Journal of Marketing Management

ISSN: 0267-257X (Print) 1472-1376 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjmm20

Is consumer psychology research ready for today’s

attention economy?

Jenni Romaniuk & Cathy Nguyen

To cite this article: Jenni Romaniuk & Cathy Nguyen (2017): Is consumer psychology
research ready for today’s attention economy?, Journal of Marketing Management, DOI:
10.1080/0267257X.2017.1305706

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2017.1305706

Published online: 31 Mar 2017.

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Download by: [University of Newcastle, Australia] Date: 31 March 2017, At: 07:39
JOURNAL OF MARKETING MANAGEMENT, 2017
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2017.1305706

COMMENTARY

Is consumer psychology research ready for today’s attention

economy?
Jenni Romaniuk and Cathy Nguyen
Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, University of South Australia Business School, Adelaide,
Australia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Attention has become an area of major interest in marketing Consumer psychology;
research as a dependent or moderating variable. In this article, research methods; attention
we argue for respondent attention as a pivotal part of any con-
sumer psychology research protocol and highlight the risks of not
incorporating realistic attention components into research design.
We propose four areas where this approach can help the external
validity of consumer psychology research. Our recommendations
include accounting for variability in the baseline attention levels;
smart use of distractions; allowing for variability in attention over
the task and avoiding attention leading/assumptive questions.

Introduction
A constant challenge for marketers is dealing with today’s fractured, almost broken,
attention economy. The advent of portable, personal technology in the form of mobile
phones, tablets and other entertainment devices means that consumers are constantly
switching their attention from one item to another. Further, advances in neuroscience
tell us that the efficacy of multitasking is a myth, and that human conscious attention
can only focus on one item at a time. Switching attention between stimuli comes at a
substantive attention cost for consumers, thereby affecting the impact of much of the
stimuli encountered. Consumers’ state of distraction creates an ever-increasing gap
between how they experience the real world versus the experimental one that is
often crafted by consumer psychologists.
We argue that unless researchers start factoring transient, variable attention into their
research design, experiment protocols, questioning approaches and interpretation of
results, consumer psychology risks becoming marginalised in its efforts to explain or be
relevant in the real world. In this piece, we highlight the areas where attention deserves
more attention, as well as the risks of ignoring this piece of the consumer research
puzzle. Finally, we present some ideas to incorporate variable attention components
into research design, to help increase the value of consumer psychology research for
marketers in today’s attention economy.

CONTACT Jenni Romaniuk Jenni.Romaniuk@marketingscience.info Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing

Science, University of South Australia Business School, Adelaide, Australia
© 2017 Westburn Publishers Ltd.
2 J. ROMANIUK AND C. NGUYEN

Why attention matters

Consumer attention is a rare, but valuable resource. The evidence that human attention
directly and indirectly influences consumer behaviour pervades various streams of
marketing research. For example, Janiszewski, Kuo, and Tavassoli (2013) find that
selective attention impacts subsequent product preference (e.g. repeatedly locating a
given product on screen increases its choice probability in subsequent preference tasks).
Similarly, in-store eye movements, which are neurological measures of visual attention,
are correlated with brand consideration (e.g. see Pieters & Warlop, 1999). Attention is
also an indicator of shoppers’ purchase considerations and decisions, particularly at the
point-of-purchase (Chandon, Hutchinson, Bradlow, & Young, 2009). However, if attention
is interrupted, then inadequate/incorrect experiences can be retained (e.g. see Cowley’s,
2006, research into the processing of advertising puffery). Therefore, if audience
attention to marketing stimuli is not adequate, then that stimuli will fail to (fully)
impact memory, attitudes or behaviour.
Attention does not have to be conscious, with effects at subconscious levels also
reported (such as in Heath & Nairn, 2005; Zajonc, 1968). This low attention research
stream highlights that stimuli could affect the consumer without conscious awareness,
and these effects can be measured. Attention, therefore, deserves recognition due to its
direct and indirect influence on consumer behaviour and should be a vital consideration
in any piece of consumer psychology research that wants to be relevant outside the
laboratory setting.

