| Advertising images have received little attention in advertising research, and when they are studied, they are often conceptualized as mere peripheral cues. This dissertation tests a new conceptualization that characterizes complex advertising images as figures of rhetoric from which consumers infer advertising messages. It examines how consumers interpret pictorial metaphors in ads, and how the verbal copy that is paired with these images impacts consumer response, using both qualitative and quantitative methods.; Results of the qualitative study, where informants drew inferences from six pictorial metaphor ads, support the conceptualization of advertising images as sources of information. Informants easily drew both shared, primary inferences, and multiple, secondary inferences solely from the images in these ads. Informant responses also provided insight into the inference process, illustrating how cultural, product, and advertising knowledge helps consumers to draw inferences and receive pleasure from interpreting images.; Two experiments examined how varying levels of verbal anchoring influence consumer response to pictorial metaphors. The experimental results generally support the proposition that the role of advertising copy is to make explicit the desired meanings of the complex images used in ads, and that advertising copy focuses the meanings attributed to an ad's images. Contrary to expectations, however, it appears that pictorial metaphor ads with copy that explicitly repeats the message conveyed in the ad's images leads to a more favorable consumer response than ads with no verbal copy. The reason for this appears to be that verbal anchoring increases comprehension, which increases liking for the ad and the brand, acceptance of the ad, and purchase intention. |
