Exposure to stimuli has become difficult because of skipping, zipping, zapping and cord cutting. Ad blocking software used by people poses a serious threat to marketers. It is a tough challenge for the marketers to get their advertisements seen by the audience.
what is zipping and zapping in advertising
'Zapping' refers to the practice of viewers of changingchannels while watching television programs. A study was conducted to examinethe impact of the zapping behavior on advertising effectiveness by analyzingits relationship with brand choice probability. It also investigated theeffect of TV remote, cable TV, VCR ownership and the demographiccharacteristics of households on zapping frequency. In addition, the studyexamined the profile of households likely to be heavy zappers. A majorfinding of the study was that television viewers tend to zap while watching aprogram instead of during commercial breaks. Results also showed thathousehold zapping behavior is significantly influenced by the availability ofTV remote-control units and cable TV. The tendency to zap is greatest amonghouseholds with several members, with children under 18, with video taperecorders, and with a college-educated member.
Over the past decade, there have been growing concerns in theadvertising industry about the potentially deleterious effects of consumervideo technology on the effectiveness of IV advertising. In particular, thegrowth of cable television programming, the penetration of VCRs, andremote-control-operated TVs all suggest the possibility of significant lossesin the effectiveness of TV commercials (e.g., Kaplan, 1985; Heeter andGreenberg, 1g85; Yorke and Kitchen, 1985; Greene, 1988; and Sylvester, 1990).It has recently been reported that 70 percent of homes had remote tuningcapability. In homes so equipped, an increase m channel switching of about 75percent was noted (Sylvester, 1990). These statistics raise fears foradvertisers that households will zap out all or portions of commercials, thusreducing the advertising impact on the full audience size that they arepaying for. Therefore, it is of interest for managers to find out how much ofthis channel switching occurs and how it affects the effectiveness ofcommercials.
To begin with, it is necessary to define zapping within thecontext of our study. The term zapping has been variously used to connote"channel switching" (Kaplan, 1985), "muting of commercialswhile on the air," "fast forwarding of video-tapedcommercials" (e.g., Tauber, 1985), and so on. Here we adopt the broaddefinition of the term for our study. Accordingly, we define zapping as thephenomenon where individuals viewing television programs switch channels.This broad definition has been similarly adopted by others in several paststudies (e.g., Heeter and Greenberg, 1985; Kaplan, 1985). We also study thechanging of channels during commercials which we call "commercialzapping." While the idea of a measure of commercial avoidance isappealing, it is difficult to operationalize such a measure given thelimitations of available data. In particular, since our data does not allowus to determine why people zapped during a particular commercial (i.e., toavoid commercials or to view another program), we restrict our attention tothe more general definition of commercial zapping as well.
While the zapping phenomenon itself has been examined in paststudies, no research has yet specifically investigated the relationship andthe effect of zapping on brand purchase behavior. In this study, we firstexamine the impact of TV remote, cable TV, and VCR ownership as well as thatof household demographic characteristics in relation to zapping frequency.This provides information about the profile of households likely to be heavyzappers. Once this profile is established, we then turn to the issue ofstudying the relationship between zapping and brand choice probability inorder to measure the impact of zapping on advertising effectiveness.
Zapping can influence advertising effectiveness in two ways.First, if a household zaps out of a program during a commercial break, adswill have no impact because they are not viewed. However, a more interestingquestion is what happens to the effectiveness of ads when only a portion ofthe ad is seen as a consequence of zapping. To address this question, weexamine channel-switching behavior during the viewing of TV commercials andinvestigate whether the worth of partial commercial exposures is differentfrom those of commercials that are viewed without interruption. This isaccomplished by means of a mathematical model that is based on a multinomiallogit analysis which examines the relationship of commercial zapping as wellas other explanatory variables to brand-choice response behavior.
The majority of related prior studies have focused on thedescription of the zapping phenomenon. Thus, in some of the earliest reportedstudies on zapping in the United States (e.g., Kaplan, 1985; Heeter andGreenberg, 1985), attention is given to describing the pattern and extent ofchannel-switching behavior as well as profiling zapping-prone households.Thus focus has been shared by Yorke and Kitchen (1985) who similarly examinezapping behavior in the United Kingdom.