The currency of attention

From a biological perspective, attention ‘… signifies that the stimulus has made contact
with a sense organ, such as the central nervous system’ (Rossiter & Percy, 1987, p. 197).
Attention is relevant in any environment that involves the absorption and processing of
content – whether the recipient be in media, advertising, retailing or post-purchase
consumption environments. However, attention, once captured, rarely lasts. This is an
issue for marketers and researchers.
The idea of limited attention is not new. Its roots go back at least as far back as
George Miller’s (1956) reference to the limited capacity of working memory (seven items,
plus or minus two). Parallel to this is Herbert Simon’s (1955) work on satisficing, which is
underpinned by the idea that consumers do not want to give the attention required to
process, in full, the information required to make maximised decisions. Combined, this
work reminds us that consumers cannot and do not want to pay full attention.
Inattention is the norm, rather than the exception, for consumers as they go about
their daily lives.
In recent times, attention challenges have become even more apparent as personal,
portable media devices now provide the consumer with further means of distraction in
any environment. A study by Deloitte (2015) found that 60% of U.S. consumers with a
mobile phone reported using it while watching television, rising to over 70% among 18–
34-year-olds, while 92% reported using their phone while out shopping. Previously
when a consumer did not pay full attention to the laundry detergent brand bought, it
was attributed to the category being ‘low involvement’ – that is, not interesting enough
 JOURNAL OF MARKETING MANAGEMENT 3

to attract and hold attention. Now a consumer might reach for that laundry detergent
while talking on the phone, listening to a podcast (quite dexterously) or updating their
social media feed. The impact of an individual’s contextual situation could now
supersede any personal category interest; potentially rendering category and
consumer factors as secondary, and with it many of our theoretical models.
Given the rapid change in technology raises many questions about how people
spend their time and the nature of social interactions; it is unsurprising that attention
has, well, gained more attention. Recent studies claim that the attention span of humans
is now around 8 s, 1 s less than the apocryphal goldfish (Microsoft Canada, 2015). While
there might be squabbling over 8-, 10- or 20-s attention spans, these times are all much
lower than the length of the average consumer psychology study. This means that
without considering attention variability, a consumer study design risks being too
removed from reality to provide robust, generalisable results. Think about the last
time you, in your personal life, fully concentrated on one task for 20 min. How does
that compare to the expectations you have for your research subjects?
In the first wave of personal device adoption, it was thought (hoped?) that the human
brain would adapt to this influx of technology and this would herald a new era of
efficiency and productivity. However, advances in neuroscience, particularly in brain
imaging, have dismissed the notion of multitasking (e.g. see Charron & Koechlin,
2010). The idea that an individual can watch TV while playing on their mobile phone
and fully process both tasks is a myth. The brain can only attend to one item at a time
(and even still it sometimes struggles), and so if two stimuli compete, attention switches
back and forth between the two. However, while our brain has not changed, our
behaviour has. Switching attention between stimuli is now commonplace but the
switch is not instantaneous – each switch comes at a cognitive cost (Kahneman,
1973). This leads to the challenge of gaining attention, and having influence on
consumers in the face of constant distraction/task switching. Rather than try to
change consumers, we need to improve our capacity to work with the natural variable
attention state where most consumers operate.
There are (at least) three layers of competition for attention to consider in the consumer
behaviour/marketing world. First, marketing stimuli must generally compete for consumer
attention with the consumers’ internal and external environment. This can range from other
cars on the road, companions chatting, a bird flying through the sky, to internal ruminations
on a difficult conversation, what to have to dinner or whether to call that cute boy/girl.
Second, marketing stimuli for one brand often has to compete with marketing stimuli
for other brands, such as on shelf in a supermarket, in a mall or on the screen of an
e-commerce store. Attention to the brand cannot be separated from the context. This is
where the role of visual brand identity and salience in context can help or hinder
noticing, and something noticeable in one context might fade into the background in
another. The effect of a brand’s stimuli in an isolated environment is of little value unless
it can be extrapolated to multiple competitive contexts.
Then within each touchpoint is the third layer of attention competition. This involves the
specific components of marketing stimuli, such as the brand name, message, packaging
claims or devices designed to generate a response. These items fight for attention, for
example, the brand name competing with a celebrity, referred to as the Vampire Effect (such
as in Erfgen, Zenker, & Sattler, 2015), a health message competing with the National Heart
4 J. ROMANIUK AND C. NGUYEN

Foundation’s tick of approval, or a for-profit brand competing with a not-for-profit brand in

an advertisement. For example, a study by Van Meurs and Aristoff (2009) found that large
amounts of information presented on a billboard, whether it be text or a large number of
different elements, distracts attention away from the brand. Similarly, Schmidt and
Hitchon’s (1999) work shows that the inclusion of a social issue within a print ad inhibits
other information about the brand being remembered. Such studies demonstrate that
consumers are easily distracted and do not process all elements equally within any
marketing stimuli. Therefore, artificially created stimuli or measurement approaches that
assume equally distributed attention or that the target stimulus is the most attended to
create the potential for misleading results and theoretical models.
These three layers of attention competition can divert consumers from fully
processing any specific stimuli, thereby reducing its efficacy. Further, the potential for
individual level volatility of distraction means greater variability in individual effect sizes.
This added layer of complexity calls into question the generalisability of effect sizes, as
the average in a laboratory setting is highly likely to be atypical. It could be argued that
the focus in experiments is on relative, rather than absolute, effect sizes. This might solve
the overall effect size issue, but not the variability question.

