LOW ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD, BEHAVIOURAL ATTITUDE FORMATION 101(‘Red Bull will give me a kick’), and it induces the consumers to test their hypotheses during
a subsequent trial experience.^102 Besides expectation and anticipation, pre-experience com-
munications may offer an interpretation or a rationale for the anticipation the brand generates.
For example, an unfamiliar computer brand could use the Intel Inside logo to assure consumers
that it is a trustworthy and high-quality brand.
A next critical function of both pre-experience and post-experience communications is
enhancing sensory and social experience. Products may taste better, function better or look
nicer and the service may be perceived as friendlier or more knowledgeable just because
consumers expect to experience this and anticipate the experience.^103 Moreover, consumers
may focus their brand trial evaluation on attributes that they would not have used without the
pre- or post-experience ad (instead of evaluating Red Bull on taste, carbonation, sugar level, etc.,
it may be evaluated on the uplifting experience it gives because of the advertising campaign),
or marketing communications may change the weight that the advertised attributes receive
at evaluation (valuing the uplifting experience as more important than taste, refreshment,
etc.). On the basis of experiments in which respondents were exposed to an ad alone, to an
ad and a product trial, or to a product trial alone, it appeared that a pre-experience ad com-
bined with brand trial resulted in significantly more favourable brand responses than either
a brand trial alone or an ad alone. More specifically, when an ad and brand trial were com-
bined, the pre-trial ad led consumers to process the brand trial information in a more focused
and meaningful way, resulting in more confidently held brand beliefs, a higher expectancy
value from the brand (as measured by the Fishbein model) and higher purchase intentions.
Moreover, ads appeared to be better in fostering confidently held beliefs about non-experiential
attributes (such as the number of calories), while trial was more powerful in creating con-
fidently held experiential attribute beliefs (such as taste).^104 Also, post-experience ads have
been shown to enhance the experience of a previous brand trial. This happens when a con-
sumer evaluates his or her brand experience as more favourable when he or she has been
exposed to advertising after brand usage as compared with the situation when no advertising
followed the brand experience. For example, if you have had Fitnesse cereal for breakfast and
afterwards you see an ad for Fitnesse which shows all the ingredients and stresses the fact that
no sugar is added, it might improve your evaluation of Fitnesse as a healthy breakfast choice.
A second role of post-experience communications is to organise memory. It offers verbal
and visual cues such as jingles, slogans, user imagery, etc., enriching the brand schema and
making it more likely that afterwards the brand will be recalled. Increasing brand recall and
top-of-mind awareness can increase the possibility that consumers stop buying the competitor’s
brand and change to the company’s brand; in other words, it can stimulate brand-switching.^105
Pepsi, for example, tried to change taste beliefs by stressing ‘nothing else is a Pepsi’. On the
other hand, post-experience communications may also prevent consumers switching to the
competitor’s brand.^106 Finally, post-experience communications also help consumers to inter-
pret their experiences: ‘The advertisement not only influences the consumer to feel that the
sensory or social experience was a good one, but it also provides reasons to believe that it
was.’^107 It is important to remember that marketing communications really are able to
improve and reshape objective sensory experience. In an era in which consumers have the
feeling that in the majority of product categories brands are converging instead of becoming
more distinct,^108 post-experience advertising may offer the extra element for a brand to be
perceived as better or more unique than the rest.Low elaboration likelihood, behavioural attitude formation
In this case, at least one of the MAO factors is low, making well-thought-through processing less
likely. Consumers will rather concentrate on elements of previous brand experience to form an
attitude and purchase intention. A typical model for this low-involvement–behavioural-orientedM03_PELS3221_05_SE_C03.indd 101 6/5/13 3:03 PM