Cornell Quarterly Article Explains How Businesses Can Build Consumers' Affection
WARM FUZZIES TRUMP COLD CASH FOR ALTERING CONSUMERS' ATTITUDES
ITHACA, NY, May 9, 2006. The false accusation last year that Wendy's had served tainted chili damaged company sales for many months afterward. Wendy's tried to bounce back with a sales promotion, with mixed results. Instead, the company might better have invoked warm, nostalgic memories to bring customers back, according to an article published in the May 2006 edition of the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly (CQ).
The article examines the use of autobiographical advertising and reconstructive memory to rekindle customers' affection for a product. Written by Kathryn A. Braun-LaTour, Michael S. LaTour, and Elizabeth F. Loftus, the article, "Is That a Finger in My Chili?: Using Affective Advertising for Post-crisis Brand Repair," is available at no charge as the featured CQ article from the Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research (www.chr.cornell.edu).
Wendy's sales continued to suffer even after it was demonstrated that the claim of tainted chili was totally false. Seeing that Wendy's campaign offering a free Frosty did not restore customer traffic, LaTour and her coauthors tested another type of advertisement, a more "affective" autobiographical ad, which referenced childhood experiences at Wendy's.
Additionally, the study shows that advertising can be used to reconstruct memories that may not have actually occurred. The autobiographical ad featured an image and text of a "Wendy's Playland." Since it is McDonald's that is the proprietor of Playland, any mention of "Wendy's Playland" on subsequent questionnaires shows the advertising influenced respondents' memory. Indeed, some respondents did "recall" playing at Wendy's as a child.
The authors are not suggesting that companies present untrue information in their advertisements, but instead are demonstrating how people use present-day cues to recall past events.
Most important to companies that are trying to recover from unfavorable publicity, the authors found that respondents who saw the autobiographical advertisement said that they held warmer feelings for Wendy's. In contrast, respondents who saw the chain's actual response to the incident, offering the free Frosty, neither recalled playing at Wendy's nor felt any more affection for the chain.
The article, which is now posted at http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/publications/hraq/feature/, was published in the May 2006 issue of the (CQ ), the premier journal of applied research serving hospitality practitioners and scholars. The award-winning CQ is published by The Center for Hospitality Research at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. Subscriptions are available from Sage Publishing (sagepublications.com).
For more information on the CQ, see: http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/publications! /hraq/.
About The Center for Hospitality Research
A unit of the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, The Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) sponsors research designed to improve practices in the hospitality industry. Under the lead of the Center's 46 corporate affiliates, experienced scholars work closely with business executives to discover new insights into strategic, managerial and operating practices. The Center also publishes the award-winning hospitality journal, the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly. To learn more about CHR and its projects, visit www.chr.cornell.edu.
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