WANDERLANDへのリンク
2. 広告における人間工学的検討
Research on the Human Ability to Interpret and Analyze Visual Information:
1. Introduction
1. CYBER DESIGN COMPETITION
今年前半では、政策・メディア研究科の院生また、学部生の合計14名で
Space For Scape というグループを
組み、コラボレーション活動を通じて、昨年11月に
ソウルで開かれた環境デザイン世界学会の一部として開かれた
STUDENT CYBER DESIGN COMPETITIONへの提出作品の制作に取り組んだ。
作品内容としては、温泉で知られている草津という地域に、
インタラクティブ・テクノロジーやウエラブル・メディアを当てはめ、
「草津」という空間をリデザインしたものとなっている。
制作過程においては、実際に草津へ足を運び、合宿を開いて、
作品制作に取り組んだ。
残念ながら、入賞を果たすことは出来なかったものの、
院生・学部生が皆一緒に一つのテーマに取り組むという、
それぞれのバックグラウンドの違いが、面白いアイディアを生み、
結果として非常にいい形でのコラボレーションを行うことが出来た。
出来上がった作品へは以下にリンクをはってある。
2-1. 研究課題
本研究では、人間の視覚情報受容・認知・分析機能の特性に着目し、
人間生態としての視覚情報受容能力を、眼球運動測定実験を通して測る。
実験を通して、人間行動を定量化することにより、
広告の形態そのものに人間光学的検討を応用し、より現代社会が
抱えているニーズに応えられる広告形態、中でも最新メディア媒体に対応出来る
広告形態への確立を目標としている。
2-2. 研究内容
今年度の研究内容としては、文献サーベイと実験を実地、また修士論文の
執筆を開始した。
文献サーベイに関しては、修士論文を英語で執筆する予定である為、
主に英語の文献をサーベイし、またマーケティング・リサーチ会社
にも訪れ、実験方法等についても詳しく教えて頂き、
自分自身の実験方法へのアイディア等を提案して頂いた。
また、実験では、実験準備として、手法の検討や素材の収集・編集を行い、
研究における予備実験としてテレビCFを用いた眼球運動測定実験を行った。
2-3. 研究のまとめ
修士論文を英語にて執筆する予定でいる為、以下研究内容は英語
で記してある。
A Human Ergonomic study on Advertisement Styles and Advertisement Effectiveness
Measuring Methods
In recent years, advertising styles and advertisements themselves have been
changing dramatically as new media forms such as the internet have become
more and more common in our lives. Not only has the style of advertising
itself changed, but the process of creating advertisements has also been
affected and adjusted so that each advertisement can target and influence
wider audiences. Methods where consumers were once segmented according to sex
or age or position in society no longer can reflect the infinitely variable
consumer values and needs in today's society accurately, as they once could
for example, in the postwar era. This change in people's values is partly due
to the fact that more cultures are interacting with each other than in the
past, thus influencing and widening the range of people's sense of values.
This change has made it necessary for advertising firms and manufacturing
industries to target a much wider range of consumers when planning
advertisements.
In my research, I will examine the relationship between advertisement
effectiveness and personality traits, first by studying the different
personality-types. Second, I will take into view how the differently the
advertisements appeal to consumers of different personality types, thus
influencing their purchasing intentions. From the results gained from this
study, I will attempt to introduce and establish a new method for measuring
advertisement effectiveness that includes aspects. Furthermore, the main goal
of this thesis will be to establish a new style of advertising more adapted
and suited to the human cognitive system, than the advertising styles that
are frequently used today.
2. Theoretical Background
2-1. Advertisement Effectiveness
In a time when consumer needs and values are changing greatly, it has become
necessary and more important than in the past for advertising agencies to
take into consideration advertisement effectiveness as one of the key
elements when planning advertisements. Advertisement effectiveness includes
the views and influences consumers gain from seeing advertisements and in
nearly every advertising agency, the effects of advertisements are measured
through questionnaires and eye movement pattern analyses as a means of
gaining feedback. Consumer behaviour is also a critical factor in marketing
and this also is another field where advertising firms bring in their efforts.
As a key researcher in Japan, Kobayashi (1991) has analyzed the advertisement
effectiveness measuring methods of Japanese advertising agencies, and based
on his research, has written a handbook on the topic. In the book the author
writes that when measuring advertisement effectiveness, generally, two types
of effectiveness should be considered; the actual effect the advertisement
has on sales figures, and the communication ability of each advertisement.
Many studies, especially in advertising agencies, have been conducted where
the communication effectiveness of advertisements have been analyzed, and
from such analysis results and from the vast experience that such agencies
have, nearly every firm has developed their own unique method for measuring
the effectiveness of advertisements. However, here lies one of the problems
in the advertising world. It has often been pointed out that as each company
has a different system of measuring advertisement effectiveness that is based
on standards and parameters that differ according to each company,
advertisements cannot be compared to one another with relative ease. This
also means that although advertisement agencies may conduct experiments based
on their own creative work, other agencies' advertisements may not be
included in experimental work. Another problem lies also in the fact that not
all of the details of each company's system are disclosed to the outside;
thus we can only guess from the framework as to what types of statistics and
steps are required in the system.
2-2. Measuring Advertisement Effectiveness
As a means of measuring advertisement effectiveness, many studies have also
been conducted to show how consumers actually interpret the visual
information in advertisements. In Phillips (1997), a study has been done to
show exactly "how consumers interpret complex visual images in advertising"
(p.77). A distinctive characteristic of this research is that the
advertisement's actual producers and creators interpretations are also
included as part of the study to show that may show "similarity or
differences about the interpretation process" (p.77). In this study,
advertisements that display pictorial metaphors are selected as stimuli and
the results of a questionnaire are analyzed that were answered by a body of
students on what they perceived from the advertisement and how they
interpreted the metaphor. For example, one of the pictorial metaphors shown
in the experiment was an advertisement of a fabric softener where a picture
of a cacti with its sharp pricks is on the right hand of the advertisement.
On the left hand side is a picture of the same cacti except that it's
prickles are no longer there leaving the cactus looking smooth. In the corner
of the cacti on the right is a small picture of a bottle of fabric softener,
the message being portrayed here is that using this fabric softener will
leave your clothes soft, not uncomfortable like the cacti with it's prickles.
In the results, the interpretations differed from each person accordingly,
and both weak and strong implicatures are found. Advertisements with strong
implicatures managed to withdraw the same message from a majority of the
experimental subject body, whereas advertisements with weak implicatures were
interpreted in a variety of ways, thus showing that consumers can at times
find the intended messages of metaphorical advertisements difficult to
interpret correctly. The study also focuses on the actual interpretation
process and shows that when one sees a pictorial metaphor in an
advertisement, one will interpret the advertisement not only on the basis of
the visual imagery the advertisement uses, but also prior common knowledge
also takes a part in the process of extracting a message from such
advertisements. For example, when students were shown the advertisement of
the fabric softener with pictures of two cactus, they knew from previous
experiences and common knowledge that the two pictures of the cactus were
there to be compared and that the message could be withdrawn by comparing the
two pictures and looking at the difference between the two.
2-3. Consumer Behaviour
Consumer behaviour also is an important factor when planning advertisements.
Generally, consumers are divided into groups that reflect their need and
values but studies have shown that there are numerous ways of segmenting
consumers in marketing. In recent studies, categorizing consumers from
psychological aspects has proved to be a valid method for classifying
consumers into groups. In those studies, researchers have tried to make clear
the relationship between the impressions and influences people gain from
advertisements by studying consumers from a personality traits basis.
Research also has been conducted focusing on the relationship between
consumer personalities and responses to visual information (Labarbera,
Weingard and Yorkston, 1998). In LaBarbera, Weingard and Yorkston's research,
consumer personalities are grouped by applying Jung's "personality type
theory" method. In this study, consumers' individual differences were
classified according to the "descriptive dimensions" of Sensing and
Intuiting. In LaBarbera's research, two advertisements were made for each
product of a fictious brand, one with a sensor-type suiting image and the
other with intuitive-type imagery. The imagery for this experiment were
chosen as a result of a pre-test where 24 visual images that more of less
fitted into either of the two personality-types were chosen by advertisement
agency staff with at least several years experiment. In the pre-test,
experiment subjects were asked to look at the imagery and mark on a
seven-point scale their overall evaluation of advertisement, the image appeal
of the advertisement, and their purchase intentions. At the same time,
subjects were asked to select from a list of vocabulary, words that described
the image. As a result of the main-test, LaBarbera found that when consumers
were divided into the sensor and intuitive types, sensor-type consumers
preferred advertisements with sensor-images, and intuitive people preferred
advertisements with intuitive images. The test results showed that
advertisements with images that reflected their personality-traits were
evaluated more highly than advertisements that did not reflect their
congruent personality types, thus LaBarbera concluded that considering
advertisement images through personality traits could produce a "considerable
difference in image appeal" of customers, and boost the advertisement
evaluation, thus enhancing the advertisement effectiveness. As an overall
result, this study shows that "personality-type preference information is
useful in understanding and predicting how consumers may interpret and
respond to advertising messages" (p.29).
Although previous research has shown that psychological personality-traits
are key elements that can help advertisers anticipate the kinds of reactions
that will be perceived from certain types of consumers when they are shown
particular advertising imagery, rarely has advertising been looked at from a
psychological and also from a more scientific aspect of visual information
perception at the same time. My research will combine these perspectives.
3. Reference List
Foxall, Gordon R., Goldsmith, Ronald E. (1983),
"Personality and Consumer Research; Another Look,"
Journal of the Market Research Society 30 (2) 111-125
LaBarbera, Priscilla A., Peter Weingard, and Eric A. Yorkston (1998),
"Matching the Message to the Mind: Advertising Imagery and Consumer
Processing Styles," Journal of Advertising Research 38 (5), 29-43.
Lohse, Gerald L. (1997), "Consumer Eye Movement Patterns on Yellow Pages
Advertising," Journal of Advertising 26 (1), 61-73.
Philips, Barbara J. (1997), "Thinking Into It: Consumer Interpretation of
Complex Advertising Images," The Journal of Advertising, 26 (2), 77-87.
Kobayashi, Tasaburo (1991), 新・広告効果測定ハンドブック 実践編 (The New
Advertisement Effectiveness Measuring Handbook Practice Version), Japan:
日本能率協会総合研究所
Kobayashi, Tasaburo (1991), 新・広告効果測定ハンドブック 理論編 (The New Advertisement
Effectiveness Measuring Handbook Theory Version), Japan: 日本能率協会総合研究所
akiko kawase akko@sfc.keio.ac.jp