Understanding attention
To explain attention variability and how it can be incorporated into consumer
psychology research design, we briefly draw on a couple of models of attention. For
visual attention, models compare two main processes: goal-directed (i.e. ‘top-down’)
where people seek out information or cues versus stimulus-driven (i.e. ‘bottom-up’)
processes that rely on salient elements to grab and direct attention (Kinchla & Wolfe,
1979). People alternate between these two processes. Humans can train their attention
based on prior knowledge, but attention is still dependent on the salient nature of the
stimulus itself and its cognitive competition (Treisman & Gelade, 1980).
Attention selection also is neither a random process nor a directed process – it is a mix of
the two. In line with Broadbent’s (1958) Limited Cognitive Capacity Theory, there are limits
and filters that influence the focus of attention. That is, individuals do not have to
experience multiple, linear stages of attention to process stimuli but jump around to suit
the situation and the nature of stimuli (see also Treisman & Gelade, 1980). Telling someone
to attend to something (i.e. goal-directed) does not preclude distraction. Attention is
difficult to manipulate/control, even in a laboratory setting – and even if you can create
the perfect attention environment, this would bear no resemblance to any consumer
experience. Further, if an effect needs such a controlled attention environment to be
observed, then how relevant can it be to someone operating in today’s cluttered, messy,
distracted world? These are all questions that researchers in general need to answer, but we
feel are particularly relevant to consumer psychology research.

The variability of attention

While attention is an important precursor to thoughts, feelings and behaviour, it has
always been difficult for marketers to command the attention of their audience and,
subsequently, influence consumers. Today’s information and platform-rich society
 JOURNAL OF MARKETING MANAGEMENT 5

exacerbates this challenge. The arrival of digital technology and social media has created
an explosion of media alternatives across the online and mobile space, as well as
expanded what can be offered via traditional media such as TV, radio and outdoor.
We continue to see evidence of consumers’ lack of attention to marketing
communications. A historical meta-analysis of studies on what people do during ad-
breaks reveals that only one-third of television viewers actively watch the
advertisements (Paech, Riebe, & Sharp, 2003). However, even when watching a single
15-s advertisement, consumers fail to pay full attention for that 15 s, in research as well
as in real life (e.g. see Teixeira, Wedel, & Pieters, 2010). In Pieters and Wedel’s (2004) work
where people are seated and asked to look at a magazine in a laboratory setting, on
average, each magazine advertisement receives just 1.73 s of attention. The online
environment faces similar challenges when it comes to capturing audiences’ attention,
for example, Dréze and Hussherr (2003) show that around half of online banner
advertisements receive no visual attention at all. Therefore, models of consumer
behaviour/effectiveness of marketing stimuli that assume or require full consumer
attention are highly likely to be misrepresenting the consumer experience.
The typical consumer is exposed to many advertisements per day, of which few are
consciously attended. Consumers have no desire to process every bit of marketing
communication they encounter, which means that most marketing directed at
influencing consumers’ thoughts, feelings or actions is transmitted to a largely
disinterested audience when there are other more interesting stimuli to grab their
attention. As a result, most marketing relies on stimulus-driven processing, whereby it
must compete for the attention of consumers, rather than consumers seeking it out.
There are the isolated occasions where a consumer will seek out or pay greater attention
to marketing, for example, if they are ‘in the category’ to buy (e.g. someone in the
market to sell a house and therefore may notice and pay attention to ads for real estate
agents). However, outside such occasions, consumers, as humans, possess, at best,
transient and variable attention. Therefore, we believe that for consumer research to
have the necessary external validity to survive outside laboratory conditions, thereby
making a sustainable contribution to marketing theory, the effect of attention and
inattention variability needs to be incorporated.

