Assessing the Impact of Ad Characteristics on Consumer Behavior and Electrodermal Activity

The use of mobile, low-cost, and wearable sensors to measure physiological activity, continuously and non-intrusively during everyday tasks has the potential to improve our understanding of human perception, cognition, and behavior at large. One applied field with the practical use of such expansive assessment is consumer neuroergonomics. In this study, we demonstrated the use of ultramobile battery operated and wireless electrodermal activity (EDA) sensors to estimate emotional arousal during the viewing of various out-of-house, printed, and e-mail advertisements of law-firm services. A total of 33 participants’ EDA data and self-reported questionnaires were analyzed to assess the impact of different ad types on consumers in terms of their age, gender and prior experience with firms (client vs. non-client). EDA results confirmed as expected that e-mail ads were the least engaging to all participants. Furthermore, participants were engaged significantly less on ads that they are already familiar with, that is existing customers. Results indicate that the use of accessible and low-cost sensors like EDA could be widely deployed to enhance our understanding of customer behavior in order to optimize ad development and delivery.