Embargoed Release: February 9, 2007
Contact: Suzanne Wu / 773-834-0386 /swu@press.uchicago.edu
Being around friends can impair your memory
You’re watching a basketball game with some buddies and decide to order pizza during the
commercial. Researchers from Indiana University found that people in a group setting exposed to
brand information – such as an ad for Pizza Hut -- have a hard time recalling the brand’s
competitors. In other words, being around friends when deciding where to order takeout might
cause you to forget completely about that local pizza place you’ve been wanting to try.
“When groups of individuals are exposed to brands in the shopping environment, their memory
for other brands within the same product category is impaired,” write Charles D. Lindsey and H.
Shanker Krishnan (Indiana University). “The current research examines retrieval in a
collaborative group setting, which is a novel context for brand memory research.”
Appearing in the March issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, the study found that this effect
is magnified for very familiar brands. Lindsey and Krishnan argue that this happens because
individuals in the group are exposed not only to the advertisement but also to mentions of the
brand by other members of the group.
“The practical implications of this research imply that a group premium (over and above the
standard market share premium) seems to exist for advertising brands during programming
where a higher percentage of viewers are group-based,” conclude the authors.
Lindsey, Charles D. and H. Shanker Krishnan. “Retrieval Disruption in Collaborative Groups
Due to Brand Cues,” Journal of Consumer Research: March 2007.