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Abstract

Past consumer research on mood has focused mainly on the impact of pre-processing mood on attitude formation, cognitive process, or behaviour. The present study, however, opens a new research direction by investigating the impact of ad characteristics on pre-processing mood. In particular, this research develops a model by combining the mood management and mood disruption mechanisms to answer the following interrelated research questions: (1) How does a consumer's mood interact with an ad's characteristics? (2) What is the effect of this interaction on subsequent mood and ad evaluation? (3) When will the above effect on ad evaluation be more likely to occur? Before the main experiment was conducted, a scale was developed to measure the mood potency of an ad -- a construct developed to capture the dimensions of an ad in eliciting affective responses. Following a systematic psychometric scale-development procedure, a reliable and valid scale with eighteen items was obtained. A 2x2x2 between-subject factorial design was conducted to test the model. The treatments included pre-processing mood pleasure, pre-processing mood arousal, and mood potency of an ad. The experiment involved exposing groups of subjects to one ad after listening to one piece of music, then comparing ad evaluations by music condition. The ad's mood potency was manipulated to elicit either a positive or negative feeling. Music was employed to vary pleasure and arousal prior to ad processing. Altogether two ads and four pieces of music were used. For the dependent measure considered (i.e., ad evaluation), findings were in accordance with a mood management interpretation. It was found that a positive mood potency ad was preferred to a negative mood potency ad either in a good or bad mood condition. Moreover, this effect was more pronounced when the arousal level was high. Regarding predictions on change in pleasure/arousal due to an exposure of an ad, only the change in pleasure yielded marginal support for the mood disruption mechanism. The findings of this study not only contribute to our understanding of research on advertising context and affective responses but also have important implications for managerial decisions on ad placing, design, and copy testing.