J BUSN RES 1990:20:263-277 263 Delayed Effects of Advertising Moderated by Involvement RussellN. Laczniak Iowa State University Darrel D. Muehling” Washington State University The moderating effect of message involvement was examined for two determinants of brand attitudes (attitudetoward the ad [Aad] and brand beliefs) measured immediately after and 1 week following ad exposure. Findings indicated that,under high-involvement conditions, both brand beliefs and Aad were relatively enduring over time. In low-involvement conditions, Aad, but not beliefs, remained relatively stableover time. Irrespective of involvement conditions, immediate measures of Aad were significantly correlated with delayed measures of brand attitude, whereas immediate beliefs weresignificantly related to brand attitude only in high-involve- mentconditions. Introduction Recent theoretical advances and empirical support have established the importance of both centraland peripheral cues in thebrand attitude formationprocess. It appears that when message involvement levels are relatively low (i.e., when in- dividuals are not motivated to process the ad’s information for purposes of eval- uating the advertised brand), peripheral cues (often dealing with some aspect of the executional features of the ad) serve as a dominant sourceof influence on brand attitudes (Petty and Cacioppo, 1981). When levels of involvement are higher, however,both central(message-based) and peripheral cues appearto influence brandattitudes (Gardner, 1985). Empirical studies of advertising’s influence on brand attitudes have generally used attitude-toward-the-ad (Aad) [a predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner to an ad stimulus (Lutz, 1985)], and brand-related beliefs(the subjective probabilities individuals assign to the likelihood of a brand possessing particular attributes (Ajzen and Fishbein,1980)as indicators of pe- *Address correspondenceto Russell N. Laczniak, Iowa State University, 300 Carver Hall, Ames, IA 50011 Journal of Business Research 20,263-277 (1990) 0 1990 Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc. 0148-2963/90/$3.50 655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010