Concreteness and language effects on advertisement recall.

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2018-08-27
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en
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Abstract
Our knowledge of the world is made up of concepts, and is quite important for our cognitive behaviour. There appears to be a difference between concrete and abstract concepts in how we store them and retrieve them. Studies suggest that concrete concepts are remembered better than abstract concepts. This is likely because we store concrete concepts as a copy of the experience in the brain and as the word, but abstract concepts are only stored verbally as they cannot be experienced. This research was interested in investigating whether this effect would be the same in advertising, as the goal of advertisements is to have people remember the brand or product. Advertisements are mostly written in foreign languages (L2), most often English as this is seen as a global language. Seeing as research suggests a foreign language is remembered worse than the native language (L1), this research also investigated whether using L1 versus L2 in advertisement mattered, and whether language played a role for the concreteness effect. A within subjects design was used, where 128 participants saw 12 advertisements: three concrete-Dutch, three concrete-English, three abstract-Dutch and three abstract-English. After a filler test participants answered a recall questionnaire. Analyses showed an effect of language: as in previous research, Dutch (L1) advertisements were remembered better than English (L2). Concrete advertisements were not remembered better than abstract ones. This could be because the manipulated words were not where participants focussed on. Another effect was an interaction between language and concreteness. For concrete advertisements, the ones in Dutch were remembered better than the English. This is likely because L1 facilitates concrete words better than L2. The answers to the research questions are therefore that concreteness unexpectedly does not appear to affect advertising recall, but that language does. Advertisements in L1 are remembered better than in L2. Concreteness also modifies this effect; as for concrete advertisements the language effect plays a bigger role. These results are quite useful for marketers and as basis for future research: marketers are advised to use their target groups’ L1, especially if the advertisement is concrete. Keywords: embodiment, concrete, abstract, language, advertisement, recall.
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