisement Effectiveness

This research mainly focused on the influence of Instagram stimulation on brand experience, however, advertisement effectiveness is also measured and studied very often in other brand experience research papers. Therefore, this study will also include the measurement of advertisement effectiveness of Instagram. The advertisement effectiveness can be measured using brand attitude, brand satisfaction, purchase intention, or other related constructs. Brand experience was often found positively related to advertisement effectiveness (Brakus, Schmitt,

& Zarantonello, 2009; Cheng; 2012; Nysveen, Pedersen, & Skard, 2013; Yeh, 2011;

Zarantonello & Schmitt, 2010). The constructs used to measure advertisement effectiveness in this research are brand attitude, brand satisfaction, purchase intention. The influence of brand experience on these constructs of advertisement effectiveness will be explained below.

Consumer attitude has been studied in various marketing researches. An attitude was defined as “an individual’s internal evaluation of an object” (Mitchell & Olson, 1981). It refers to an individual’s internal state that consists of an evaluation. It happens in cognitive, affective and behavioral level and is directed towards an object. These objects could be advertisements, sales promotions, websites, charitable organizations, product placement and such (Zarantonello & Schmitt, 2010). Brand attitude is consumer’s attitude towards brand related stimuli. It provides a summary of a consumer’s evaluation of the product, service, or brand (Belch & Belch, 2003). Brand attitude was defined as “a relative enduring, uni-dimensional summary evaluation of the brand that presumably energizes behavior” (Spears &

Singh, 2004). In other words, brand attitudes will affect behavior intention and in turn initiate behaviors. Therefore, attitudes can predict consumer behavior. Brand attitude is an essential component of branding (Rossiter, 2014). According to Schiffman and Kanuk (2012), attitudes are learned predispositions. They are formed by consumers’ direct experience with

‧

the product, word-of-mouth information, firm generated contents, or through social media and the Internet. Attitudes occur within a situation, within a particular time, event or circumstance. Brand experience is the precursor of brand attitude, because it is the internal responses evoked by brand related stimuli. And through this response from brand experience, consumers formed evaluation towards the brands. The contexts when evaluating brand also matters, the brand attitude would be more positive in a hedonic experiential contexts compare to a utilitarian context (Mathwick, 2005; Yoo & MacInnis, 2005). And hedonic brand attitude also strongly affect purchase intention (Zarantonello & Schmitt, 2010). Zarantonello and Schmitt (2010) also discovered the relationship between brand attitude and purchase intention would be more positive in higher experiential profile consumers compared to low experiential profile consumers.

People seek all aspects of experience, such as sensory stimulation; affective stimulation, to seek pleasure and avoid pain; Intellectual stimulation, to suppress boredom (Brakus, Schmitt, & Zarantonello, 2009). When brands evoked more aspects of experiential stimulation, it is more likely to increase consumers overall evaluation of brands as well as brand satisfaction. For example, Nysveem et al. (2013) discovered that sensory experiences would influence brand satisfaction positively. Brakus et al. (2009) states that because experience gives value, and therefore the more positive the experience, the higher the brand satisfaction. They discovered strong brands that provide more aspects of brand experience would also have higher brand satisfaction (Brakus, Schmitt, & Zarantonello, 2009). The evaluation of strong brands is always positive, because strong experience enables elaborative information processing and inference, which results in brand-related associations (Keller, 1993). And brand-related associations will affect satisfaction.

Purchase intention is defined as “a consumer’s conscious plan or intention to make an effort to purchase a product” (Spears & Singh, 2004). It is the probability of a consumer to buy a product or service. Purchase intention happens before the actual purchase behavior.

When consumers have a good evaluation and a high preference for the product, the probability of them purchasing the products would be higher. Engel et al. (1995) explored the process of consumer decision-making. They stated that purchase behavior is a continuous process and the eventual decision is influenced by both internal and external information. The internal evaluation of a brand, the brand attitude, would affect purchase intention. Bouhlel et al. (2010) also discover a positive relationship between consumers’ attitude and consumers’

purchase intention. Brand attitude and brand satisfaction are both the evaluation of brands.

With positive brand attitude and brand satisfaction, consumers would be more likely to

‧

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

purchase a brand. From the above literature review, it is shown that brand experience is positively related to brand attitude, brand satisfaction, and purchase intention. However, the focus of this study is on the direct effect of Instagram on advertisement effectiveness. This study seeks to explore whether Instagram would influence both brand experience and advertisement effectiveness positively. The mediated effect by brand experience on advertisement effectiveness is not considered in this study. According to Murphy (2014), Instagram did increase consumer’s brand attitude and purchase intention. This study aims to explore whether Instagram would have the same positive influence on advertisement effectiveness among senior high school students in Taiwan. This study hypothesized that:

Hypothesis 2: With Instagram stimulation, the advertisement effectiveness will be more positive.

Hypothesis 2a: With Instagram stimulation, brand attitude will be more positive.

Hypothesis 2b: With Instagram stimulation, brand satisfaction will be more positive.

Hypothesis 2c: With Instagram stimulation, purchase intention will be more positive.

‧

The research focus of this study is to explore whether Instagram intervention would result in a more positive brand experience and advertisement effectiveness among senior high school students in Taiwan. The research design will be introduced first, followed by the description of participants, experimental treatment, measures and procedure.

3.1 Quasi-Experiment Design

The research method of this study is a quasi-experiment design. This research includes Latin square and several research techniques to enhance the validity of the quasi-experiment design.

It was used to help explore the group difference contributed by Instagram intervention. It is a one-factor experiment design to explore how Instagram intervention changes brand experience and advertisement effectiveness. This research combined both between subjects and within subjects design in the experiment, to include the consideration of the levels of experimental treatment and the order of brands. This quasi-experiment design helps to maximize the research measurements for further analysis and explore the influence of Instagram on brand experience and advertisement effectiveness.

According to the definition of brand experience, it is the “subjective, internal consumer responses (sensations, feelings and cognitions) as well as behavioral responses evoked by brand-related stimuli that are part of a brand’s design and identity, packaging, communications and environments” (Brakus, Schmitt, & Zarantonello, 2009, p. 53). In order to understand participants’ internal response of brand experience arising from Instagram contents and also the advertisement effectiveness, this study asked them to evaluate their experience with brands using several measurements. The measurements of brands and the experiment treatment were arranged according to Latin Square (Table 2).

Table 2

The Quasi Experiment Design – Latin Square

Note. In Table 2, A, B, C, and D represents respective brand. The quasi-experiment was carried out in a sequential order, from left to right, ex: The measurements for group I will be conducted in the order of A, B, C, D. There are two levels of treatment, the first two measurements are in controlled condition, and the last two measurements are in experimental condition.

Group Controlled Condition Experimental Condition

I A B C D

II B A D C

III C D A B

IV D C B A