Understanding the communication processFrom a business perspective, the fundamental issue withadvertising concerns its relationship with consumer behaviour.Essentially, this issue boils down to whether or notadvertising is effective in changing consumer’s behaviour suchthat consumers who, without being exposed advertising, wouldnot buy a product do as a result of the advert. From abusiness perspective, then, efficient advertising isadvertising which creates more demand for a product or serviceand inefficient advertising is advertising which does not.This additional demand provides a “return on marketinginvestment” (Jeffries, 2011).

In order to calculate the return on marketing investment, whatHarms and Kellner (1991) describe as ‘”administrative mediastudies”, has focused upon finding ways to conceptualize andmeasure the effectiveness of particular advertising conceptsand executions. These models have moved beyond thebehaviourist approach to thinking purely in terms of stimuliand responses linked by a blackbox of the consumers’ mind.These models stress that rather than measure effectiveadvertising purely in terms of sales, ‘advertising can satisfyits ultimate objective of affecting demand only byestablishing a hierarchy of intermediate effects in itsaudience’ (Scholten, 1996: 97).

As we will see in this paper, each of the frameworks putforward to explain how advertising relates to consumerbehaviours has significant flaws and, even where there is

consensus among practitioners and researchers regarding whichframeworks to use, it is more often the result of pragmatismnot scientific proof. The state of the problem is still bestsummed up in the famous quote attributed to Britishindustrialist Lord Leverhulme: “I know half my advertisingisn't working, I just don't know which half”.

Information theoryBefore we can consider how advertising messages relate toconsumer behaviours, we must set down some further foundationsregarding the way that advertising is able to transmit amessage to consumers. Up to now we have consideredadvertising as a particular type of communication and exploredhow it is produced through a set of organizations known as theadvertising industry using various media and culturalresources. That’s to say we’ve been looking at what is uniqueabout advertising as communication. Let’s think aboutadvertising more broadly, then, by looking at what it shareswith other forms of communication. In so doing we can notonly illuminate some features of advertising that we have notyet considered, we can also see how a particular logic, or wayof understanding communication, has influenced a generation oftheories about the relationship between advertising andbehaviour.

In the first half of the 20th century, there was a growing needto understand the communications process. The telegraph, thetelephone and the radio allowed people to communicate in newways but they had significant technical issues that wereovercome, in large part, by the ideas developed under the nameof “information theory”. For instance, while telephones wereoriginally purchased in pairs to connect a specific point toanother (Gleick, 2011: 190), soon huge, interrelated circuitsconnected senders and receivers. The new complexity opened upissues with crossed wires, delays, and distortion.Mathematicians and engineers, accordingly, turned theirattention to understanding the physical limits imposed on

communication across the telegraph, telephone and radio. Theywanted to develop a system to understand how much informationcould be transmitted through a system at maximum efficiency inorder to highlight where inefficiencies existed.

Here the work of Claude Shannon marks a turning point.Shannon was an American mathematician and electrical engineer.He worked on and researched a range of topics brought togetherunder the topic of the ‘transmission of intelligence’ (Gleick,2011: 187). His interests were both in understanding thephysical problems involved in creating efficient systems oftransmission and in understanding the logic problems ofproducing messages that could be transmitted (or the problemof creating a language about language). In many ways, forShannon, the two problems could not be separated. Shannonargued that any problem of communication could be understoodas the problem of reproducing a message or, as it becameknown, some kind of information, from one point to another.For Shannon, it didn’t matter what the information was or evenhow it was being transmitted. Whether we were talking tosomeone in the same room, sending a Morse code message, orspeaking on the telephone, the problem remained the same: howcould we transmit information from one point to another.

Shannon sketched out a model of transmission which stated thata message must first be encoded into a form that can betransmitted through a particular channel. If the message istransmitted effectively and is not distorted through thetransmission process, it must then be decoded at the other endof the channel to reproduce the message.

To make sense of this model, it is worth considering Shannon’sown history. During the Second World War, Shannon worked oncode-breaking. He saw first-hand that it was not just enoughto receive a message if it couldn’t be deciphered. There was,he realized, a clear similarity between the processes throughwhich code breakers decoded messages in war and the process

through which, for example, telegraph operators decoded theseries of dots and dashes that we sent over the telegraph intomessages that communicated some information. In each case,the communication process was enabled by system for encodingand decoding the message shared by the source and destinationand by the ability of someone at the destination todistinguish noise from the message. As Shannon puts it: ‘asecrecy system is almost identical with a noisy communicationsystem’ (in Gleick, 2011: 216).

Shannon moved on, then, from the semantic content of a messageto thinking in abstract terms about the amount of informationa message contained. Information, on his understanding, isnot information about anything it is just new data. If onlyone message is possible on channel, there is no information.If there are two messages, then there is one piece ofinformation. For example, consider a light switch. It iseither “on” or “off”. Because it cannot be on and off, thelight switch only communicates one thing. As such, forShannon, it became less important the think about what theinformation being communicated was about than finding a way tounderstand whether the communications process transmits theinformation efficiently and effectively through the encodingand decoding process and through reducing noise.

For Shannon, then, information is linked with uncertainty.The more uncertainty, the more information that iscommunication. For example, if the letter “t” is followed bythe letter “h” in English, not much information is conveyedbecause most words beginning with “t” also begin “th” (this isthe logic behind auto-fill forms on websites and searchengines). As Gleick (2011: 230) explains: ‘If a letter can beguessed from what comes before, it is redundant; to the extentthat it is redundant, it provides no new information’. When amessage includes additional parts that do not conveyinformation, they are said to be redundant. The use ofredundancy is to allow error correction. Finally, Shannon’smodel was expanded to include a feedback loop.

The beauty of Shannon’s model is that it allows thecommunications process to be calculated mathematically. If weare not concerned with the meaning of a message but simply theamount of information is contains, we can use mathematics tofigure out the most efficient way to transmit a message, thenecessary level of redundancy that ensures that noise does notinterfere with the message but does not waste too muchcapacity of the channel with unnecessary code.

Shannon’s perspective on communication has had profoundeffects on the understanding of humans as communicators.Essentially, Shannon argued that for communication to workhumans, without realizing it, must possess a great deal ofmathematical knowledge and undertake a great deal ofstatistical processing. He estimated that English, forexample, has a ‘built-in redundancy’ of around 50 percent(Gleick, 2011: 229). That is, half of what we say contains nonew information (like this sentence). Instead, it simplyreproduces what has already been communicated in a new way toensure that there were no errors in the reproduction of themessage from one point to another. As communicators, weimplicitly know how much redundancy is expected. Moreover,when there is an error we are able to complete the message

based on our knowledge of the code. For this reason, we donot have to finish our sentences exactly in spoken speech andwe can understand a sentence even if there is a spellingmistake. As Shannon puts it:

anyone speaking a language possess, implicitly, anenormous knowledge of the statistics of the language.Familiarity with the words, idioms, clichés and grammarenables him to fill in missing or incorrect letters inproof-reading, or to complete an unfinished phrase inconversation. (Gleick, 2011: 229)

Shannon’s information model of communication has subsequentlybecome a standard for the study of communication. It alertsus to a number of common features that all communication musttake account of such as encoding, channel, decoding. Howeverit has been argued that, in terms of advertising, the model isof limited use primarily because advertising is not simplyabout the transmission of information. Shankar (1999), forexample, argues that, in terms of advertising, there is rarelyone single sender of a message and that the sender might noteven be aware of the information they are transmitting. So,in some senses, Shannon’s model is something of a straw-man inthe study of advertising. It is included in introductorytextbooks but it routinely attacked and undermined.

Information-ProcessingYet, the implication that humans naturally process informationmathematically has had profound affects within advertisingstudy and practice. The idea that humans, essentially,process information like a machine caught hold in what becameknown as the Information-Processing Model (IPM) ofadvertising. This model tells us that, like a computer andlike the process of transmitting information itself,communication is linked to behaviour through a set number ofstages (or, in the language of a computer, through a setnumber of programs and operations).

Influential consumer researchers such as Engel, Bettman, andMcGuirge, took on-board the logical conclusions of Shannon’sinformation theory to set out a number of steps through whichconsumers process information mathematically like computers.First, the message must be exposure to the message. That isto say, someone must be the destination or receiver of themessage. The person must then pay attention to the message.Studies have shown, for example, that people often filter outmessages especially when they suffer from “informationoverload”. Next, they must comprehend the message. They thenstore the information – a process known as yielding – suchthat they retain the information and can use it when making adecision.

In this sense, the IPM is based on the assumption thatbehaviours are, ultimately, the result of information. If wehave new information, we will make different decisions whenbuying a product, choosing a brand, considering who to votefor etc. What is important, then, is to understand howinformation is stored, retained and called on. In this sense,informed by IPM, marketing researchers moved on from simplyjustifying advertising in terms of behaviour and insteaddeveloped measures of information and its storage inconsumer’s memory banks. These include the recall andrecognition tests in which consumers are asked to expose theinformation they can access from their memory. Here, IPMresearchers assumed that consumers would know what they knew –a point we will return to.

While this model might help to structure the process throughwhich information can inform behaviours, it is less useful inhelping us to distinguish the reasons why some instances ofcommunication led to behaviour change when others do not.Here, Bettman develops a more complex model that allows for“antecedent factors” which condition the progress through theprocess. Borrowing heavy from the computer metaphor impliedin Shannon’s work, the factors Bettman works with include“processing capacity” and “motivation” – that is to say,intelligence and interest in the message.

There are three assumptions at work in this model. First, itassumes that each stage in the processing sequence must occurin order and that the probability of a subsequent stage takingplace is dependent on the completion of the previous stage.Simply, if you have not been exposed to an advert, theprobability of comprehending it is zero. In formal terms, theinformation processing model is a Markov Chain (the “mediationpostulate”). Second, the antecedent factors which impact oninformation processing have opposite effects at different

stages of the sequence (the compensation postulate). AsScholten (1996: 101) explains: “Intelligence, for instance,tends to enhance the probability of comprehension but, as aresult of a greater ability to support prior beliefs on theissue and to refute arguments discrepant with those beliefs,to refute the probability of yielding, implying that people ofintermediate intelligence tend to be most easily persuaded’.Finally, it is assumed that the effect of an antecedent factoron different stages of the sequence will depend on thesituation in which the factor operates. This means that alater stage might be affected, to a different level anddifferent extent, by an antecedent factor in comparison to thefactors effect on earlier stages of the process.

From an advertising perspective, the IPM implies that, inorder to test the effectiveness of an advert, we do not need

to measure actual behaviours but rather the extent to whicheach stage in the sequence has taken place in relation tovarious antecedent factors. Asking a consumer to recall anadvert, or the message contained within an advert, inparticular, suggests that the advert has been retained andwill affect behaviour in the future.

Subliminal PerceptionTaken to its extreme, the IPM does not need the individualperson who is processing the information to be active in theprocess at all. As long as the antecedent states are in placeand the message transmitting effectively, there’s no reasonwhy someone has even be aware of processing information. Infact, if we think about it, we’d probably think it was morelikely that someone wasn’t aware of processing information.It just sort of happens.

Put otherwise, we can process information unconsciously.Moreover, if we can process information unconsciously perhapswe can also be exposed to it unconsciously. In a famous casehere, in 1957 an American market researcher, James Vicary,reported the results of a study on the effect of subliminaladvertising to the press and, in the process, sparked of aninternational debate about the ethics of advertising toconsumers without their being aware of it. Vicary claimed tohave increased the sale of confectionaries in cinemas bynearly 60% by placing extremely short messages reading “EatPopcorn” and “Drink Coke” in a movie seen by some 45,699movie-goers (Rogers, 1992).

Elaboration Likelihood Model Bringing together the two ideas – that sometimescommunications are consciously processed and at other timesthey short cuts the processing sequence – Petty and Cacioppo(1981, 1983, 1986) developed the Elaboration Likelihood Model(ELM). The foundation of the ELM – linking to other ideas incognitive psychology such as the Theory of Planned Behaviour –

is that a change in behaviour is a consequence of a change inattitude towards the behaviour. This marks a shift from theIPM as it is no longer information but what consumers feelabout a brand or product through their interpretation(processing) of that information that counts. Put otherwise,before we change our consumer behaviour, we must first changeour attitude towards that behaviour to turn it from somethingwe don’t consider doing into something we do consider doing.This happens, according to the ELM, when we elaboratecommunication by processing it in more depth. But, it canalso happen, according to the model, more subliminally withoutelaborate processing through another sequence.

The ELM, then, sets out two routes through which an advert canchange a consumer’s attitude. The central route is the mostsimilar to the IPM. Here, a consumer is motivated and able toelaborate the message. Depending on their existing attitude,level of experience and knowledge and so on, the message willeither led to a cognitive change (in the language of the IPMit will be accepted) and led to a positive or negative changein attitude or it will be discounted. When a message isdiscounted through the central route it is processed throughthe peripheral route like any other advert which the consumer hasneither the ability not motivation to elaborate. Here, themessage is not comprehended (in the language of the IPM) butis investigated for cues that can, almost subliminally, led tocognitive changes although they are also likely to be ignoredor discounted. According to the ELM, the effect of thesechanges though is to make us more interested in (or primed topay attention to) subsequent communications. The likelihoodof elaboration, in other words, is determined by ability andmotivation of the consumer – which is based on theirprocessing abilities and the effects of their existingattitude, past communications and so on. Other effectshighlighted in the literature include “source credibility” –an existing attitude – argument quality.

The ELM is based on a number of assumptions. It assumes thatthe central route will be likely to be followed if theconsumer is motivated and able to assess the true merits of abrand. Likewise, where a consumer has low motivation andability there is a high probability of them following theperipheral route (the “reciprocity postulate”). But, thecentral and peripheral routes are not absolute categories inreality. They are probabilities not discrete options (thecontinuity postulate). The implication is that argumentquality will be the main (but not only) effect in highelaboration likelihood, both argument quality and cueattractiveness in moderate elaboration likelihood and cueattractiveness in low elaboration likelihood. The ELM alsoassumes that thoughts about arguments will be biased againstor in favour of the argument and cues. These biases are, itimplies, determined by the initial brand attitude. Thecongruence of an argument with initial attitudes of theconsumer will, in short, affect the level of attitude change

(the “biased-elaboration postulate”). In addition, the modelassumes that the consequences of each route differ. Attitudeschanged along the central route are more likely to endure,more likely to persist in spite of counter arguments, be morelikely to be report by the consumer and be more predictive orbehaviour than attitudes arrived at through the peripheralroute. In other words, the ELM assumes attitude-behaviourconsistency (see Azjen and Fishbein, 1977; Fazio, 1986).

To illustrate the difference, consider an advert for a newIKEA bed that is on offer at £99.99. If a consumer ismotivated to elaborate this advert – say they need a new bed –they will read it and, depending on their existing attitude toIKEA beds, may be persuaded through the central route tochange a negative attitude into a positive one. If they wereuninterested in a new bed, the may ignore the ad, but theymight pick up a cue and without elaborating on the ad, thismight contribute to a change in attitude. Say, for example,the advert did not offer a new bed at “£99.99” but, instead,offer one at “under £100”. This new cue, might led to achange in attitude and behaviour, even though the informationin the advert has not been changed.

ReferencesAjzen, I. and Fishbein, M. (1977) Attitude Behaviour

Relations: A Theoretical Analysis and Review of EmpiricalResearch’, Psychological Bulletin, 84: 888-918.

Fazio, R. H. (1986) ‘How Do Attitudes Guide Behaviour?’ in TheHandbook of Motivation and Cognition Foundation of SocialBehaviour, R. M Sorentino and E.T. Higgins: New York:Guildford Press pp. 204-243.

Gleich, J. (2011) The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood¸ London:Fourth Estate.

Harms, J. and Kellner, D. (1991) ‘Critical Theory andAdvertising’, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 11: 41–67.

Rogers, S. (1992) ‘How a publicity blitz created the myth ofsubliminal advertising’, Public Relations Quarterly

Scholten, M. (1996) ‘Lost and Found: The Information-Processing Model of Advertising Effectiveness’, Journal ofBusiness Research, 37: 97-104.