Humour effect on memory and attitude: moderating role of product involvement

Hwiman Chung New Mexico State University, Las Cruces Xinshu Zhao University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
This study examined the moderating effects of product involvement on the effects of humour on memory and attitude towards the advertisement by using multi-year survey (1992 to 1997) of responses to commercials shown during the Super Bowl. Positive and significant relationships between humorous advertisements on memory and attitude were found through multiple regression analysis. Furthermore, results show that humorous advertisements are more effective in low-involvement products in terms of memory and attitude towards the advertisement.

Due in part to the popularity of using humorous advertising campaigns (according to Weinberger and Spotts, 24.4% of prime-time television advertising in the USA is intended to be humorous), the advertising scholars have studied the effects of humorous advertising campaigns on advertising effectiveness (e.g. Markiewicz 1974; Cantor & Venus 1980; Belch & Belch 1983; Duncan et al. 1983; Gelb & Pickett 1983; Sutherland & Middleton 1983; Madden & Weinberger 1984). Sternthal and Craig (1973) drew some tentative but useful conclusions about the effects of humour on advertising by reviewing the early literature on humour in general, and Gelb and Pickett (1983) and Spotts et al. (1997) provide some theoretical discussions of how humorous advertising may affect consumers. These discussions consider the use of humorous messages, which can create some positive (favourable) attitudes towards the advertised brand through a transfer of effect created by the ad to the brand. This transfer of
International Journal of Advertising, 22, pp. 117144 2003 Advertising Association Published by the World Advertising Research Center, Farm Road, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 1EJ, UK

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effect has been proven by researchers in consumer behaviour (Ray & Batra 1983; Holbrook & OShaughnessy 1984; Mitchell 1986). In terms of advertising effectiveness, numerous studies have suggested that advertising liking could contribute to an advertisements effectiveness in terms of recall, brand preference or persuasion (Du Plessis 1994; Hollis 1995). As Du Plessis (1994) and Walker and Dubitsky (1994) reported, commercial liking (or attitude towards the ad) relates positively to advertising recall. One theoretical background for this relationship is that likeable or well-liked advertisements can affect an individuals information processing by creating positive arousal, increasing the memory of the advertised material, and creating more favourable judgements of the advertisement message (Edell & Burke 1986; Aaker & Myers 1987). Our purpose extends work in this research stream by considering the issues of product involvement. The primary focus of previous studies of the effects of humorous advertisements has been on attitude towards the advertisement and memory. In this study, we include product involvement as a moderating variable to provide insight into the differences of humorous ads on subjects attitudes towards the ad and memory. The purpose of the study is to add to the body of knowledge regarding the effects of humorous advertisements on cognitive and affective aspects of advertising effectiveness and product involvement. It is usually agreed among advertising practitioners that we should not use humorous advertising for high-involvement products because it may cause effects opposite to those we intended. It is important for advertising practitioners to understand what exact effects humorous messages have, compared with non-humorous advertising, because often the advertising objective is to get high recall for an advertised brand by increasing the amount of attention. If, indeed, humorous appeal is more effective in terms of grabbing attention, high recall and message comprehension, it will be much easier for advertising practitioners to develop an advertising message. As some researchers argue that advertising studies which use laboratory settings are weak in their generalisability (see, for example, Zhao 1997), this study also tries to find the effects of humour on memory and attitude in a natural television-watching environment.

