WHAT WE REMEMBER FROM SOCIAL MEDIA. MEMORY OF ADVERTISEMENTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA WEBSITES – A RESEARCH IN THE PARADIGM OF BACKWARD FRAMING

Abstract

For many years human memory and its character has been the area of research interests of neurologists, psychologists and psychiatrists. Importantly, proper understanding of how our memory works is an issue that is significant from cognitive point of view and also for promotion and advertising specialists. In order to achieve the objectives of marketing communications – informational, persuasive and competitive objectives – an advertising addressee has to rightly read, remember and recall an advertisement in the phase of making the purchase decision. This process is exposed to endogenous and exogenous noises and distortions. One of the most intriguing types of memory errors is a situation, where previous experience is distorted by the information coming later on (retroactive interference). This phenomenon is being researched in the paradigm of backward framing. Works on this type of memory distortions were pioneered by Braun with co-researchers (e.g. Braun, Zaltman, 1997; Braun-LaTour, LaTour, 2005). In Poland, research on the impact of emotions on the evaluation and memory of advertisements were conducted i.a. by. A. Grochowska and A. Falkowski (2008). The source literature cites many examples of research on traditional advertising carried out in the paradigm of backward framing (i.a.. Kamins, Marks 1987; C. Hu, S. Cole, 2016, Falkowski 2017). However, there is a cognitive gap in case of this type of research being carried out in the internet environment. In case of online marketing communications, one should particularly note the promotional activities carried out on social media websites. Such communication, whose share in the market grows year by year, is characterized by certain specificity. It may be of great importance for memory and evaluation of advertisements published by that channel. In particular, they include: displaying advertisements in the form of “suggested posts”, which are additionally recommended by friends, interlarding promotional contents in memories and updates of friends displayed in news feed. The main purpose of the research being presented herein is checking how recommendations of friends and famous persons affect memory and evaluation of advertisements and how memory and evaluation of advertisements is distorted under the impact of the information coming afterwards. 102 respondents from Poland took part in the pilot research. The results indicate that there is a relationship between the contents presented on Fan Page and the subsequent product evaluation: the respondents who read comments and opinions of other internet users evaluated a non-existing product better than those who saw only an informational page. Article visualizations: