Chapter 16 of PSYCHOMarketing by Roger Nichols
Zajonc’s “Mere Exposure” study established that, the more one is exposed to a particular stimulus object, the more one prefers it. This is a phenomenon we have all experienced at one point or another. Are you acquainted with this phrase: “It grew on me” or “It will grow on you”? I’m confident you might have heard a song at first that you didn’t like, but when you were forced to listen to it repeatedly because it was played in stores or by a colleague at work, you ended up liking it. Well, that is the Mere Exposure Effect. Put simply, the more you see or hear something, the more you like it. In other words, familiarity builds interest. This is not restricted only to products; it happens in romantic relationships, too. The more you spend time with a person, the higher the probability is that you will begin to find him or her attractive. This concept can also be called the “Familiarity Principle.”
Although the concept was first brought to the world’s attention by Gustav Fechner in 1876, the scholar whose theory is best known on the subject is a Polish-born American social psychologist, Robert Zajonc, who introduced it in the 1960s.
Zajonc started his research by looking at language and the frequency of words used. He carried out a series of laboratory experiments between 1960 and1990, in which his subjects were exposed to a familiar stimulus for a period. He conducted four experiments, and the results were all the same: the subjects ended up rating the familiar stimulus more favorably than the unfamiliar and similar ones that were not presented during the experiment. In his words, “the first evidence displayed an association between affective nuance of words and word frequency; the second showed the effect of experimentally manipulated frequency of exposure upon the affective connotation of nonsense words and symbols; the third showed the correlation between word frequency and attitude to their referents; while the last showed the effects of experimentally manipulated frequency of exposure on attitude.”
In his Journal article, “Attitudinal Effects Of Mere Exposure,” written in June 1968, Zajonc said, “We have all the reasons in the world to be ‘happy’ (p. 1449) and ‘gay’ (p. 418) rather than ‘sad’ (p. 202) and ‘gloomy’ (p.72), for things are 5 times more often ‘good’ than ‘bad,’ almost 3 times more often ‘possible’ than ‘impossible,’ and about five times more ‘profitable’ than ‘unprofitable.’ That is, perhaps, why ‘boom’ and ‘prosperity’ outdo
‘recession’ by a factor of just about 30, ‘abundance’ outdoes ‘scarcity’ by at least 3:1, and ‘affluence’ is 6 times more prevalent than ‘deprivation.’
“Catering to our corporeal sensibilities, things are 3 times more often ‘fragrant’ than they are ‘foul,’ 12 times more often ‘fresh’ than ‘stale,’ and almost 7 times more often ‘sweet’ than ‘sour,’ and everything that can be filled is three times as often ‘full’ as it is ‘empty.’ If we have anything, we have ‘more’ of it 6 times more often than we have ‘less’ of it, 2 and 3 times more often ‘most’ of it than ‘least’ of it. And those things that we have so frequently more of are 5 times more often ‘better’ than they are ‘worse,’ 6 times more often ‘best’ than ‘worst,’ and 4 times more often ‘superior’ than ‘inferior.’ Still they ‘improve’ at least 25 times as often as they ‘deteriorate.’ These examples suffice to convince one that the world represented by a one-to-one correspondence with word frequencies is as unreal as it is spectacular.”
What this established is that positive words are used more in marketing than negative ones because people respond to positive words more than their negative counterparts. The other experiments Zajonc carried out, with the use of objects or stimuli, such as nonsense words, polygons, ideographs, photographs, drawings, likings, pleasantness, and forced-choice measures, all proved that exposure leads to familiarity.
In marketing, salespersons and brands make use of the Mere Exposure Effect often to sustain their customers’ interests. In particular, game developers make use of this strategy a great deal; this is why they make use of theme songs from notable rock bands like Imagine Dragons, Linkin Park, Mumford and Sons, etc., to exert a pull on their target audience. Game developers also create games that have the theme of blockbuster movies and series because they know the familiarity can help them attract more players all over the world. Movie producers also do this; and games like Assassin Creed have been adapted into movies.
Popular books are adapted into movies as well, for this reason, as have biographies of popular figures. These are all ways to endear bigger audiences. Stores make use of music to attract customers, too. If you are wandering the halls of a mall and you hear a store playing your favorite music, genre, or artist, you will prefer going to that store over the counterpart store that plays songs you do not like. This is particularly common during Christmas, where popular songs like Jingle Bells, Twelve Days of Christmas, Mary’s Boy Child, Little Drummer Boy, Silent Night, and Let it Snow, among others, are routinely played to attract holiday shoppers. Store managers understand that these songs stir nostalgic feelings of spending holidays with loved ones, and they take advantage of it.
I am sure some marketers are confused about the difference between the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon and the Mere Exposure Effect because they both feed on familiarity. However, they are two different concepts. Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon is influenced by the piece of information or pre-existing experience we might have been exposed to. Mere Exposure, on the other hand, is you developing a preference for a person, object, brand, or style because you have seen or heard about it a couple of times.
We make decisions every day; and these decisions are different in type, value, and degree. Making wrong conclusions can be devastating for both individuals and producers—and, especially, marketers. Many times, bad decisions are formed as a result of insufficient information. In 2011, the renowned Israeli-American psychologist and business analyst, Daniel Kahneman, explained that the decision-makers’ minds were influenced by the information that was available to them. We tend to believe a particular idea regardless of its accuracy. This phenomenon is a cognitive bias that comes into play during decision-making on what to purchase, what production technique and advertisement technique to apply, etc. A confused marketer will likely always choose to resolve his own dilemma with “more” rather than risk providing his customers insufficient information.
Marketing Implications of Mere Exposure Effect
As we all know, brands aim to make some profits. To achieve this, they need to do advertising that will cause consumers to develop a preference for their brand. This is why brands make use of familiar tactics they believe can sustain the interest of their customers. This, so-called Mere Exposure possesses a good effect. However, researchers have confirmed that if you continue to expose the same stimuli to your clients more than 10 times, they get bored; your advertising will yield diminishing returns: it will lose its effect. This is why it is imperative brands review their strategies, advertisements, and jingles from time to time.
How marketers apply the Mere Exposure Effect
The use of catchy jingles and popular brand ambassadors is one of the most renowned strategies brands use to create the Mere Exposure Effect. Most times, they make use of musicians, actors, and athletes people love. They also make use of controversial celebrities to promote their brand, because, when they make use of controversial figures, they generate a lot of buzz in cyberspace and attract the attention of a lot of prospects who later turn into customers. Another popular strategy they implement is advertisements that pop-up on social media pages and browsers. When an advertisement keeps popping up on your tab, it is likely annoying at first; then you become curious and click on it. The use of billboard advertisement and print are also ways Mere Exposure Effects are re-enforced. When avid newspaper readers keep coming across your ad on a daily basis, or weekly, or monthly, it arouses their curiosity, and they just might get in touch with you. This also pertains to billboards. When you keep seeing the same advertisement on a billboard on your way to work, school, the bank, and store as you go about your daily activities, you might find yourself purchasing the product at the store when you’re shopping. However, if the advertisement is not captivating, aesthetic, and creative enough, people won’t even notice the brand. It is also imperative for marketers to select colors, fonts, words, and pictures carefully to attract their audience.