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BACKGROUND How different message appeal in an advertisement relates to the effectiveness of that advertisement is a long-standing and unsolved question. Academic studies report inconsistent results on the effectiveness of humour in ads, but the absence of systematic empirical results contrasts with humours widespread use (Markiewicz 1974) and the intuitive belief of advertisers that humour in ads enhances persuasion (Madden & Weinberger 1984). Considerable anecdotal evidence suggests that humorous advertisements can be effective in selling products in many diverse product categories such as soft drinks, cars and insurance (Markiewicz 1974). In addition, research in advertising has investigated the effects of humorous advertisements on many other response variables such as memory, advertising liking, brand attitude and purchase intention. Even though there has been considerable research, the findings fail to show a systematic effect of humour on recall, recognition and ad liking. Furthermore, few studies have focused on the differences of humour effects across product categories. A rule of thumb among advertising practitioners is to avoid humorous advertising for high-involvement products because the results may be counterproductive. Because the advertising objective is often to get high brand recall through high attention, it is important that advertising practitioners understand the exact effects of humour appeal compared with non-humorous advertising. If humour is indeed more effective at grabbing attention, supporting high recall and aiding message comprehension, advertising practitioners may be wise to add a few laughs to their advertising messages. Researches about effects of humour In 1973, Sternthal and Craig drew some tentative but useful conclusions about the effects of humour in advertising by reviewing the early literature on humour in general. Even though the literature they reviewed is small, and not specific to advertising, their conclusions about the often positive effects of humour eased the way for future studies on the effects of humour. After Sternthal and Craigs study, Murphy and colleagues (1979) studied the effect of TV programme types on the recall of humorous TV commercials. They found that the programme environments within which humorous ads appear affect the performance of both ads and items in tests of unaided recall. They
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found that overall ad recall is much higher for humorous ads than for non-humorous ads. Unlike Murphy et al.s study, which was done in a laboratory setting, Cantor and Venus (1980) tested the effect of humour in radio ads on memorability and persuasiveness in a quasinatural setting. The results of their study also support the general conclusions drawn by Sternthal and Craig. Most advertising practitioners already used humorous advertisements to promote products and services. According to Markiewicz (1974), humorous advertising on TV and radio accounted for as much as 42% of the total. A survey of executives in leading agencies revealed that 90% of the respondents believed that humour enhances advertising effects (Madden & Weinberger 1984). Further, it was estimated that 24% of prime-time television advertising in the USA used humorous messages (Weinberger & Spotts 1989). Madden and Weinberger (1982) studied the effects of humour on attention levels, but, unlike previous studies, they used magazine advertisements to test the effects of humour. They also tested whether the potential heightening of attention is moderated by audience factors such as race and gender. They found that humorous advertisements outperformed normal ads on each recall category. Gelb and Pickett (1983) tried to find out whether humour in an ad influenced cognitive components (e.g. ad liking/disliking, attitude towards ad, attitude towards brand, and purchase intention of advertised product), as well as attention and recall. They found a relationship between the perception of humour in an ad and a positive attitude towards the ad, although the direction of causal flow is unknown. They also found a positive relationship between attitude towards brand and perceived humour. However, the perception of humour in an ad was not related to purchase intention. Belch and Belch (1983) found similar results. They found that humorous messages are evaluated more favourably by the audience than serious messages, and they produce more positive perceptions of advertiser credibility, more favourable attitudes towards the ad, and more favourable cognitive responses. However, attitude towards using the advertised product (in this case the product was the services of Federal Express) and purchase intention were not affected differently by serious vis--vis humorous messages. Lammers and colleagues (1983) also tried to understand the persuasive effects of humour by using trace consolidation theory. They hypothesised that a more humorous message would increase
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persuasion-related measures (cognitive responses and attitude) in the long run. It was found that when cognitive response measures were taken immediately after subjects were exposed to ad materials, there was little difference between the serious and humorous ads. However, when cognitive response measures were delayed, the humorous appeal produced more cognitive responses than the serious appeal. It was also found that most of the increased cognitive activity came in the form of pro-argumentation. They concluded that humorous appeal may be more effective than serious appeal because humour, in the long run, stimulates more favourable cognitive responses. Sutherland and Middleton (1983) also tried to expand the effects of humour to include message credibility as well as recall. They found, however, that although humour can attract audience attention, there is no difference between straight and humorous appeals in terms of recall of the advertising message. Moreover, they found that straight messages are more likely to be judged as credible than humorous messages and that straight messages have more authority than humorous messages. Thus Sutherland and Middletons study produced totally different results compared with previous studies of recall and credibility. Duncan and colleagues (1983) re-examined the effects of humour on advertising comprehension by focusing on type of humour measurement (manipulated vs. perceived) and humour location in the advertisement. Their results also confirmed the results of previous studies about the effects of humour on advertising comprehension. Duncan and Nelson (1985) also found that humour can increase attention paid to an ad, improve advertising liking, reduce irritation experienced from the commercial and increase product liking. Just as in previous studies, however, humour did not have any influence on purchase intention. They concluded that humorous ads seem to be more appropriate for generating awareness than for generating persuasion or purchase intention. Recently, advertising scholars used different approaches to study the effects of humour by focusing on the role of moderating or mediating variables on the effects of humour, such as advertising repetition, prior exposure to ad messages and audience size. Zhang and Zinkhan (1991) studied the effects of humour in ads in relation to ad repetition and size of audience. They found that humorous ads tend to produce higher levels of perceived humour, positive brand attitude and brand information recall. However, ad repetition has no influence on perceived humour and overall effectiveness of
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advertising. Further, Zhang (1996) studied the effects of humour in print ads using need for cognition as a mediating variable and found that the effect of humour is moderated by individual differences in need for cognition. Chattopadhyay and Basus study (1990) found that the effect of humour on consumer attitude and choice behaviour was moderated by the message recipients prior evaluation of the advertised brand. Therefore, when prior brand evaluation is positive, humorous ads are more effective than non-humorous ads and vice versa. In sum, previous research has failed to prove consistently superior persuasive effects of humorous ads over non-humorous ads. The absence of empirical results contrasts with humours widespread use in many different products (Markiewicz 1974) and the intuitive belief of advertising practitioners that humour in ads enhances persuasion (Madden & Weinberger 1984). Most studies measuring the effects of humorous ads on recall and comprehension suggest that findings are mixed; that is, some found positive effects and others found negative effects. However, most studies of source credibility and liking of source found that humorous ads have a positive influence. Finally, several studies found that humorous ads do not have a positive impact on choice behaviour, such as purchase intention. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Cognitive and affective effects of humour Humours effects on the cognitive process have usually been measured in terms of memory and comprehension. In advertising research, the emphasis has been on memory rather than on comprehension (Du Plessis 1994). Advertising researchers have identified recall and recognition as processes that access memory traces of commercial messages. Although the recall and recognition to measure advertising effectiveness is a long-standing debate (see Du Plessis (1994) for a review), the fundamental difference between the two is that recall is measured by asking subjects to specify the stimulus without aid, whereas recognition is measured by asking subjects to identify whether they have seen or heard the stimulus before. Krugman (1986) argues that recall and recognition measures are different in nature and suggests that the advertising industry has failed to make the distinction. 1 Footnote.
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There is no simple way to decide which method is most useful. In some situations, advertising research requires either recall or recognition measures; in other cases, both recall and recognition are required. The threshold theory posits that recall and recognition measure the same memory but that recognition requires a lower threshold of familiarity (Kintsch 1970). However, according to the dual-process hypothesis (Anderson & Bower 1972), recall consists of two steps memory search and recognition. In this sense, recognition is a sub-process of recall. To recall items, a subject generates possible candidates for recall during the search process and then selects items through recognition. It is therefore a logical explanation that recognition is less sensitive than recall and understandable that recognition scores are substantially higher than recall scores. Thus to gain higher recall, a stronger encoding process and more frequent exposure is needed. Humours effects on recall and recognition may be explained by operant conditioning theory. As Nord and Peter (1980) explain, operant conditioning occurs when the probability that an individual will emit one or more behaviours is altered by changing the events or consequences that follow the particular behaviour. Unlike information-processing theory, operant conditioning views humour as a reward for listening to the advertising message (Phillips 1968). Therefore, a humorous advertisement could be better understood and recalled than a similar non-humorous advertisement because humour was a positive reinforcement. This better memory may also be explained by the positive impact of emotional arousal (effect) to memory. Ambler and Burne (1999) posit that if consumers are emotionally aroused while watching commercials, those commercials are more likely to be recalled by them. Thus they argue that advertising with high affective components is more likely to be remembered by consumers. In this sense, it is possible that consumers can be emotionally aroused through watching humorous advertisements and this emotional arousal in turn affects consumers memory over advertisements. Another possible rationale for the effects of humour is Helsons adaptation-level theory (1959), which deals with the capacity of a stimulus to attract attention. Each stimulus that an individual encounters becomes associated with an adaptation or reference level. Thus attention is attracted when the individual perceives the focal stimulus to be plainly different from its reference stimuli. In this case, humour specific to an advertising context or
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perceived as exceptional will be noticed because, in general, unique advertisements are learned and recalled better than non-humorous commercials. Therefore, the first hypothesis regarding the humour effect is as follows: H1: Degree of perceived humour in an advertisement will be positively related to the unaided and aided recall.

