ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH
Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802
Investigating the Interactive Effects of Visual Imagery and Brand Familiarity on Brand Recall: a Cross-Cultural Study
Andrei Mikhailitchenko, Cleveland State University, USA
Galina Mikhailitchenko, Psychological Institute of Russian Education Academy, Russia
The authors address the issue of visual imagery in cross-cultural consumer research. The relationship between visual imagery, brand
familiarity, and brand claim recall is investigated in two distinct cultural environments – the U.S. and Russia. The paper consists of
two studies that explored imagery potency from the point of view of memory-evoking effects. The obtained results suggest that imageintensive tools generate different returns depending on the level of brand familiarity and cultural media. The research findings may be
of interest to marketing scientists studying cross-cultural consumer behavior as well as to managing practitioners operating in
international advertising and global brand building.
[to cite]:
Andrei Mikhailitchenko and Galina Mikhailitchenko (2007) ,"Investigating the Interactive Effects of Visual Imagery and Brand
Familiarity on Brand Recall: a Cross-Cultural Study", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 34, eds. Gavan
Fitzsimons and Vicki Morwitz, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 110-111.
[url]:
http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/12937/volumes/v34/NA-34
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This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in
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Investigating The Interactive Effects of Visual Imagery and Brand Familiarity on Brand
Recall: A Cross-Cultural Study
Andrei Mikhailitchenko, Cleveland State University, USA
Galina Mikhailitchenko, Psychological Institute of Russian Education Academy, Russia
EXTENDED ABSTRACT
The issue of visual imagery in cross-cultural consumer research is addressed in the study. It investigates the relationships
between the brand familiarity, visual imagery of an ad, and the
brand claim recall in two distinct cultural environments–the U.S.
and Russia.
A substantial research in cognitive psychology and consumer
behavior is devoted to exploring sources, nature, specific features,
and memory outcomes of human imagery. Memory recall is documented to be higher if associated with more intensive visual
imagery activity rather than under conditions that are believed to be
less imagery stimulating (Paivio and Csapo 1969; Elliott 1973;
McKelvie and Demers 1979; Rossiter and Percy 1980; LaBarbera,
Weingard, and Yorkston 1998). Therefore, the improving recall of
ad contained information for imagery–intensive ads is hypothesized.
Another hypothesized effect is positive relationship between
the level of brand familiarity and brand claim recall. The evidence
for this relationship is provided by the signal detection and information organization theories as well as by the recent research on
message processing and message response (e.g., Campbell and
Keller 2003; Sagarin et al. 2002; Campbell and Kirmani 2000). The
interaction between the two factors discussed above is considered
as well.
Based on the cross-cultural consumer behavior and advertising research, it was proposed that there will be the difference
between Russian and American consumers in terms of advertising
image elaboration and, therefore, in relationship between imagery
and brand claim recall.
The 2 x 2 factorial between subjects experimental design with
two manipulated conditions–brand familiarity and imagery content
of the ad–was applied in Study 1. The two chocolate brands–
American (A) and Russian (R)-both of which operate on the U.S.
and Russian markets, were chosen for the experiment. Two ads, one
consisting of picture and text, and the other one consisting of text
only, were created for each brand.
The students filled the questionnaire measuring the brand
familiarity for brands they were assigned to, then rated the visual
imagery level of ads. Then subjects were given a surprise claim
recall test on the ads.
A two-way ANOVA followed by post-hoc tests produced the
results that indicate at significance of both imagery and familiarity
main effects as well as interaction effect (higher marginal influence
of imagery on lower rather than on higher level of brand familiarity).
The Study 2 was conducted in two countries–USA and Russia.
Each subject was randomly assigned to one of the treatments (HF/
HI, HF/LI, LF/LI, and LF/HI). The 2 x 2 x 2 factorial between–
subjects experiment was designed with three manipulated conditions–a subject’s country of domicile, brand familiarity and imagery content of the ad. The same chocolate brands–Brand A and
Brand R-were used. Attitude towards brand score (AB) was measured as well.
An ANCOVA with AB score as covariate was applied. The
main effects of imagery rating and brand familiarity on brand recall
remained to be significant after removing the covariate’s effect.
The higher imagery effect under low rather than high familiarity
conditions was demonstrated as well. The significant 3-way inter-
action between country of domicile, brand familiarity, and imagery
rating reveals different pattern of marginal influence of the imagery
on brand claim recall for high familiarity vs. low familiarity
conditions in two cultures. While in the U.S. imagery has much
higher contribution to brand recall on low levels of brand familiarity, in Russia the difference of this contribution for high and low
familiarity conditions is much less substantial.
To summarize, the Studies 1 and 2 provided highly significant
support for brand familiarity and imagery effects on brand recall.
Their interaction (higher contribution of imagery to brand claim
recall on low rather than on high levels of brand familiarity) was
supported by both studies as well. The significant differences of
imagery influence on brand recall score in two countries was
revealed by the significance of corresponding interactions. The
difference of brand familiarity’s influence on brand recall across
two cultures was not supported.
The obtained results have important implications for both
academic and practitioner research. The findings reported in this
study attract attention to the issue of information processing resources that exist in consumer mind. The high level of brand
familiarity creates the strong brand-related schema, that can use the
cognitive capacity and interfere in the elaboration of the new imageevoked information. In contrary, the absence (or weakness) of such
a schema for unfamiliar brands increases the availability of cognitive resources needed for image elaborating activity (Carlston
1980; Britton and Tesser 1982; Kardes 1986).
The study also demonstrates that the process of elaboration of
image-initiated information is strongly influenced by social media.
The need for image processing appears to be a cultural phenomena,
that is influenced by spiritual traditions of the country, its media
habits and dominating lifestyle. The strong cultural predisposition
to reading the books and newspapers result in lower level of need
for visualization, while media habits oriented at watching TV and
reading colorful magazines create image-based information elaboration pattern. The associative links evoked by images result in
higher attribute recalling abilities for consumers from imageintensive media environments, like USA. In contrast, consumers
from reading-intensive environments, like Russia, have higher
predisposition to elaborate textual rather than imagery information
contained in the ad.
From managerial point of view, the study demonstrated that
investment in image-intensive advertising will not produce the
same return for different levels of brand familiarity and different
international markets. The well established brands with higher
familiarity rating require different communication strategies aimed
at facilitating brand claim recall than low familiar ones. Imageintensive tools generate diminishing returns with increasing brand
familiarity. The companies that are going global should also evaluate the degree of image intensiveness of the environments they are
going to operate within. This is needed for assessing the “imagery
advertising leverage” that global businesses will have in the particular culture.
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