Humor and Advertising Effectiveness after Repeated Exposures to a Radio Commercial

Abstract

This study tested a model relating humor perceived after repeated exposures to a commercial message to measures of advertising effectiveness. These effectiveness variables are recall of the brand name and advertising copy, attitude toward the advertised brand, stated purchase probability and actual brand choice. The findings indicated that adding humor to a conventional hierarchy-of-effects model does not improve the model's overall explanatory power. However, humor was found to be negatively related to recall and was positively related to brand attitude; both relationships were predicted based on literature in this area.