As indicators of advertising effectiveness, Attitude towards the ad (hereafter Aad), Attitude towards the brand (hereafter Ab) and Purchase Intention (hereafter PI) are usually examined. Many studies have reported Aad as a mediator of advertising effects on Ab and PI (Mitchell & Olson 1981; Lutz 1985; MacKenzie et al. 1986; Holbrook & Batra 1987). In 1981, Mitchell and Olson first introduced the notion that consumers choice behaviour is likely to be influenced by attitude towards the advertising stimulus. Mitchell and Olson (1981) proposed, and found empirical support for, the mediational effects of attitude towards the ad. They suggested that Aad should be considered as distinct from beliefs and brand attitudes. Using a classical conditioning approach, they reasoned that the pairing of an unknown brand name (unconditioned stimulus) with a highly valenced visual (conditioned) stimulus probably causes the transference of affect from ad to brand. Researchers have since shown that Aad, which is defined as an affective construct representing feelings of favourability/ unfavourability towards the advertising itself, mediates the effects of advertising content on Ab and consumers Acb (Attitude towards choice behaviour) (Mitchell & Olson 1981; Shimp 1981; Lutz 1985; MacKenzie et al. 1986; MacKenzie & Lutz 1989). This mediating role of Aad has been found continuously in many other consumer studies (Belch & Belch 1983; Gelb & Pickett 1983; Park & Mittal 1985; Zinkhan & Zinkhan 1985; Park & Young 1986; Zhang 1996). Recently, however, some studies have found the reverse relationship between Aad and Ab (see e.g. Madden & Ajzen 1991). That is, in some cases, consumers prior attitudes towards the brand also influence positively or negatively their attitudes towards the advertisement of that brand (Machleit & Wilson 1988). Thus, in a familiar brand, attitude towards the advertisement will be influenced by consumers prior attitude towards the brand. In the advertising area, the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) Copy Research Validation project has emphasised the role of liking a commercial as an important evaluative measurement (Haley &
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Baldinger 1991). The basic question relating to commercial liking is whether likeable advertising is inherently more effective than less likeable advertising. In broader terms, there are two primary rationales to explain how ad liking might contribute to advertising effectiveness. The first has to do with cognitive processing. If consumers like the advertising they are more likely to notice and pay attention to the ads and more likely to assimilate and respond to the advertising message. The second rationale has to do with affective response. According to Lutzs (1985) affect transfer model, if consumers experience positive feelings towards the advertising, they will associate those feelings with the advertiser or the advertised brand. Thus the more the ad is liked, the more positive feelings are created towards the brand. As seen in previous studies, several advertising scholars have found that perceived humour in an advertisement has an impact on the message receivers attitude towards the ad (Belch & Belch 1983; Gelb & Pickett 1983). That is, the more humour the receiver perceives in the advertisement, the more favourable attitude towards the ad the receiver has. This finding is also confirmed by Chung and Zhao (2000). Thus the second hypothesis is suggested: H2: Degree of perceived humour in an advertisement will be associated positively with the attitude towards the ad.

Moderating role of product involvement In the advertising research area, involvement has a long history. First, Krugman drew the involvement issue to the forefront of advertising research. Applying learning theory, Krugman (1965, 1977) found that people remembered better those ads which were presented first and last. Krugman (1965) argued that advertising actually had low levels of involvement. He also operationalised the involvement as the number of bridging experiences, namely connections or personal references per minute that the viewer made between his own life and the advertisement. Since Krugmans seminal argument about television advertising, the construct of involvement has emerged as an important factor in studying advertising effectiveness (Wright 1973; Krugman 1977; Rothschild 1979; Petty & Cacioppo 1981a, 1981b; Petty et al. 1981; Petty et al. 1983; Greenwald & Leavitt 1984). In these studies, involvement usually refers to: personal relevance to the message and product (Petty & Cacioppo 1981; Engel & Blackwell 1982;Footnote. Greenwald & Leavitt 1984); arousal, interest, or drive evoked by 1
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a specific stimulus (Park & Mittal 1985); a persons activation level (Cohen 1982); and goal-directed arousal capacity (Park & Mittal 1985; Park & Young 1986). The variables proposed as the antecedents of involvement may be divided into three categories. The first relates to the characteristics of the person, the second relates to the physical characteristics of the stimulus. Thus involvement will be different according to the types of media or content of the communication. The third category relates to the situation. For example, the persons involvement will be different if he or she watches the advertising when planning to buy that product. These three categories are usually used for ascertaining involvement. Among these proposed antecedents, the second and third categories were based on the assumptions that involvement is activated by external stimulus (Taylor & Joseph 1984). Although involvement has been recognised as an interaction between individual and external stimuli, product involvement has been defined as salience or relevance of a product rather than an individuals interest in a product (Salmon 1986). Recently, researchers divided product involvement into two distinct types. The first type is situational involvement, which reflects product involvement that occurs only in specific situations. The second type is enduring involvement, which represents an ongoing concern with a product that transcends situational influences (Houston & Rothschild 1978; Rothschild 1979). All these constructs are focused mainly on the external stimulus rather than on an individuals general interest in a product. Analysing individuals common interest in a product is very important in the sense that marketers and advertisers need some baselines to segment markets according to consumers product involvement. In this sense, the construct product involvement has a meaning that may be used for the majority of consumers. Therefore, the term product involvement used in the business area has a very different meaning compared with those constructs that are focused mainly on relations between individual and specific external stimuli. Product involvement is often used interchangeably with perceived product involvement in the marketing literature (Kapferer & Laurent 1985). The meaning and definition of product involvement differ across researchers. For example, Cushing and Douglas-Tate (1985) defined product involvement as how the product fits into that persons life (p. 243). To them, product involvement is a sort of degree of importance to a person. To Zaichkowsky (1985), product
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involvement is referred to as the relevance that individuals perceive in the products values according to their own interests and needs. Similarly, Tyebjee (1979) describes product involvement as strength of belief about the product class, but others characterise involvement in the product class as the relevance or salience of a product class to receivers (Mitchell 1979; Greenwald & Leavitt 1984; Zaichkowsky 1985). The Elaboration Likelihood Model (hereafter ELM: Petty & Cacioppo 1981a, 1986a, 1986b) posits that persuasion can occur via two routes the central and peripheral routes. The central route requires a persons cognitive elaboration of advertising message (persuasive message in their studies), and the peripheral route occurs in the absence of cognitive elaboration for those persuasive arguments. According to ELM, a persons processing of information differs by his or her level of involvement. When consumers have high MAO (Motivation, Ability and Opportunity) to process communication, they are willing or able to exert a lot of cognitive processing effort, which is called high-elaboration likelihood. On the contrary, when MAO is low, consumers are neither willing nor able to exert a lot of effort. However, a persons elaboration likelihood is also influenced by situational variables such as product type. That is, a high-involvement product situation would enhance a persons motivation for issue-relevant thinking and increase a persons elaboration likelihood, so the central route to persuasion will probably be induced. A low-involvement product situation would probably create low consumer motivation to process information, which leads to greater possibility of a peripheral route to persuasion. Therefore, we expect that a humorous message in an advertisement will work as a peripheral cue so that it is more effective for a lowinvolvement rather than a high-involvement product. That is, a consumer is less motivated to process information for a lowinvolvement product and is thus more likely to form an attitude towards the ad based on peripheral cues such as a humorous message that we expect to function as a peripheral cue. Conversely, the humorous advertisement is less likely to affect consumers with a highinvolvement product since consumers are more motivated to expend cognitive processing effort for high-involvement products. Thus the following hypotheses are suggested:
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H3:

