It’s Personal, It’s Not Business: The Effects of Moods on Advertisements Recall

Abstract

The study of mood states is extensive in the literature, providing both consistent and contradictory findings. The question remains, however, why and how mood states affect the ability to recall advertisements presented in low involvement situations. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of mood states on the ability to recall central and peripheral cues in the low involvement situations. The contributions of the study are (1) to be the first to explain mood effects on recall ability in low involvement (to the best of author’s knowledge), (2) to identify evidence of how advertisements should be projected to maximize viewers’ information recall, and (3) to provide practitioners additional guidelines in executing marketing strategies. The results support dual processing model, but refute theory of affect-as-information. Specifically, recalls of advertisements represented in central or peripheral routes are indifferent when accompanying positive mood states. In contrast to some studies, negative mood states recall less central cues than peripheral cues. This finding is both consistent and contradictory to recent studies, rendering additional future research on negative mood state.