Current Issue Summary
June 2023 (Vol. 64, Issue 2)
Why the Experiential View Is Vital to Marketing Communications Research Now: An Enhanced Framework for Examining the Effects of Contemporary Marketing
This essay, by Jean-Luc Herrmann (University of Lorraine) and John B. Ford (Old Dominion University and former JAR Editor-in-Chief), is a call to advertisers and marketers for a shift from persuading consumers, to providing experiences that blend entertainment with more indirect persuasion. This is essential, the authors argue, given the dramatic changes the internet and social media have brought in both the volume and style of content that consumers view, as well as consumer involvement in brand-related discussions. Herrmann and Ford develop three major arguments supporting “the addition of the experiential view to provide an enhanced framework for examining the effects of contemporary marketing communications.” Specifically, they assert, the experiential view offers a more elaborate account of:
- “consumers’ incidental exposure to numerous communications and the effects of brand stimuli without awareness;
- “increasingly entertaining communications with less direct, factual and verbal messages;
- “the increasingly active role that empowered consumers play.”
Finally, an effort to expand the “traditional information-processing paradigm by bringing in the experiential view, provides an enhanced framework for examining communications effectiveness… This enhanced framework requires a more holistic approach as well as more indirect measures such as implicit measures.”