Humorous ads will be more effective in a low-involvement product than in a high-involvement product in terms of attitude towards the advertisement. Humorous ads will be more effective in a low-involvement product than in a high-involvement product in terms of memory of advertised brand.

H4:

METHOD Telephone survey The data on attitude towards the ad and memory were collected via a telephone interview and then aggregated across respondents. Telephone interviews were conducted in Chapel Hill, North Carolina from 1992 to 1996, and in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1997. Three telephone interview sessions were conducted from Monday through Wednesday evenings following the Super Bowl games. Graduate and undergraduate students enrolled in research classes conducted telephone surveys of local residents. Random-digit dialling was used to include unlisted numbers. The interviewers asked for the person who had the next birthday in the household. If a call yielded no answer, the number was redialled at least three times before being discarded. No respondents knew beforehand that we would be conducting the interviews after the games, so the viewing situation was completely natural. Measurements Wells and colleagues (1992) state that advertising plays several different roles: the marketing role, the communication role, the economic role and the societal role. However, these different roles are all based on the function of providing information for different purposes. Advertising imparts information that triggers consumer needs, provides information for buyers and helps consumers make wise decisions based on comparing product features. All purchase decisions involve the memory of alternative brands. Therefore, a rational, conscious brand choice decision depends on memories of the brands. For this reason, all market or advertising research involves some sort of memory test because memory is one of the most 1 Footnote.
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important measurements for advertising effectiveness. Further, Attitude towards the ad (Aad) is a frequently employed measure of advertising effectiveness. Many studies have explored the role of Aad as a mediator of advertisings Attitude towards the brand (Ab) (e.g. Mitchell & Olson 1981; Lutz et al. 1983; Lutz 1985; Edell & Burke 1987; Holbrook & Batra 1987). And, the hierarchy-of-effects paradigm (e.g. Lavidge & Steiner 1961; Preston 1982) has also explored Aads role in the purchase process. Following the traditional measurement for advertising effectiveness, this study also measures memory and attitude towards the advertisement as two important dependent variables.
MEMORY

The unit of analysis in this study is each brand advertised during the games. Memory was measured by unaided recall and aided recall. Following an instruction, interviewers asked each respondent whether he or she had watched the Super Bowl game, and which part. Those who watched any part of the game were asked to list all advertisements they remembered seeing during the game. Two coders coded the response separately, which had been recorded verbatim during the interviews. The two sets of results were in agreement in all but one case (more than 99%). The unaided recall rates were then calculated by dividing the number of respondents who recalled the brand (R) by the number of respondents who watched the segment (s) in which the brand was advertised (W). After the unaided recall measure, aided recall was measured. Respondents were given a list of brand names and asked if they remembered seeing an advertisement for that brand during the game. The aided recall rate was then calculated by dividing the number of respondents who said they remembered seeing an advertisement for each brand (G) by the number of respondents who watched the segment (s) in which the brand was advertised (W). Although the memory measure used here is not exactly the same as the day-after recall (DAR) used by advertising agencies or research companies, it has been validated in a series of previous studies (Zhao 1997; Chung & Zhao 2000).
ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE AD

The second dependent variable used in this study was attitude towards the ad. In experimental design, researchers have used several 1 Footnote.
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dimensions to measure attitude towards the ad. For example, several studies have used a four-item index: goodbad, likedislike, irritating not irritating and uninterestinginteresting (Mitchell & Olson 1981; Gardner 1985; Mitchell 1986). Batra and Ahtola (1991) support the argument that attitude towards the ad is not only one-dimensional. Instead, they found two dimensions of attitude: hedonic and utilitarian. However, other studies have used only a one-item index such as likedislike or favourableunfavourable (Burke & Edell 1986; Edell & Burke 1987). For this study, we focused on the degree of advertising likeness. Our purpose was to find whether or not the perceived humour affects advertising liking. Therefore, it was unnecessary to measure other dimensions of attitude in this study. Attitude towards the ad was measured by asking those respondents who remembered seeing an ad how likeable or dislikeable they thought the ad was. Nine-point Likert scales ranging from 1 it was one of the best to 9 it was one of the worst were used. To facilitate interpretation (to obtain the same scale with unaided and aided recall), all the scores were linearly transformed to 0100; here 100 represents the most likeable and 0 represents the least likeable. Those scored were then averaged across respondents for each brand for each year. Independent variable
DEGREE OF HUMOUR

