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ABSTRACT
Marketers use autobiographical advertising as a means to create nostalgia for their products. This research explores whether such referencing can cause people to believe that they had experiences as children that are mentioned in the ads. In Experiment 1, participants viewed an ad for Disney that suggested that they shook hands with Mickey Mouse as a child. Relative to controls, the ad increased their confidence that they personally had shaken hands with Mickey as a child at a Disney resort. The increased confidence could be due to a revival of a true memory or the creation of a new, false one. In Experiment 2, participants viewed an ad for Disney that suggested that they shook hands with an impossible character (e.g., Bugs Bunny). Again, relative to controls, the ad increased confidence that they personally had shaken hands with the impossible character as a child at a Disney resort. The increased confidence is consistent with the notion that autobiographical referencing can lead to the creation of false or distorted memory. (c) 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Advertisers play off consumers' memories and emotions through the use of autobiographical referencing. The use of such referencing can cause consumers to focus less on rational product information and more on the feelings evoked by their recollected memories (Sujan, Bettman, & Baumgartner, 1993). Increasingly, marketers are using this technique to appeal to Baby Boomers where these past images represent lasting expressions of freedom and youth (Marconi, 1996). For example, Walt Disney celebrated the 25th anniversary of Disney World in Orlando with an advertising campaign entitled "Remember the Magic." The ads resembled vintage home movies and featured scenes of people swimming, meeting Mickey Mouse, and enjoying themselves on the theme park's exciting rides. The campaign's aim may have been to remind consumers of their own past happy childhood memories of the parkin order to get them to revisit.
But what if such referencing could change what consumers remember about their childhood memories of visiting the park? Not all consumers have had happy experiences at Disney nor do they all have the ability to accurately conjure up those childhood images at will. Because consumers may use the advertising as a cue to recollect their past experience, there is the...
