During the 2000 Super Bowl, ABC invited viewers to visit its Enhanced TV Web site. Fans could play trivia, see replays, participate in polls and chat rooms, and view player statistics. The site received an estimated one million hits. Why? Frame your answer in terms of exposure, attention, and comprehension.
This question goes a step further than the previous one and requires students to follow the consumer from first exposure to the consumption decision. The Super Bowl is often the most watched television event of the year. As a result, it is an excellent opportunity for marketers to maximize accidental exposure to their products and services. Certainly, most truly devoted football fans (the group most likely to be intrigued by the activities offered on the Web site) were watching the Super Bowl that Sunday. To promote the Web site during the game was therefore an ideal opportunity to maximize accidental exposure.
Because the Super Bowl is such a major event, most viewers (especially the die-hard fans) were watching with a relatively high level of focal attention. One of the primary reasons ABC’s promos were so successful in attracting traffic is that they were at least somewhat situationally self-relevant to everyone who saw them. If you didn’t care at all about football, you wouldn’t have been watching the game. The intrinsic self-relevance of the Web site was very strong for those serious fans who wanted to know even more about the game they were watching, or debate the play-calling and the relative merits of the teams with fans around the world. Those fans who visited the Web site felt a high level of involvement with the game, and thus the situational and intrinsic self-relevance of the promos was fairly high.
That high involvement also affected viewers’ motivation to comprehend the message. Many football fans associated the Web site promos with personally relevant values and consequences. Fans’ level of football knowledge might have also played a role in their decision to visit the sight. Perhaps some die-hard fans weren’t satisfied with the level of analysis or the amount of background information presented during the broadcast, and thus they responded when they saw the kinds of things they could do and see on the Web site. These consumers might have also drawn an inference from the promos that while the telecast was for everyone, the “real fans” should go to the Web site to get the inside scoop. More serious fans probably associated deeper, more abstract meanings with the site, and this comprehended the promos at a deeper level than the more casual fan.
3. Think about your own web surfing patterns. Write down all the reasons you visit the sites you visit? Which of the marketing strategies discussed in the case do you find most (and least) influential?
This is a question that asks students to analyze their own behavior to determine the reasons behind their own decisions. Students can learn about sites from a variety of sources—traditional media advertising, banner ads, event sponsorships, search engines, or word of mouth. Try to get students to pinpoint which kind of exposure is most influential for them, and why.
4. Many on-line firms are competing in cyberspace with companies that al