An independent variable for this study was perceived humour in an advertisement. Some studies have found that different types of humour have different effects in terms of attention and memory (see e.g. Madden 1982; Speck 1991). For instance, Speck (1991) divided humorous messages into five different categories comic wit, sentimental humour, satire, sentimental comedy and full comedy and found that the effects of humour ranged from strongly positive for full comedy to an essentially null effect for sentimental humour. Some studies used five- or six-item semantic questions to measure the degree of humour in an advertisement. However, in this study humour was treated and measured as a unitary form since we focused on only comic wit type of humour which is used most frequently in advertising. To measure the degree of perceived humour in each advertisement aired during the Super Bowl game, undergraduate students in a large southern university were used. Even though it has been found that 1 Footnote.
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younger people are more likely than older people to rate advertisements as humorous and that younger peoples categories of humour are different from those of older people, students were used for methodological convenience since it was impossible to ask each respondent who watched the game and advertisement to rate the degree of perceived humour in each ad. All students watched the taped advertisements through a big screen in a computer laboratory room and rated the degree of perceived humour in an advertisement with a nine-point Likert scale (1 is least humorous and 9 is most humorous). In addition, to obtain the same scale as other variables, all degrees of perceived humour were linearly transformed to a 0100 scale, where 100 represents the most humorous and 0 represents the least humorous. Those scores were then averaged across respondents for each brand for each year. Moderating variable
PRODUCT INVOLVEMENT

For this study, the Foote, Cone and Belding (FCB) grid for 60 common products (Ratchford 1987) was used as a guideline to divide the products advertised during the game into two different categories: high-involvement product and low-involvement product. Two graduate students were trained to categorise the products according to an FCB grid for 60 common products. Each worked independently and categorised all products advertised during the game according to the same FCB grid for 60 common products. After finishing categorising the products, they exchanged their work and checked whether there were differences. In fact, almost all the products advertised during the Super Bowl game are within the range of 60 common products or similar products to those of 60 common products used by Ratchford (1987). Therefore, no problem exists with regard to categorising products according to the FCB grid. Control variables There are several other variables that can explain significant amounts of variance in the dependent variables, such as ad frequency. A brand that places more ads should be more likely to influence the dependent variables (in particular memory), and this is also more likely to truncate the effects of humour in ads. Even though several scholars have found that attitude towards the ad decreased with increased
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advertising exposure (high frequency) (Messmer 1979; Burke & Edell 1986; Machleit & Wilson 1988), mere exposure theory posits that people are likely to give higher attitude ratings to the repeated exposed stimuli. Further, higher frequency is likely to be associated with better memory. Ad frequency is therefore controlled in the regression analysis as a continuous variable. We also considered the variable year as another confounding variable, since we recognised that when we pooled the data there was a chance that differences between years could confound the effects of humour in each ad during the Super Bowl game. We therefore created five dummy variables, year 1993 through year 1997 (1992 serves as a comparison). RESULTS Data screening The data were analysed through Systat version 9.0 and were screened before the analysis began. The results found no severe univariate outliers. Though descriptive statistics found the unaided recall to be highly skewed, it is natural and reasonable to expect a highly skewed recall score (Jin & Zhao 1999; Chung & Zhao 2000). Since regression analysis is very sensitive to outlying cases, all the statistics for finding outlying and influencing cases were worked out. Apart from unaided recall, there were no significant outlying and influencing cases in terms of leverage, studentised deleted residual, and Cooks distance (see Appendix for details). In terms of unaided recall, one case was identified as a highly influencing case. However, because the percentage of Cooks distance for this case (17.8%) belongs to moderate range (10 to 50%: Neter et al. 1999), this case was not deleted from the dataset. Descriptive statistics for data Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics for the dependent variables memory and attitude towards the ad independent variable, moderating variable and control variable. The highest score for unaided recall was 87% and the lowest was 0, and the mean was 6.54%. For aided recall, the highest brand had 78.31% and the lowest brand had 8.61%, with a mean of 29%. The least favourable brands had an attitude score of 35% and the most favourable brands had an attitude score of 92%. For the dependent variable, the least humorous
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TABLE 1 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTIC FOR VARIABLES

Min Attitude towards the ad Unaided recall Aided recall Ad frequency Humour 35.00 0.00 8.61 1.00 6.64 Max 91.57 87.00 78.31 7.00 91.01 Mean 58.45 6.54 29.00 1.61 50.45 SD 8.98 16.42 14.92 1.12 21.47 Median 57.54 0.00 24.42 1.00 47.27 Skewness Kurtosis 0.279 3.336 1.172 0.142 0.958 11.168 1.028 1.041

commercial had 6 points and the most humorous commercial had 92 points in terms of degree of humour. Hypotheses tests
HYPOTHESES 1

The first hypothesis proposes a positive relationship between a humorous advertisement and subjects memory of an advertised brand. Using degree of humour as an independent variable, simple regression was done to check the relationship between memory and humour. As hypothesised, humour and memory have a positive relationship (Table 2). Simple regression shows the significant regression model ( p < 0.001), and regression coefficients were both significant ( p < 0.001) and positive for unaided and aided recall. Total variations that can be explained by an independent variable were 22% for unaided recall and 26% for aided recall. Humour effect on memory was further investigated including control variable such as frequency. In this analysis, we also included dummy coded year variables since there is a possibility that a different year has a different degree of humour.