Paying attention in research

While many papers investigate the topic of attention itself, the role of attention in the
research process is rarely considered. Our review of published consumer psychology
research reveals the small-scale laboratory experiment is still the go-to method where
people are read scenarios, told to imagine situations or given fake stimuli created with
fictitious brands. We appreciate the internal validity advantages of such approaches, but
question the long-term cost to relevant knowledge development.
We now highlight four areas where taking into account realistic attention levels/
consistency could help the relevance of consumer psychology research. These examples
are designed to stimulate researchers to think about how to improve the external
validity of the research at hand. We recognise it will be difficult to address many of
these, but we encourage any efforts that can be made. In the interest of prioritising
newer aspects of this article, we will not address the well-trodden limitations of student
6 J. ROMANIUK AND C. NGUYEN

samples and classroom/laboratory settings (e.g. see Jones & Sonner, 2001); these are
very important and the continued reliance on these protocols does hamper the external
validity of consumer psychology research. However, our aim in this article is to focus on
some less often considered areas of the research process. These are accepting variability
in the baseline attention levels; understanding the role of distractions; allowing for
variability in attention over the task and minimising attention leading/assumptive
questions.
Attention baselines – people enter a room with a head full of thoughts, some more
meaningful, persistent and distracting than others. Instead of standardising initial
attention, perhaps a more realistic approach is to accept normal variation in attention
point of entry, and include this as a design/analysis factor. Capturing this normal
variation also helps to understand how a stimulus might impact people at different
baseline levels. For example, a stimulus might have a different effect on someone fully
attentive compared to someone distracted by the internal thoughts in their busy mind.
Studies that ask people to imagine a scenario or learn/rehearse something to use later
are prone to this unrealistic attention homogeneity. We appreciate that homogeneity of
starting points is efficient research-wise, as it is easier to isolate changes amongst a
treatment group – but the external validity cost of this homogeneity is great in today’s
fractured attention world, and the potential cost is research irrelevance.
The role of environmental distractions – rather than trying to control the environment,
allowing the subject to have and make use of natural distractions can allow attention
rhythms during the task to better reflect normality. While full attention is useful to
ensure an individual remembers the steps to follow the protocol, allowing them to
switch between tasks and try attending to two things at the same time better reflects
real life. Indeed, if conducting research with teenagers, one of the most distracting
actions you can take is to remove their mobile phone, as the thought of missing out on
what might be happening online is all-consuming! Deloitte in their 2015 study found
that 18–24-year-olds check their phones on average 74 times per day, while recent
research by The Nielsen Company (2017) shows Generation X are actually more
obsessed with social media than Millennials. Incorporating distractions by allowing
respondents to access their devices, as they feel inclined, might help, rather than
hinder, the research.
Allowing for variable attention throughout the task – most experiments involve a series
of steps that all fit together to test the issue at hand. Given the short length of typical
attention spans, expecting a participant to pay full attention for 20 or 30 min is
unrealistic unless someone is in a deep sense of flow, such as when playing a video
game. Sadly, most psychological experiments are not so engaging. Dissecting the data
collection process and research design might help to identify opportunities to better
capture or replicate the natural variability of attention.
Minimise attention leading/assumptive questions – it is easy to assume that because
someone is instructed to pay attention, and all environmental distractions are
removed, that the person will notice what you wanted them to notice. This
assumption can then influence question framing, in particular those pertaining to
affect/attitudes/intentions. Not taking attention for granted means designing the
question structure and wording to more capture possible encoding failures and not
prime the desired retrieval. It can be helpful to review questions and check if each
 JOURNAL OF MARKETING MANAGEMENT 7

piece of information provided in the question is essential. For example, if the

question involves showing respondents the brand name and the advertisement, to
test the effect of a manipulation of a message style on preference, ask yourself if the
brand name is needed when capturing effects. The brand name is unlikely to help
retrieval compared to the more visually rich image of the advertisement, but it might
introduce the confounding effects of either liking the brand (if a real brand) or liking
the word (if a fictitious brand) that unduly influence effect readings. Removing the
brand name minimises this risk. Another simple adaption is to allow for ‘don’t know’
as a viable response, so the respondent is not forced to give a response they do not
have (for an example of the effect this has on Likert scales for brand personality
perceptions, see Romaniuk, 2008).
We are sure that, with further attention to the topic (pun intended), others can expand
upon this list, and we welcome further suggestions. Our aim is to stimulate discussion on
this issue, to help get consumer psychology research on the path of robustness and
relevance for marketing research and practice in today’s attention economy.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Jenni Romaniuk is Research Professor and International Director at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.
Her research has been published internationally in a wide range of marketing journals including
Marketing Letters, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Business Research, European Journal of
Marketing, and International Marketing Management. Her expertise covers Brand equity metrics,
Mental Availability, Distinctive assets, Advertising Effectiveness, and Word of Mouth.
Cathy Nguyen is a Lecturer in Marketing at the University of South Australia’s Business School and
a Senior Research Associate at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. Cathy’s research focus is on
Advertising Effectiveness and Co-branding. Her interests also include Cause-related/Charity
marketing and Word of mouth behaviour and measurement. She has presented her research to
industry and academic audiences throughout Australia, Asia, Europe and North America.

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