Processing of Apparel Advertisements: Application and Extension of Elaboration Likelihood Model

This is an investigation of how consumers use the elements of an apparel advertisement to develop their attitudes toward an advertised product. It examined whether participants' involvement level (high or low) and the product type (utilitarian jacket or expressive jacket) influence the ways consumers process a message argument (strong or weak) and background picture (unattractive or attractive) in an apparel advertisement. Using the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), an experimental study was conducted to examine information processing activities and attitude formation. Participants with a high level of involvement devoted more information processing efforts to specific elements of the advertisement - verbal messages for the utilitarian product and pictorial information for the expressive product - than participants with a low level of involvement. As a result, when the level of involvement was high, the message argument influenced the consumer's attitude toward the utilitarian product, whereas the background picture influenced attitudes toward the expressive product. In this paper, we discuss the applicability of ELM and its extension in explaining attitudes toward an apparel product.