TABLE 2 HUMOUR EFFECTS ON UNAIDED AND AIDED RECALL

Unaided recall Coefficient Constant Humour Total R Adjusted R 11.632 0.360*** 0.222 0.219 Beta 0.471*** Aided recall Coefficient 10.931*** 0.358*** 0.266 0.263 Beta 0.515***

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001

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TABLE 3 HUMOUR EFFECTS ON UNAIDED AND AIDED RECALL INCLUDING CONTROL VARIABLES
Unaided recall Constant 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 Frequency Humour R by year R by frequency R by humour Total R Adjusted R 18.707 0.419 3.742 0.307 2.348 2.063 6.593*** 0.261*** 0.009 0.298*** 0.106*** 0.414 0.400 0.164 0.089 0.007 0.050 0.049 0.451*** 0.341*** Aided recall 6.015** 1.188 0.879 0.002 1.253 0.557 5.415*** 0.280*** 0.002 0.271*** 0.149*** 0.422 0.408 0.030 0.023 0.001 0.030 0.015 0.408*** 0.404***

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001

Humour including those control variables was also regressed on both unaided and aided recall (Table 3). As expected, degree of humour in a commercial related positively to both unaided and aided recall above and beyond the control variables. Year variable (1992 was used as a comparison year) shows no significant effect on dependent variable, which means no significant differences among different years. Also, as expected, ad frequency has a positive relationship with memory and ad frequency itself explains 30% and 27% of total variations for unaided and aided recall, respectively. Humour effect, when control variables were included, became smaller (10% for unaided recall and 15% for aided recall), but still had significant and positive coefficients for memory. Therefore, the first hypothesis suggesting a positive relationship between memory and humour was supported.
HYPOTHESES 2

The second hypothesis also proposes a positive relationship between humour and attitude towards the advertisement. Following simple regression of humour on attitude, multiple regression including control variables was also run (Table 4). As shown in the table, humour itself explains almost 9% of variation in attitude towards the advertisement and had a significant positive coefficient for attitude
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TABLE 4 HUMOUR EFFECTS ON ATTITUDE TOWARD THE AD INCLUDING CONTROL VARIABLES

Unaided recall Constant 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 Frequency Humour R by year R by frequency R by humour Total R Adjusted R
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001

51.119*** 1.815 0.512 0.557 0.223 1.070 0.267 0.128*** 0.005 0.014* 0.085*** 0.105 0.084

0.076 0.022 0.022 0.009 0.047 0.033 0.305***

towards the advertisement. Unlike for memory, ad frequency explains only 1% of variation but it was significant. Therefore, Hypothesis 2, suggesting positive relations between attitude and humorous message, was also supported by the data.
HYPOTHESES 3 AND 4

Hypotheses 3 and 4 predict the possible moderating effect by product involvement. In this study, product involvement was not measured directly from surveyed individuals. Instead, categorical product involvement was used. That is, advertised products were categorised into high-involvement and low-involvement products based on a frequently used FCB grid. Further, to test hypotheses 3 and 4, the amount of effect of humour on memory and attitude was compared for high- and low-product involvement. Table 5 shows the amount of total variations explained by humour across high- and low-product involvement. As shown in the table, humour explains many more variations in low-product involvement. In terms of unaided recall there are 11.1% differences between high and low-product involvement, and for aided recall there are almost 13% differences. For attitude towards the ad, a humorous message explains 10% more variations in low-involvement products.
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TABLE 5 MODERATING EFFECTS OF PRODUCT INVOLVEMENT

Unaided recall R by humour High involvement Low involvement
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001

