Central and Peripheral Routes to Advertising Effectiveness: The Moderating Role of Involvement

Abstract

ver the past three decades, a large number of studies have examined how consumers ’ evaluations of issues, candidates, and products are affected by media advertisements. Research on the methods by which consumers ’ attitudes are formed and changed has accelerated at a pace such that Kassarjian and Kassarjian were led to the conclusion that “attitudes clearly have become the central focus of consumer behavior research” ’ (1979, p. 3). Not only are there a large number of empirical studies on consumer attitude formation and change. but there are also a large number of different theories of persuasion vying for the attention of the discipline (see Engel and Blackwell 1982: Kassarjian 1982). In our recent reviews of the many approaches to attitude change employed in social and consumer psychology, we have suggested that-even though the different theories of persuasion possess different terminologies, postulates, underlying motives, and particular “effects ” that they specialize in explaining—these theories emphasize one of two distinct routes to attitude change (Petty and Cacioppo 1981, 1983). One, called the central route, views attitude change as resulting from a person’s diligent consideration of information that s/he feels is central to the true merits of a

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