In a more recent study, Olney et al. (1991) examine a hierarchy ofeffects in which advertising contents influence emotions and attitudes towardan ad. These intervening variables are then linked to a commercial-zappingmeasure. Thus, the primary focus of the latter study is on the determinantsof zapping behavior. However, as in the previous studies, it does notinvestigate the relationship of zapping to advertising effectiveness.
Little is known about the effect of zapping on advertisingeffectiveness due to the sparseness of research studies linking the twovariables. An exception to this is a Gallup and Robinson study by Greene(1988). This study reports that zappers show only a slightly reducedcommercial recall of 3 percentage points relative to nonzappers. It thenconcludes that zapping behavior itself may have a positive impact onadvertising recall in that it forces viewing action back to the TV set whenthe viewer might not otherwise be attentive.
Greene's (1988) contribution is that it relates zappingbehavior to advertising effectiveness. However, the study is limited by itsuse of a survey-based measure of day-after TV commercial recall as well asself-reported measures of zapping from a sample of viewers. As such, themethodology relies on potentially biased self-reported data about viewerzapping behavior. Moreover, it uses recall as the criterion of advertisingeffectiveness and thus does not directly measure the effect of zapping onpurchase behavior.
In contrast to the conclusions reached by Greene (1988), Percy Co.has suggested that zapping is indeed a potentially significant problem foradvertisers (see Kneale, 19&8). The Percy study electronically trackedviewing audience and zapping for a sample of 1,000 homes in the New Yorkmetropolitan area to measure "commercial ratings." TV setmonitoring was accomplished by means of electronic metering and computerdevices which provided second-by-second information about TV set status,while viewer presence in the TV viewing room was measured by heat sensors andpeople meters.
Among its interesting findings, the Percy study noted that while anew specialty commercial, such as the Pepsi ad featuring singer MichaelJackson at the 1988 Grammy music awards, showed a relatively low audienceloss (about 2 percent), certain ads, aired during competing popular sportsevents, showed staggering losses of as much as 43 to 53 percent due tozapping. The study concludes that a "commercial rating" istypically much lower than that of a show. Although the Percy study shows thata significant amount of zapping behavior does exist by means of a verysophisticated measurement methodology, it does not specifically evaluate theeffect of this behavior on advertising effectiveness. Nevertheless, theadvertising concerns raised by the Percy study results have led tocontroversy and debate within the TV and advertising industry. Thus, TVnetworks and some ad agencies have disputed the results of the Percy study,questioned the representativeness of the New York city sample used, anddismissed "zapping" as a minor problem (see Kneale, 1988).
In summary, we know that zapping is a fairly widespread phenomenonand potentially of considerable-concern to advertisers. However, we have verylittle understanding of the way zapping affects advertising effectiveness. Inthis study, the main focus is on the impact of zapping on advertisingeffectiveness. Stewart and Furse (1986) note that most studies that havefocused on advertising effectiveness rely on effectiveness criteria such asadvertising persuasion, recall, comprehension, and executional factors. Thus,considerations of brand choice and purchase-related effects are typicallyignored. A major reason for this oversight has been due to limitations inavailable data. However, new advances in the collection of single-source datanow allow more explicit links to be made between advertising ad purchasebehavior (e.g., see Assael and Poltrack, 1991).
Several recent studies have used analytical models based onsingle-source scanner panel data to study the effects of advertisingexposures on household purchase behavior. Tellis (1988) uses tobit models toexamine the relationship of brand choice and purchase quantity to advertisingexposures and other explanatory variables. Other researchers have alsostudied advertising exposure effects by applying multinomial logit models tosingle-source data (e.g. Deighton et al., 1988; Batra et al., 1989; Russeland Winer, 1989; Pedrick and Zufryden, 1991). Although the latter studiessuggest useful approaches to model the relationship between advertisingexposures and brand-choice behavior, none of these have examined the impactof zapping on the effectiveness of ad exposures. In our study, "Arespecifically address and provide insight into this issue by applyingmultinomial logit analysis to our scanner panel database. Thus, we focus onthe effects of commercial zapping as well as other relevant causal variableson a household's brand purchase behavior. 2ff7e9595c
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