Aided recall R by humour 4.1*** 16.9***

Attitude towards ad R by humour 2.1*** 10.3***

3.5*** 14.6***

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION This study examined the relationship between a humorous advertisement and memory and attitude, and the role of product involvement in this relationship. Overall, strong positive relationships were found between a humorous advertisement and memory of advertised brand and attitude towards the advertisement. Further, it was found that those positive relationships were much stronger within lowinvolvement products than within high-involvement products. All the research hypotheses were supported in our data. The simple and multiple regressions for hypotheses 1 and 2 show that humour in a television commercial does appear to have some positive effects on unaided and aided recall and attitude towards the ad. Our findings imply that most humorous advertisements during the 1992 to 1997 Super Bowl games did a good job in these respects. As the advertising environment has become increasingly crowded, humour in advertising appears to be playing a larger role in helping ads stand out. In addition, most previous studies were done in forced exposure environments using print ads (two researchers used television ads in forced exposure); therefore, the subjects attention levels could have been higher than in a natural television viewing situation. The fact that we allowed attention to vary naturally in our study may partially explain the larger effects we observed. We might therefore infer that the believers in humour advertisements are right. Indeed, despite the contradicting opinions of other researchers and advertisers, it can be a powerful tool for attention-grabbing in some sense since research has suggested that enhanced attention leads to more extensive processing, which in turn leads to higher memory (Petty & Cacioppo 1985). These findings have some practical implications for advertising practitioners. First of all, using humorous advertisements will be more effective in the highly cluttered environment of broadcasting, in 1 Footnote.
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particular television, to win higher attention from the audience and to further increase memory of the brand and a favourable attitude towards the advertisement. Humorous advertisements worked well for gaining favourable attitudes from the audience, and worked well even for increasing memory of the advertised brand. Scholars have found that affective reaction to stimulus will increase attitude both towards the ad and towards the brand. Even though this study did not measure attitude towards the brand, it seems possible that humorous advertisements can elicit a favourable attitude towards the advertisement and further increase favourable attitude towards the advertised brand (Batra & Ray 1985; Edell & Burke 1986). A second implication is related to the role of product involvement. Findings suggest that even though the effects of humour were statistically significant in both high- and low-involvement products, the effects of humour in highinvolvement products were small and marginal. As expected, humorous messages work very well in lowinvolvement products. This phenomenon may be explained fully by ELM; that is, humorous messages can serve as a peripheral cue and work better only in a low-involvement situation. Therefore, advertising practitioners should be very cautious about using humorous advertisements for high-involvement or high-risk products. In some sense they can be distracting elements for those who have highproduct involvement. Limitations Several limitations should be considered in interpreting the findings of this study. First, this study did not consider the effects of news coverage on brand recall and recognition. Jin and Zhao (1999) suggest that news coverage can explain more than 70% of the variance for brand recall and 60% of the variance for brand recognition. That is, brand recall and recognition are influenced heavily by news coverage of the advertised brand. In this context we should consider the characteristics of the Super Bowl game. Because the Super Bowl is the most visible advertising event and has tremendous media coverage, Super Bowl advertising also draws special media attention. Therefore, Super Bowl advertising will have wide media coverage before it is aired; thus the higher recall and recognition score may be due in part to the media coverage received. Second, in this study humour was treated and measured as a unitary form. However, as Speck (1991) pointed out, different types of humour may have a different humour1 Footnote.
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type effect. Third, recall and recognition rates may have been affected by ads aired either before or after the Super Bowl game. Some national advertisers use new advertisements only for the Super Bowl, while others rerun their famous or favourite advertisements during the Super Bowl. Fourth, brand familiarity may be an important variable that can influence dependent measures. More familiar brands are more likely to be remembered. Fifth, methodological concerns may exist because we used university students to rate the humorous advertising, while recall and recognition and ad liking were measured among city residents. It was found that younger people are more likely than older people to rate advertisements as humorous and that younger peoples categories of humour are different from those of older people. These differences may work against our positive findings between humorous advertisements and memory and attitude. APPENDIX: SCREENING DATA To see whether there are outlying and/or heavily influencing data, leverage, studentised deleted residual, and Cooks distance were used to evaluate the outlying and influencing cases in the data. First, the average leverage was calculated for all three variables. Average leverage for unaided recall, aided recall, and attitude towards the ad was 0.0705 (11/156), so it was considered larger in terms of leverage if the leverage of case exceeds twice the average leverage. Therefore, several cases were identified as having high leverage. However, those cases had smaller leverage than 0.5 (usually considered as a cut point; see Neter et al. 1999). So in terms of leverage no case was identified as an outlying case. Second, the studentised deleted residual (defined as ti = di/s{di}) was calculated to see whether there was any outlying case. Bonferronicorrected critical value at = 0.05 was 2.998. In unaided recall, 6 cases were identified as having bigger score in terms of studentised deleted residual, but in other variables, no case was identified as having bigger score. Finally, the Cooks distance was calculated, and the corresponding percentile to the value of Cooks score was used to see whether there was a heavily influencing case. As a general rule of thumb, the case that had more than 50% of Cook percentile was used as a major influencing case (see Neter et al. 1999). All the cases identified as
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Hwiman Chung received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has worked as an ad agency account executive, handling diverse clients ranging from a cosmetic company to an airline. His major interest is in consumer behaviour in the new media environment, with a particular focus on structure and design issues in www advertising. Xinshu Zhao received his Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin, Madison. His areas of research interest are Super Bowl advertising, public opinion, and consumer behaviour in the new media environment. His research papers have appeared in many industry journals.

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