ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH

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Relatedness Vs. Similarity: the Role of Response Set Effects in Competitive Advertising
Yih Hwai Lee, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Elison Ai Ching Lim, University of Melbourne, Australia
Anish Nagpal, University of Melbourne, Australia

Past research on competitive advertising has generally focused on interference among similar stimuli and its subsequent negative
effects on recall and attitude. Using response set theory, we propose that learning can actually be facilitated when consumers
identify implicit categorical relations between competing ads. Specifically, we showed that ads containing related (vs. similar)
product claims indeed produced better overall recall. Collectively, these results suggest the effectiveness of implicit retrieval cues
in enhancing overall recall. Theoretical and managerial implications, along with directions for future research, conclude this
paper.

[to cite]:
Yih Hwai Lee, Elison Ai Ching Lim, and Anish Nagpal (2006) ,"Relatedness Vs. Similarity: the Role of Response Set
Effects in Competitive Advertising", in AP - Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 7, eds. Margaret Craig
Lees, Teresa Davis, and Gary Gregory, Sydney, Australia : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 244-245.

[url]:
http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/13037/volumes/ap07/AP-07

[copyright notice]:
This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in
part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/.
 RELATEDNESS VS. SIMILARITY: THE ROLE OF RESPONSE SET EFFECTS IN COMPETITIVE
ADVERTISING
Yih Hwai Lee, National University of Singapore
Elison Ai Ching Lim, University of Melbourne
Anish Nagpal, University of Melbourne
EXTENDED ABSTRACT
Competitive interference, i.e., the notion that brand
information recall is lower when a brand’s advertising
occurs in the presence of competitive advertising
(competing ads having similar ad content) than when the
competitive advertising is absent (competing ads having
dissimilar ad content), has been the focus of numerous
studies for the past two decades (e.g., Burke and Srull 1988;
Keller 1987, 1991; Jewell and Unnava 2003; Kumar 2000;
Unnava and Sirdeshmukh 1994). Although, most of the
research has focused on the damaging effects of
competitive interference, Unnava and Sirdeshmukh (1994)
suggest that variable encodings of stimulus information
should result in multiple retrieval cues which should assist
in the retrieval of information. Such variable encoding can
occur when consumers see the same ad in different program
contexts (Singh et al. 1992) or when the product is
portrayed in different situational contexts by varying the ad
executions (Unnava and Sirdeshmukh 1994).
In this research, we extend this notion of reducing the
damaging effects of competitive interference and seek to
uncover some conditions under which marketers can
maneuver themselves out of the detrimental effects of
inevitable clutter. Our research differs from the previous
research in two aspects. First, whereas past research has
focused on the recall of brand name and information of the
target brand, we focus on the combined/overall recall of
brand information for the target and competitive ads.
Overall recall is important when firms manufacturing
different products are interested in improving awareness of
the overall brand name, rather than the awareness of a
single product. Second, past research has typically used
externally provided cues (e.g., headline from an ad) at the
time of retrieval to reduce the damaging effect of
competitive interference, we employ the response set theory
as a basis to suggest that when appropriate retrieval cues are
present at the time of encoding rather than retrieval, they
offer ease of identifying the categorical relations between
pieces of information, which in turn enhances recall
(Garner and Whitman 1965). Applying this to the
competitive advertising context, we propose that such
retrieval cues may take the form of related ad content.
Hence, we conjecture that response set effects are evoked
when competing ads contain related (rather than similar or
dissimilar) product claims, as observed from enhanced
recall. Importantly, examining related, in addition to similar
and dissimilar stimuli, fills a gap in interference research.
Response set theory (Bower, Thompson-Schill and
Tulving 1994) proposes that predictive retrieval cues can be
used to call up a small group of response words, thereby
making them available for recall. For this to happen, a cue
should be specific to the item to be recalled (Bower and
Bolton 1969). In addition, an obvious rule relating a cue
term to its response terms (e.g., ‘duck’ and ‘luck’ both end
with ‘uck’) should be present and easily identified. In their
experiments, Bower et al. (1994) used two main lists of
items: the all-same list and the congruent list. The former
constituted a list of items that belonged to the same type of
material (e.g., all were two-digit numbers). These authors
observed that higher levels of interference occurred because
there was no specific response term for its category (i.e., an
abundance of similar responses). In competitive advertising,
similar ad content is likewise prone to higher levels of
interference since they are possible responses during
244
retrieval. In contrast, vastly different paired-lists should
have no retrieval cue since there is no obvious relation
between the response terms and the retrieval cue (e.g., pan,
45, sick, ball, W). This in turn corresponds to the notion of
dissimilar ad stimuli in competitive advertising, where
interference is negligible.
On the other hand, items in Bower et al.’s (1994)
congruent list either belonged to the same form class (e.g.
numbers with numbers, letters with letters) or had similar
semantic structures (e.g. even numbers, rhyming words).
Thus, the congruent list observes a systematic same-
category rule, which serves as the retrieval cue (Underwood
1963). The form class of sets of response terms (e.g., two-
digit numbers, alphabetical letters, and names of famous
persons) acts as an important retrieval cue which provides
an enormous boost in learning effects. Extending this
notion to advertising, similarity in semantic structures may
be replicated through ad content relatedness. For example,
an ad may promote a car’s product benefits of
“spaciousness” while another may advocate the related
benefit of “child safety auto-lock.” These two benefit
claims are conceivably linked by the cue term “good for
family use.” Hence, competing ads related to each other by
virtue of having similar semantic structures should facilitate
easy identification of the relations between themselves,
which in turn evoke response set effects. Related ad content
in competing ads should therefore result in better learning
compared to ads of similar or dissimilar ad content.
Results from our experiment indicated that there was
no difference in the recall of information between ads
portraying dissimilar versus similar ad content, in line with
response set theory. However, ads portraying related
content information led to a significantly higher overall
recall compared to ads portraying similar information.
Collectively, the results from the current study augment
past interference findings by demonstrating that related
content can actually enhance recall. These results supported
the usage of similar semantics structure (i.e. related ad
claims) as a retrieval cue, enabling the identification of an
implicit relation associating the competing ads. Given that
subjects were not explicitly cued or primed about how
competing ads may be related, enhanced recall performance
for ads containing related ad claims suggest that they were
able to form associations between the two ads.
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