Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion, is a summary of a current article from the Platt Retail Institute's Journal of Retail Analytics.
In-store, or point of purchase (POP), advertising helps trigger memory recall, effectively introduces new products, promotes sale items and educates consumers. Yet with the average person facing approximately 3,000 marketing messages each day, it appears as though marketers' solution to advertising avoidance is increasing the number of ads. This results in a high degree of advertising clutter.
In analyzing magazines, Dr. Louisa Ha, chairman
of the Department of Telecommunications and an associate professor at Bowling
Green State University, identified three separate dimensions of advertising
clutter:
- Quantity: The number of ads as well as the percentage of space taken by the ad(s) compared to non-advertising content in a particular media vehicle.
- Competitiveness: The extent to which the advertised products are alike and the proximity between ads for competing brands.
- Intrusiveness: The degree to which advertisements in a media vehicle
interrupt the flow of editorial unit.
At the store level, advertising, particularly when perceived as excessive, can result in diminishing returns due to several factors. First of all, advertising clutter can cause negative attitudes in consumers, such as skepticism or decreased likability. Second, as individuals are unable to pay attention to all messages to which they are exposed, clutter results in avoidance of advertising messages. The third point concerns the fact that high levels of clutter are demonstrated to decrease brand recognition. Another problem is decreased consumer attention. Finally, research suggests high clutter generates confusion.
It is evident that in-store advertising plays a crucial role in reinforcing a brand message. However, a high degree of clutter can lessen the effectiveness of in-store advertising. For this reason, retailers and marketers need a solution to help increase how each message impacts the consumer. An integrated in-store communication strategy may help to ensure optimum consumer impact. The issue of advertising clutter has been studied in mass media environments. However, interestingly, there is not much research on clutter in a retail environment. At this point, we can only assume that in-store clutter tends to have an effect on advertising effectiveness similar to mass media clutter. This topic certainly presents an interesting avenue for future research.