What the Blind Eye Sees: Incidental Change Detection as a Source of Perceptual Fluency

Abstract

As competition for consumer attention continues to increase, marketers must depend in part on effects from advertising exposure that result from less deliberate processing. One such effect is processing fluency. Building on the change detection literature, this research brings a dynamic perspective to fluency research. Three experiments demonstrate that brand logos and product depictions capture greater fluency when they change location in an advertisement from one exposure to the ad to the next. As a consequence, logo preference and brand choice are enhanced. Evidence shows that spontaneous detection of the location change instigates this process and that change detection is incidental in nature; participants in all three experiments were unable to accurately report which brand logos or product depictions changed location across ad exposures. These findings suggest that subtle changes to ad design across repeated exposures can facilitate variables of import to marketers, even when processing is minimal.

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