Effects of Two Voice Characteristics on the Attitudes toward Advertising Messages

Abstract

This study explored the effects of two prosodic variables, voice intonation and voice intensity, on the attitudes of a sample of Canadian students toward two messages advertising automated teller machines and student loans. The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) was used as a theoretical framework. The ELM proposes that peripheral cues such as voice characteristics should enhance the receiver's attitude only under low-issue involvement situations. A 2 × 2 × 2 (Level of Intensity × Level of Intonation × Levels of Issue Involvement) experiment was used. The two advertising messages provided very different levels of issue involvement, measured in terms of the Zaichkowski scale (1985) by the 221 subjects. The results confirmed those proposed by the ELM-that the two voice characteristics are significant only under low-involvement conditions. The most efficient voice combined low-intonation and low-intensity features and was interpreted as efficient because its qualities bypassed the respondents' defense mechanisms.