Opening the black box: Understanding cross-media effects

Authors:
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Despite their popularity, the reasons why cross-media campaigns are more successful than single medium campaigns are still unknown. Therefore, the aim of this study is (a) to investigate which psychological processes are present when people are exposed to cross-media campaigns, and (b) to examine to what extent these processes contribute to campaign results. Three psychological processes are investigated to gain insight into the effectiveness of cross-media campaigns: forward encoding (i.e., the ad in the first medium primes interest in the ad in the second medium); image transfer (i.e., mentally replaying the ad previously viewed during exposure to the ad in the second medium); and multiple source perception (i.e., believing the brand is good and popular because of the amount of advertising). To identify the role of these processes, 219 participants were exposed to one of four media conditions (two cross-media conditions and two repeated media conditions). The results showed that two processes were present when participants were exposed to the cross-media combinations: forward encoding and multiple source perception. We also found support for the hypothesis that these two processes contributed to campaign results. However, the third process, image transfer, was present in all conditions and did not add to the explanation of cross-media effects.

This publication has 35 references indexed in Scilit: