On the Automatic Effects of Advertising: The Uncontrollability of Evaluative Conditioning Effects

Changing brand attitudes by pairing brands with affective stimuli is called evaluative conditioning (EC). EC is defined as the change in liking of conditioned stimuli or brands (CS) caused by their pairing with valenced, unconditioned stimuli (US). This basic procedure of pairing brands with positive stimuli lies at the heart of branding and advertising strategies and is therefore of central importance to consumer research (Shimp, Stuart, & Engle, 1991; Stuart, Shimp, & Engle, 1987; Sweldens, van Osselaer, & Janiszewski, 2010). Whereas there is no doubt that EC effects can be established through conscious propositional reasoning, a long-standing disagreement in the literature concerns whether there can also be a contribution of an unconsciously operating automatic process in the attitude acquisition (Hofmann, De Houwer, Perugini, Baeyens, & Crombez, 2010; Sweldens, et al., 2010). A process is defined as automatic if it occurs in the absence of awareness, is uncontrollable and is not influenced by intentionality or processing resources (Bargh, 1994).