Young Consumers’ Responses to Event Sponsorship Advertisements of Unhealthy Products: Implications of Schema-triggered Affect Theory

Abstract

There is growing concern over commercial promotions of products that are unhealthy or unsafe. In some cases, policy recommendations have called for restrictions on promotional activities, such as event sponsorship, when used to promote products like alcohol, tobacco, and fast (“junk”) foods. This study utilises variations of fast-food and tobacco print advertisements containing sport sponsorship themes in a test of Fiske's theory of schematriggered affect. Using a pretest/posttest experimental design, print ad manipulations were developed which involved pairing a known brand of fast-food and a known brand of cigarettes with three different sport events. MANCOVA analyses largely supported existing research on schematriggered affect, and run counter to some of the arguments for regulating tobacco sponsorships. Sponsorship ad manipulations were found to impact subjects’ perceptions of ad schema congruence as well as their subsequent attitudes towards the sponsorship ads. However, ad congruence effects were not observed in terms of significant differences between treatment groups’ mean brand attitudes or purchase intentions.