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Destination advertising
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Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 7–24, 2006 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain 0160-7383/$32.00
doi:10.1016/j.annals.2005.07.002
DESTINATION ADVERTISING Age and Format Effects on Memory Kelly J. MacKay Malcolm C. Smith University of Manitoba, Canada Abstract: As older adult tourism markets continue to grow in size and importance, it is imperative to understand how they respond to destination advertising. In two experimental studies, age-related differences in memory for advertising were examined using text and framed (labeled) picture formats. With education and destination familiarity statistically controlled, results using text indicated age differences in favor of younger adults for the number of features recalled but not for elaborations. No memory differences were found using framed picture formats, suggesting that younger and older adults process information from pictures similarly. Follow-up analyses revealed that advertising format is a determinant of elaborative memory, while age is not. Keywords: age, memory, advertising format. 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ´ mesure Re´sume´: Promotion des destinations: effets d’aˆge et de format sur la me´moire. A que les marche´s du tourisme pour adultes plus aˆge´s croissent en importance, il faut comprendre leur re´ponse a` la promotion des destinations. Dans deux expe´riences, on a examine´ les diffe´rences de me´moire selon l’aˆge pour les formats publicitaires de texte et d’images encadre´es (e´tiquete´es). Utilisant des cas te´moins pour l’e´ducation et la familiarite´ avec la destination, on a trouve´ que les jeunes adultes se rappelaient plus de caracte´ristiques, mais il n’y avait aucune diffe´rence pour les e´laborations. On n’a trouve´ aucune diffe´rence de me´moire pour les formats d’image, ce qui sugge`re que les jeunes adultes et les plus aˆge´s assimilent l’information des images de fac¸on similaire. Selon des analyses comple´mentaires, le format serait un de´terminant de la me´moire e´laborative, tandis que l’aˆge ne le serait pas. Mots-cle´s: aˆge, me´moire, format publicitaire. 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION Memory is one of the most highly researched areas in gerontology. Yet, the literature provides an incomplete picture of how the aging memory system functions when everyday stimuli are cognitively processed (West and Sinnot 1992). This would include messages received via mass media (advertising), which could be verbal (aural or written) and/or visual in nature. The tourism industry is one whose messages are typically very visual (Dann 1996). In fact, over 75% of the content in most brochures is pictorial (Jenkins 1999). Today, much of this
Kelly MacKay, Professor of recreation studies at the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2, Canada. Email), holds a joint research appointment with Parks Canada. Her research interests include destination marketing and visuals. Malcolm Smith is Associate Professor of Marketing in the I.H. Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba. His main research interest is marketing and older adults. 7
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marketing is aimed at older adults, who for the past 20 years have been recognized as a major consumer growth market (Dann 2001; Day, Davis, Dove and French 1987/88; Lawson 1991; Shoemaker 2000). Currently in North America, and most of the Western world, approximately one-third of the population is 55 years of age or older (Muller and O’Cass 2001). Many of these adults are active tourists, as researchers continue to report that they travel farther, more frequently, stay longer at vacation destinations, and spend proportionately more of their income on tourism than younger adults (Baloglu and Shoemaker 2001; Fleischer and Pizam 2002; Huang and Tsai 2003; Rosenfeld 1986). In addition to the more traditional vacations associated with older adults (motorcoach tours), special interest tourism (nature and heritage) research indicates that they comprise a significant portion of those markets as well (Partridge and MacKay 1998; Wight 1996). These patterns, coupled with the demographic trends toward an older, healthier, and more affluent North American society (Zimmer, Brayley and Searle 1995), indicate current and future opportunities for destinations. The magnitude and importance of the senior tourist market in North America and other continents (Europe and Asia) should not be overlooked (Fleischer and Pizam 2002; Huang and Tsai 2003). Given the continued projected growth of this demographic segment (Lohmann and Danielsson 2001), understanding how to market effectively to older adults should increase in importance. Advertising is critical to destination marketing, thus, large amounts of time and money are invested in it (Manfredo, Bright and Haas 1992). Furthermore, photographs are considered paramount to destination advertising strategy as evidenced by their extensive use (Jenkins 1999). Pictures are an established means for inducing imagery (MacInnis and Price 1987), and for destinations that strive to produce memorable advertisements, pictures can affect tourists through the creation of expectations and the desire for image verification (Okoroafo 1989). Furthermore, Wicks and Schuett (1993) demonstrated that brochures are a key representation of the destination under consideration and are used for comparison shopping by potential tourists. Today, websites provide a prominent information channel for destination advertising (Govers and Go 2003). While there is a growing body of knowledge on segmentation of older tourists (Faranda and Schmidt 1999; Horneman, Carter, Wei and Ruys 2002; Zimmer et al 1995), there is limited research on understanding how they, when compared to their younger counterparts, process and remember pictorial destination advertising. Recently, however, Smith and MacKay (2001) studied such age-related differences. Older and younger adults in that study viewed pictures of unidentified destinations and, following a distracter task, were required to recall as much as they could about the picture content. For all dependent measures, no age differences in memory were found. Smith and Park (1990) reported similar findings for recognition of complex pictures. They found no evidence that such memory is worse for older than for younger subjects. One possible explanation for this finding is that both groups cognitively process complex pictures in the same manner
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and that age-related differences typically found with discourse or text as the stimulus, are domain specific. In order to understand the effects of format on memory, the purpose of this research was to examine agerelated differences in memory for tourism advertising using text and visual formats.
AGE, MEMORY AND ADVERTISING When one surveys the gerontology literature on age-related differences in memory, it becomes evident that two broad theoretical perspectives prevail. The first entails a deficit framework, which suggests that with increasing age comes a decline in cognitive abilities that very well might affect the efficiency of the learning process (including how much is remembered). That is, within the deficit view, it is assumed that mental performance peaks at the early adulthood stage of life and during the second half of the life span, mental performance gradually declines. This reduced memory capacity has been hypothesized to be linked with such causes as a biological slowing of the nervous system, a shrinking of working memory, or a decrease in general cognitive resources (Light 1991). Many studies in the aging literature have found that younger outperform older subjects when memorizing such stimuli as word lists, expository text, or narrative text (Light 1991, 1996). In most of these studies, the unit of measurement for memory is directly related to the literal, surface meaning of the text and researchers have found that younger adults consistently recall more than the other group (Hultsch and Dixon 1984, 1990). That is, the former remember more of the idea units actually contained in the text and these results are often interpreted in light of this deficit theoretical framework. A second theoretical perspective of cognitive aging in the gerontology literature views aging as a period where growth and decline can take place independent of each other (Labouvie-Vief 1985; LabouvieVief and Schell 1982). This is known as the lifespan cognitive developmental perspective. Adams (1988) claims that this lifespan perspective brings the potential for the development of a late-life cognitive style (the way a person prefers to organize and process information) in which there is a preference to go beyond surface-level analysis in favor of organizing experiences in terms of their structural relationships that connect objects, people, and events. This is a more holistic perspective in contrast to a literal and analytic cognitive style that seems to be characteristic of early adulthood. Support for this lifespan developmental viewpoint has been reported in the literature, especially when more than just memory for the literal/surface content of the ‘‘to-be-remembered’’ material is examined. For instance, when recalling a narrative text (one that tells a story), older adults tend to produce more elaborations than their younger counterparts (Gould, Trevithick and Dixon 1991), as well as more abstract themes and metaphors (Adams 1991). Additionally, older group’s summaries of stories tend to be deeper as well as more
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integrated and symbolic than those of their counterparts (Adams, Smith, Nyquist, and Perlmutter 1997). Research by Adams (1991) and Adams, Labouvie-Vief, Hobart, and Dorosz (1990) also suggests that older adults remember text in a more thematic fashion and their recall is more evaluative and elaborative in nature compared to the recall of the other group, thus providing evidence that older adults interpret and remember narrative text material in a deeper, more holistic manner (Adams et al 1997). This type of remembering may indicate a level of abstractiveness (Srull and Wyer 1989) indicative of mature thought processes (Adams 1991). Therefore, as Adams et al (1997) suggest, researchers should not exclusively examine memory for literal detail of the text, for to only focus on the surface-level ideas as the unit of measurement may put older adults at a disadvantage. Memory for an ad, an often-used measure of advertising effectiveness (Dubow 1994), is believed to ensure that a recalled brand/destination has a competitive advantage over a less recalled brand/ destination (Goldsmith and Lafferty 2002). While memory for advertising has been researched extensively, the literature on age-related differences in memory for it is sparse. Much of this body of literature has focused only on the quantity of the literal idea units recalled in the ads or comparing younger and older adults’ abilities to search for, learn about, and assess information. Most of these studies have implicitly used the deficit framework (Cole and Balasubramanian 1993; Cole and Gaeth 1990; Cole and Houston 1987; Dubow 1995; Law, Hawkins and Craik 1998) and found that the former recall more of the literal advertising content than the other group who do not search for new information efficiently. Recent studies have reported contrary findings, however. For instance, when examining radio advertisements, Smith and Phillips (2001) found no age-related differences in immediate or seven-day delayed recall of their content. Additionally, Smith and MacKay (2001) reported that younger and older adults recalled the same amount of information from pictures used in destination advertising. This literature suggests that if the stimuli are in text format, agerelated differences in memory for the specific content of the text will emerge in favor of younger adults and the older group will produce deeper, more evaluative memory protocols than their counterparts. When the stimuli are in a different format (such as pictorial), however, age differences do not occur (Smith and MacKay 2001; Smith and Park 1990). One explanation for this incongruity stems from the work of Edell and Staelin (1983) who have proposed that when pictorial and verbal/lexical information is processed, it is carried out via different cognitive processes. They state that memory for a picture which is framed (the picture is labeled or identified) before encoding would be greater than when it is either unframed or when it is framed/ labeled just prior to recall. Edell and Staelin go on to argue that when a message in text format is read, the individual draws on prior schema or knowledge in order to encode the information that is in the text. They believe that the individual also engages in evaluation of the advertised brand (the destina-
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tion) by comparing the new information with the previously stored criteria normally used for evaluating alternative brands (destinations). Frame theories, which relate to representation and use of knowledge for pattern recognition, have utility for research on memory and recall ðFriedman 1979). They further aver that if the stimulus is a picture which is framed, the individual uses this label as a framework for encoding the picture (the destination) similar to that used when a print advertisement (text only) is read. Alternatively when individuals view an unframed picture, they tend not to retrieve relevant information from memory, which identifies how the information is encoded, and fewer evaluative thoughts are generated. Research Questions and Hypotheses The nonsignificant age differences in memory found by Smith and MacKay (2001) were obtained under the condition of unframed pictures at the time of encoding. Therefore, the results may be due to the fact that at the time encoding occurred, the pictures were not linked to any particular destination and in this situation, older and younger adults may carry out cognitive processing of what they see in a similar manner. Alternatively, when subjects view pictures of destinations that are framed or when they read their descriptions, the literature suggests a different mode of processing may take place because framed pictures and text may be processed similarly. Research suggests that older adults recall less of the literal content of text that they have read (Adams et al 1997; Adams, Smith, Pasupathi, and Vitolo 2002; Light 1991, 1996). It also suggests that they naturally produce more evaluations, elaborations, and themes in their memory protocols than younger adults do (Adams 1991; Gould et al 1991; Hultsch and Dixon 1983; Tun 1989). These points led to two main research questions, addressed in two experimental studies. Question one asks if there are agerelated differences in memory for text descriptions of destinations. Study one addresses this question through the directional hypotheses based on the literature reviewed. H11: When a text description of the destination is used as the stimulus, younger adults will recall more of the individual attributes (features) contained in the text than older adults. H21: When a text description of the destination is used as the stimulus, older adults will produce more elaborations about the text than younger adults.
Question two asks if framed (labeled) pictures of destinations are recalled in the same manner by age groups as text descriptions of the destinations. The resulting hypotheses were formulated for study two. H12: When a picture (stimulus) of a destination is framed (labeled), younger adults will recall more of the individual attributes (features) contained in the picture than older adults. H22: When a picture (stimulus) of a destination is framed (labeled), older adults will produce more elaborations about the picture than younger adults.
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Study Methods Participants for both studies were recruited using the procedure described here. Young adults between 18 and 25 were recruited from various introductory marketing classes at a major university in western Canada. Older adults, between 60 and 75, were recruited from various community and church groups in the province’s capital city. No older adults over the age of 75 were included to reduce the chance of health problems interacting with the ability to carry out the memory task (Perlmutter and Nyquist 1990). Recruiting information advised that the study would take approximately 75 to 90 minutes to complete. Participants from each age group were randomly assigned to either the text (study one) or picture (study two) experiment. Data collection for both studies occurred in small groups (maximum of 15 people at one time). In the case of the older adults, data collection sessions were run at community centers or church halls. The younger adults participated in the study outside of class time but on the campus of the university. Ten Canadian dollars for each participant was donated to the associations to which the older adults belonged. The younger adults received extra credit for their participation. Study One Procedures. The purpose of study one was to examine agerelated differences in memory for textual descriptions of destinations, thereby testing H11 and H21. The stimuli used in this study were written descriptions of the four destination pictures used by Smith and MacKay (2001). They were: the Cabot Trail, Nova Scotia; Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Bermuda. An employee of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind was retained due to his expertise in communicating visuals to verbal text. The intent was to transform the pictures to text as accurately as possible to obtain two formats of the same stimulus. To ensure consistency of reading levels across descriptions of the four destinations, each description fell within the sixth-grade reading level as determined by the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (Schuyler 1980). The 45 younger and 48 older participants in study one were given two minutes and thirty seconds to read each description (This time was determined in a pretest with a small independent sample from both age groups prior to commencing the study). In each data collection session, participants began by signing an informed consent form. This was followed by a brief questionnaire to measure demographic characteristics, health, and overall tourism experience (within the province, country, and worldwide). This confirmed participants’ age and education, as well as health status, through a self-rated (1 very poor; 7 excellent) report on eyesight, hearing, overall health, and a checklist of health problems (chronic headaches, regular dizziness, long lapses of memory, fainting, serious illness). Only one person was omitted from the data set, due to age (82 years). Tourism experience measures included open-ended questions on the number of trips taken (in a typical year) for pleasure as day trips, short (two to four days) trips, and long (five or more days)
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trips, as well as series of questions on experience measured on a 5-point agree/disagree scale (Table 1). The participants were then given the locations and written descriptions of the destinations, and told that they would be asked some questions about them once they finished reading them. The order of the descriptions was varied from group to group to avoid any primacy or recency effects. After reading the descriptions, to avoid short term memory rehearsal (Adams et al 1997) the participants completed a card sorting distracter task (Kogan, Connor, Gross and Fava 1980). This consisted of participants organizing a package of 25 cards containing patterns of lines/shapes into five piles however they chose to do so, and then telling the group their rationale for how they organized their card piles. Following the distracter task, they were cued to the locations of the destination descriptions they had read and asked to recall in writing what they could remember from each description. No time limit was placed on this memory task. Finally, the participants completed a series of questions to assess their perceptions of the attractiveness of each place (1 strongly disagree; 5 strongly agree) and how familiar they were with each destination (1 not at all familiar; 5 extremely familiar). Lastly, participants reported on their tourism history to these locations, including whether they had ever traveled there and if yes, the number of times. First, the participants’ questionnaires were screened and any respondents who did not meet the age categories or reported poor health were omitted from the data analysis. The written memory protocols were transcribed so that the coders would not be able to guess the ages of respondents by their handwriting. Each typed protocol was assigned an identity number and then parsed into idea units following a method described by Frederickson (1975a, 1975b). In this method, a unit consisted of a noun–verb–object, an adjective or adverb, or a clause.
Table 1. Tourist Experience: Study One (Text Participants) Average Number of Trip Types Per year
Older
Younger
t-value
d.f.
1 day 2–4 days 5+ days
10.3 4.7 1.6
7.8 4.1 1.2
1.072 0.559 1.953
77 76 76
I’ve traveled a lot in . . .a Manitoba Canada United States
4.1 3.4 2.9
3.1 3.3 2.6
3.772b 0.371 1.392
90 86 88
Tourist Profile: I. . .a Am well traveled Know about travel Am a skilled traveler
2.8 2.4 2.8
2.9 2.4 2.6
0.397 0.051 0.723
88 87 87
a b
Based on 5 point scale; 1 strongly disagree; 5 strongly agree. Significant at p < .05.
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Coding of the protocols for dependent variables (features and elaborations) followed previous research methods (Adams 1991; Adams et al 1997; Smith and MacKay 2001). Each memory protocol was then scored for the total number of individual features contained in the stimulus and the number of elaborations evoked by the stimulus. Features were defined as objects or attributes actually present in the description (such as, there was a car; there was a boat, etc.) or adjectives used in the description that objectively modified an object (blue car; green boat). Elaborations were defined as adjectives, adverbs, interpretations, evaluations, or themes produced by the participants themselves; that is, they were not actually written in the description (majestic, brilliant, a peaceful scene) but rather evoked by the stimuli per se (Smith and MacKay 2001). For each participant, a total score for features was calculated by summing the total number of features recorded across all four destinations. Total elaboration scores for each participant followed the same procedure. Obvious errors, such as the color or location of an object, were coded as mistakes. Two researchers independently coded the protocols and then met to record their results for each participant on a two-way grid to highlight discrepancies. Percentage agreement was 86% and discrepancies in coding were resolved in conference between the researchers. Data were entered into the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Prior to testing the hypotheses, descriptive statistics and t-tests were run to provide demographic and tourist behavior profiles of the participants in the studies. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) tests were used to examine the hypotheses. Participants’ total features and total elaborations scores were used as dependent variables. Years of education and overall destination familiarity were selected as covariates due to their obvious possible links to improved memory for destinations. Familiarity, while advanced as both a positive and negative factor in destination evaluation, is typically associated with a more realistic impression of a destination (Gartner and Hunt 1987) or a more affective image that is based on visitation experience (MacKay and Fesenmaier 1997; MacKay and McVetty 2002). Education was self-reported as actual school years. An overall measure of destination familiarity was computed for each participant by summing the ratings for all four scales (maximum score 20; minimum score 4) as per Smith and MacKay (2001). In study one, the mean age of the younger adults (n = 45) was 20 (SD = 1.6) and of the older adults (n = 48) was 69 (SD = 5.7). In this group of participants, the younger adults had significantly more years of education (t(93) = 8.291, p < .00) with an average of 15.6 years (SD = 1.4), compared to their counterparts who had 11.6 years (SD = 2.9), thus confirming the inclusion of education as a covariate in hypothesis testing. Both age groups were predominantly female in composition: 73% of the younger and 71% of the older adults. There were no significant differences in terms of overall level of familiarity with the destinations for these participants. The summated mean score for familiarity for younger was 9.2 (SD = 3.3) and for older participants 10.7 (SD = 4.4).
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Table 1 displays the summaries of the participants’ tourism experience. There were no significant differences between the two age groups regarding the number and types of trips taken each year. As can be seen in Table 1, older adults in this study were more experienced tourists in their home province (Manitoba) than were their counterparts. For the self-assessments regarding tourism knowledge and skills, there were no differences between the age groups. In study one, while controlling for education and destination familiarity, there was a significant age-related difference in the number of features recalled (F(1,89) = 15.60, p < .001), but not in the number of elaborations produced (F(1,89) = 2.30, p > .05). Younger adults recalled an average of 89.2 features (SD = 40.0) across all text descriptions while the other group recalled less than half that number, 37.2 (SD = 33.2). On average, the former produced 13.8 (SD = 7.6) elaborations, and the latter 7.7 (SD = 6.7) when they read the text descriptions. As a result, H11 was supported, but not H21 (Table 2). The results indicate that younger adults recall more of the content of a written description of a destination than do older participants. This result is consistent with many studies on text memory reported in the gerontology literature (Light 1991). However, the finding of no age-group differences in the number of elaborations produced is somewhat surprising. In fact, the pattern of results reflects the reverse of what was expected. When recall protocols are analyzed for elaborative content, the older typically are shown to produce more than the younger group (Gould et al 1991; Hultsch and Dixon 1984). One explanation could be that the texts were expository in nature (they simply described the scene) and were not narrative (they did not have a story
Table 2. ANCOVA Results for Text Stimuli Source Corrected Model Features Elaborations Intercept Features Elaborations Education Features Elaborations Familiarity Features Elaborations Age group Features Elaborations Error Features Elaborations Total Features Elaborations Corrected Total Features Elaborations
Sum of Squares d.f. Mean Square 60159.767 1189.063 934.600 17.056 2324.845 123.863 1533.715 204.673 20441.795 103.875 111363.514 3841.814 546509.000 16021.000 171523.281 5030.876
3 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 85 85 89 89 88 88
F
20053.256 15.306 396.354 8.769 934.600 .713 17.056 .377 2324.845 1.774 123.863 2.740 1533.715 1.171 204.673 4.528 20441.795 15.603 103.875 2.298 .133 1310.159 45.198
Sig. .000 .000 .401 .541 .186 .102 .282 .036 .000
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line). Older adults have been shown to produce more elaborations than other participants when the text is in narrative form (Adams et al 1997). It is interesting to note, however, that the number of elaborations generated in the present study was quite low for both age groups. This is consistent with other studies examining elaborations in text recall, which typically have reported low frequencies (Gould et al 1991). Given that Edell and Staelin (1983) suggest that framing a picture is analogous to text for triggering prior schema or internal knowledge of the place, study two was conducted to test that proposition. Accordingly, hypotheses H12 and H22 paralleled the directions of H11 and H21. Study Two Procedures. The purpose of second study was to examine the age-related differences in memory for framed pictures of destinations, thereby testing H12 and H22. Study participants were told that they would be viewing pictures of four destinations and that they would be asked some questions about them. These were the same pictures used by Smith and MacKay (2001). Participants viewed each picture in a slide format for 30 seconds, the order of which was rotated from group to group to avoid any primacy and recency effects. Slide format provided consistency of image viewed by all participants and control over viewing time by the researchers. Each picture was framed by informing the participants (verbally and visually) of the location of each destination before viewing. With the exception of the different format for the stimuli and the time exposed to them, the recruiting of participants, procedures used, coding, and methods of analyses replicated those employed in study one. In this study, the mean age of the younger adults (n = 44) was 20 (SD = 1.7) and the other group (n = 45) was 69 years (SD = 4.9). Of the former subjects, 59% were female and of the latter 66%. The older adults in this study reported a significantly higher level of familiarity (M = 11.2) with the destinations (t(86) = 2.117, p < .05) than did the other group (M = 9.6), thereby confirming use of familiarity as a covariate in the analysis. Younger participants reported an average of 15.7 years of education, while older ones reported 14.3 years (nonsignificant). Table 3 displays summaries of participants’ general tourism experience. The results indicated no significant differences between the two age groups for the number of day, short, or long trips taken each year. The older adults in study two were generally more experienced tourists based on travel within North America. For the self-assessments regarding their tourism knowledge and skills, no significant differences were found between the two age groups. The results of the one-way ANCOVA indicated that when education and destination familiarity are controlled, no significant age-related differences for number of features recalled (F(1,86) = 2.72, p > .05) were evident. On average, the younger adults recalled 39.2 features (SD = 17.5), while the older ones recalled 46.1 (SD = 26.6). Likewise, the results of the ANCOVA for elaborations, when controlling for edu-
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Table 3. Tourist Experience: Study Two (Framed Pictures Participants) Average Number of Trip Types Per year 1 day 2–4 days 5+ days I’ve traveled a lot in . . .a Manitoba Canada United States Tourist Profile: I . . .a Am well traveled Know about travel Am a skilled traveler a b
Older
Younger
t-value
d.f.
11.4 5.1 2.4
14.0 7.3 1.8
0.969 1.840 1.451
80 81 84
3.7 4.0 3.4
3.3 3.9 2.7
1.542 2.633b 2.811b
86 85 85
3.6 3.0 3.9
3.2 2.8 3.1
1.479 0.535 1.278
86 85 86
Based on 5 point scale; 1 strongly disagree; 5 strongly agree. Significant at p < .05.
cation and familiarity, showed that the younger group produced 18.0 elaborations (SD = 10.4) on average, and the other 16.4 (SD = 10.5), which were again, nonsignificant (F(1,86) = 0.024, p > .05). Thus, H12 and H22 were not supported (Table 4). The results of study two indicated that younger and older adults recalled the same amount of information and produced similar numbers of elaborations after viewing pictures of destinations framed. While contrary to the hypotheses, it is consistent with Smith and MacKay’s (2001) research, which found no age-related differences for these dependent variables when unframed pictures were used as stimuli.
Table 4. ANCOVA Results for Framed Picture Stimuli Source Corrected Model Features Elaborations Intercept Features Elaborations Education Features Elaborations Familiarity Features Elaborations Age group Features Elaborations Error Features Elaborations Total Features Elaborations Corrected Total Features Elaborations
Sum of Squares d.f. Mean Square 2598.705 1617.428 2165.723 36.534 1806.002 1130.448 88.237 160.583 1392.675 2.262 41998.748 7673.327 200105.000 35349.000 44597.709 9290.756
3 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 82 82 86 86 85 85
866.235 539.143 2165.723 36.534 1806.002 1130.448 88.237 160.583 1392.675 2.262 512.180 93.577
F
Sig.
1.691 5.761 4.228 .390 3.526 12.080 .172 1.716 2.719 .024
.175 .001 .043 .534 .064 .001 .679 .194 .103 .877
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Additionally, these results seem to be contrary to Edell and Staelin’s (1983) proposition that framing a picture acts like text and triggers prior schema or internal knowledge of the place, which in turn leads to enhanced memory. The results of these studies indicate that younger and older participants process information from framed pictures of destinations in a similar manner. That is, on average, they recalled the same number of features and produced the same number of elaborations when the stimuli were in a totally visual/picture format. In contrast, when the stimuli were presented in a written format, age differences emerged for the number of features recalled in favor of the younger adults. These results are in light of the fact that participants’ education and familiarity with the destinations were controlled. In consideration of these findings, a follow-up analysis was performed to examine within age-group differences by stimuli. A 2 (age-group) · 2 (type of stimulus) ANCOVA was run with education and total familiarity score used again as covariates. The results revealed a significant Age-Group · Stimulus interaction (F(1,175) = 30.37, p > .001). Thus, when one asks whether ‘‘younger adults always recall more features than older adults’’, the answer is ‘‘it depends’’. Younger adults recall more of the features (M = 61.75, SD = 36.48) than their counterparts (M = 39.91, SD = 29.86) when the stimulus is text based, but not when the stimulus is pictorial in nature. The same follow-up analysis was conducted with elaborations as the dependent variable. Although the number of elaborations more than doubled for older adults from study one to two, a similar pattern was true for the younger adults. The results here show that there were no age-related differences in the number of elaborations produced; however, this number was statistically different based on the stimulus used (F(1,175) = 14.41, p < .001). On average, when the stimulus was in a picture format, there were more elaborations (M = 17.40, SD = 10.45) produced than when in text format (M = 11.11, SD = 7.56). This indicates that while age is not a determining factor of elaborative memory, the format of the stimulus is.
CONCLUSION Results of these studies have both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, they indicate that the context of the memory task can play a role in memory performance. This study showed that age differences occurred in the typical text-based testing format, but not in a situation where framed pictures were the stimuli even when controlling for education and familiarity with the destination. This finding is in agreement with Edell and Staelin (1983) who posited that processing of pictorial and lexical information is carried out by different cognitive processes—and may result in different amounts of learning/memory— but contrary to their position that framing or labeling the picture would trigger encoding similar to text.
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With respect to the results obtained for text descriptions, one might ask whether ‘‘this supports the deficit viewpoint of cognitive aging’’. On the surface the answer is yes; however, there is at least one explanation as to why this may not necessarily be so. While reading and recall of a text is an everyday occurrence for many younger adults (who are still at or recently graduated from educational institutions), perhaps the older adults did not find this to be a particularly relevant everyday task. Past research has indicated that when the memory task is relevant to both younger and older adults, age differences in memory disappear (Adams et al 2002; Smith and Phillips 2001). Future research should manipulate and/or measure the subjects’ perceived relevance of the task and its effect on the dependent measures. However, the nonsignificant findings from study two, support the findings of Smith and MacKay (2001) who argued that younger and older adults may process and encode information from pictures of destinations in a similar manner. The findings presented here would add to this argument indicating that this may happen whether or not the picture is framed. While the result of no-age differences when subjects viewed framed pictures is not in agreement with the deficit viewpoint of cognitive aging, it does agree with Smith and Park (1990) who found no age-related differences for memory of complex pictures. The fact that no significant age differences in elaborative memory emerged in either study is an interesting finding and contrary to the past literature base on the lifespan developmental view of aging (Adams et al 1997). In most studies that report age differences in elaborations recalled in favor of older adults (Adams 1991), a narrative text format was used. In this way, the ideas are presented in a logical sequential order and allow for the reader to embellish the story naturally upon recall. As stated above, the texts used here were more expository in nature and the order of the idea units could easily have been placed either at the beginning, middle, or end of the description, thus possibly making it more difficult to add embellishments. In fact, there were relatively few elaborations produced for the text, indicating that elaborative processing may not have occurred spontaneously. In the case of the framed pictures, the subjects produced significantly more elaborations than when the stimulus was in a text format, although the number was still quite low. While there were no age-related differences in the number of elaborations produced in either text or picture presentation format, this finding is in agreement with Adams et al (2002). On the practical side, this is of interest to destination marketers. There is ample evidence of the role of information in stimulating destination choice, and/or modifying motivations, expectations, and activities (Bieger and Laesser 2004; Bloch, Sherrell and Ridgway 1986; Fodness and Murray 1999; Sternthal and Craig 1982). Pictorial representations, in particular, contribute to tourists’ destination images and expectations (MacKay and Fesenmaier 1997; Okoroafo 1989). Regardless of age, framed pictures evoked the type of elaborations and impressions that are often the objective of image advertising.
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When the objective is focused on memory of specific attributes of a destination, it is important that the stimulus is in a format that will maximize impact on the target market. The findings in this study suggest that if the target market is younger in age, a text format will facilitate the best memory; however, for older adults, when the objective is memory for features, text or pictures are equally effective. Most destination advertising consists of a combination of visual and text. In this research the visuals were separated from the text to understand the full impact of each factor on the memory performance of the two age groups. The text also was a transcription of a picture rather than a description of the destination, which would have been more realistic in an advertising context. While this approach ensured a higher standard of stimulus comparability in the experiment (internal validity), it lessened its relevancy to practice (external validity). As suggested previously, understanding narrative or story text may involve different procedures than those employed to remember static representation of a picture (Friedman 1979). Furthermore, Smith and Park state that, ‘‘relying on only one presentation format may lead to incomplete conclusions about age differences in memory’’ (1990:71). Future studies should combine the use of both formats to investigate their interactive effects on memory. While advertisers increasingly favor web-based information channels over more traditional destination promotions, the content remains visuals and text, hence this type of basic research is relevant to a wide array of contexts. Another possible limitation of this research is that most participants had some prior knowledge of all destinations used and the pictures may have matched their expectations of what they would ordinarily find in advertisements for these locales. Thus, these pictures may have been congruent with the existing knowledge bases of the participants. Future research could examine the effects on memory of pictures and/ or information that is not congruent with existing schema for a destination. Such advertising strategy has been used in the field by some destination marketers (‘‘Texas—It’s a Like a Whole Other Country’’) and little is known about the effects of using such incongruent visuals. In summary, these current findings extend previous work by Smith and MacKay (2001) who examined age-related differences in memory for unframed pictures of destinations. The two studies reported here examined framed pictures and text formats based on literature from cognitive gerontology and advertising as well as frame theory. While some results do not differ from Smith and MacKay, the results of study two contradict what lifespan developmental theory would predict. Thus, the findings presented here not only extend that earlier work, but also contribute to the body of knowledge on how younger and older adults process different formats of destination advertising. While intuitively the format of the stimulus should be a determining factor of elaborative memory, this is one of the first investigations to examine this phenomenon scientifically. There are still many outstanding issues yet to be resolved in the area of age, format, and memory for tourism advertising. This research is an important initial step in this direction.
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Acknowledgements—The authors would like to acknowledge the Health, Leisure and Human Performance Research Institute, University of Manitoba Small Grant Program for support of this research.
REFERENCES Adams, C. 1988 Cognitive Style and Aging: The Development of a Late Life Metaphoric Style. San Diego: Presented at the Western Psychological Association Meeting. 1991 Qualitative Age Differences in Memory for Text: A Life-Span Developmental Perspective. Psychology and Aging 6:323–336. Adams, C., G. Labouvie-Vief, K. Hobart, and M. Dorosz 1990 Adult Age Group Differences in Story Recall Style. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 45:17–27. Adams, C., M. Smith, L. Nyquist, and M. Perlmutter 1997 Adult Age-Group Differences in Recall for the Literal and Interpretive Meanings of Narrative Text. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 52B:187–195. Adams, C., M. Smith, M. Pasupathi, and L. Vitolo 2002 Social Context Effects on Story Recall in Older and Younger Women: Does the Listener Make a Difference? Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 57B:28–40. Baloglu, S., and S. Shoemaker 2001 Prediction of Senior Travelers’ Motorcoach Use From Demographic, Psychological, and Psychographic Characteristics. Journal of Travel Research 40(1):12–18. Bieger, T., and C. Laesser 2004 Information Sources for Travel Decisions: Toward a Source Process Model. Journal of Travel Research 42:357–371. Bloch, P., D. Sherrell, and N. Ridgeway 1986 Consumer Search: An Extended Framework. Journal of Consumer Behavior 13:119–126. Cole, C., and S. Balasubramanian 1993 Age Differences in Consumers’ Search for Information: Public Policy Implications. Journal of Consumer Research 20:157–169. Cole, C., and G. Gaeth 1990 Cognitive and Age-Related Differences in the Ability to Use Nutritional Information in a Complex Environment. Journal of Consumer Research 27:175–194. Cole, C., and M. Houston 1987 Encoding and Media Effects on Consumer Learning Deficiencies in the Elderly. Journal of Marketing Research 2:55–63. Dann, G. 1996 The Language of Tourism. A Sociolinguistic Perspective. Oxon: CAB International. 2001 Senior Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 28:235–238. Day, E., B. Davis, R. Dove, and W. French 1987/88 Reaching the Senior Citizen Market. Journal of Advertising Research 27(6):23–30. Dubrow, S. 1994 Point of View: Recall Revisited, Recall Redux. Journal of Advertising Research 34:92–108. 1995 Advertising Recognition and Recall by Age––Including Teens. Journal of Advertising Research 35:55–60. Edell, J., and R. Staelin 1983 The Information Processing of Picture in Print Advertisements. Journal of Consumer Research 10:45–61.
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Faranda, W., and S. Schmidt 1999 Segmentation and the Senior Traveler: Implications for Today’s and Tomorrow’s Aging Consumer. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing 8(2):3–27. Fleischer, A., and A. Pizam 2002 Tourism Constraints Among Israeli Seniors. Annals of Tourism Research 29:106–123. Fodness, D., and B. Murray 1999 A Model of Tourist Information Search Behavior. Journal of Travel Research 37:220–230. Fredericksen, C. 1975a Acquisition of Semantic Information from Discourse: Effects of Repeated Exposures. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 14:158–169. 1975b Effects of Context-Induced Processing Operations on Semantic Information Acquired from Discourse. Cognitive Psychology 7:139–166. Friedman, A. 1979 Framing Pictures: The Role of Knowledge in Automatized Encoding and Memory for Gist. Journal of Experimental Psychology 108(3):316–355. Gartner, W., and J. Hunt 1987 An Analysis of State Image Change Over a Twelve Year Period (1971– 1983). Journal of Travel Research 16(2):15–19. Goldsmith, R., and B. Lafferty 2002 Consumer Response to Web Sites and Their Influence on Advertising Effectiveness. Internet Research 12:318–328. Gould, O., L. Trevithick, and R. Dixon 1991 Adult Age Differences in Elaborations Produced during Prose Recall. Psychology and Aging 6:93–99. Govers, R., and F. Go 2003 Deconstruction Destination Image in the Information Age. Information, Technology and Tourism 6:13–30. Horneman, L., R. Carter, S. Wei, and H. Ruys 2002 Profiling the Senior Traveler: An Australian Perspective. Journal of Travel Research 41:23–37. Huang, L., and H.-T. Tsai 2003 The Study of Senior Traveler Behavior in Taiwan. Tourism Management 24:561–574. Hultsch, D., and R. Dixon 1983 The Role of Pre-experimental Knowledge in Text Processing in Adulthood. Experimental Aging Research 9:17–22. 1984 Memory for Text Materials in Adulthood. In Lifespan Development and Behavior (Vol. 6), P. Baltes and O. Brimm, eds. pp. 77–108. New York: Academic Press. 1990 Ability Correlates of Memory Performance in Adulthood and Aging. Psychology and Aging 5:356–358. Jenkins, O. 1999 Understanding and Measuring Tourist Destination Images. International Journal of Tourism Research 1:1–15. Kogan, D., K. Connor, A. Gross, and D. Fava 1980 Understanding Visual Metaphor: Development and Individual Differences. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 45:183. Labouvie-Vief, G. 1985 Intelligence and Cognition. In Handbook of the Psychology of Aging, J. Biren and K. Schaie, eds., pp. 500–530. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Labouvie-Vief, G., and D. Schell 1982 Learning and Memory in Later Life. In Handbook of Developmental Psychology, B. Wolman and G. Stricker, eds., pp. 828–846. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Law, S., S. Hawkins, and F. Craik 1998 Repetition-Induced Belief in the Elderly: Rehabilitating Age-Related Memory Deficits. Journal of Consumer Research 25:91–107.
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Lawson, R. 1991 Patterns of Tourist Expenditure and Types of Vacation Across the Family Life Cycle. Journal of Travel Research 29(4):12–18. Light, L. 1991 Memory and Aging: Four Hypotheses in Search of Data. Annual Review of Psychology 42:333–376. 1996 Memory and Aging. In Memory, E. Bjork and R. Bjork, eds., pp. 390–443. San Diego: Academic Press. Lohmann, M., and J. Danielsson 2001 Predicting Travel Patterns of Senior Citizens: How the Past May Provide a Key to the Future. Journal of Vacation Marketing 7:357–366. MacKay, K., and D. Fesenmaier 1997 Pictorial Element of Destination Promotions in Image Formation. Annals of Tourism Research 24:537–565. MacKay, K., and D. McVetty 2002 Images of First-time Visitors to Queen Charlotte Islands and Gwaii Hanaas National Park Reserve. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration 20(2):11–30. MacInnis, D., and L. Price 1987 The Role of Imagery in Information Processing: Review and Extensions. Journal of Consumer Research 13:473–491. Manfredo, M., A. Bright, and G. Haas 1992 Research in Tourism Advertising. In Influencing Human Behavior, M. Manfredo, ed., pp. 327–368. Champaign: Sagamore. Muller, T., and A. O’Cass 2001 Targeting the Young at Heart: Seeing Senior Vacationers the Way They See Themselves. Journal of Vacation Marketing 7:285–301. Okoroafo, S. 1989 Branding in Tourism. In Tourism Marketing and Management Handbook, S. Witt and L. Moutinho, eds., pp. 23–26. London: Prentice Hall. Partridge, C., and K. MacKay 1998 An Investigation of Nature-based Tourists’ Motives for Travel. Journal of Applied Recreation Research 23:263–287. Perlmutter, M., and L. Nyquist 1990 Relationships between Self-reported Physical and Mental Health and Intelligence Performance across Adulthood. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 45:145–155. Rosenfeld, J. 1986 Demographics on Vacation. American Demographics 8(1):38–58. Schuyler, M. 1980 A Readability Formula Program for Use on Microcomputers. Journal of Reading 25:560–591. Shoemaker, S. 2000 Segmenting the Mature Market. Journal of Travel Research 39:11–26. Smith, M., and K. MacKay 2001 The Organization of Information in Memory for Pictures of Tourist Destinations: Are There Age-Related Differences? Journal of Travel Research 39:261–266. Smith, M., and M. Phillips Jr. 2001 Age Differences in Memory for Radio Advertisements: The Role of Mnemonics. Journal of Business Research 53:103–109. Smith, A., and D. Park 1990 Adult Age Differences in Memory for Pictures and Images. In Aging and Cognition: Mental Processes, Self Awareness and Interventions, E. Lovelace, ed., pp. 69–96. Amsterdam: North Holland. Srull, T., and R. Wyer Jr. 1989 Person Memory and Judgement. Psychological Review 96:58–83. Sternthal, B., and C. Craig 1982 Consumer Behavior: An Information Processing Perspective. New York: Prentice Hall.
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Tun, P. 1989 Age Differences in Processing Expository and Narrative Text. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 44:9–15. West, R. and J. Sinnott, eds. 1992 Everyday Memory and Aging: Current Research and Methodology. New York: Springer-Verlag. Wicks, B., and M. Schuett 1993 Using Travel Brochures to Target Frequent Travelers and ‘‘Big Spenders’’. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing 2:77–90. Wight, P. 1996 North American Ecotourists: Market Profile and Trip Characteristics. Journal of Travel Research 34(4):2–11. Zimmer, Z., R. Brayley, and M. Searle 1995 Whether to Go and Where to Go: Identification of Important Influences on Senior’s Decisions to Travel. Journal of Travel Research 33(3):3–10.
Submitted 22 April 2004. Resubmitted 15 September 2004. Resubmitted 11 January 2005. Accepted 28 January 2005. Final version 3 February 2005. Refereed anonymously. Coordinating Editor: William C. Gartner
Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 7–24, 2006 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain 0160-7383/$32.00
doi:10.1016/j.annals.2005.07.002
DESTINATION ADVERTISING Age and Format Effects on Memory Kelly J. MacKay Malcolm C. Smith University of Manitoba, Canada Abstract: As older adult tourism markets continue to grow in size and importance, it is imperative to understand how they respond to destination advertising. In two experimental studies, age-related differences in memory for advertising were examined using text and framed (labeled) picture formats. With education and destination familiarity statistically controlled, results using text indicated age differences in favor of younger adults for the number of features recalled but not for elaborations. No memory differences were found using framed picture formats, suggesting that younger and older adults process information from pictures similarly. Follow-up analyses revealed that advertising format is a determinant of elaborative memory, while age is not. Keywords: age, memory, advertising format. 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ´ mesure Re´sume´: Promotion des destinations: effets d’aˆge et de format sur la me´moire. A que les marche´s du tourisme pour adultes plus aˆge´s croissent en importance, il faut comprendre leur re´ponse a` la promotion des destinations. Dans deux expe´riences, on a examine´ les diffe´rences de me´moire selon l’aˆge pour les formats publicitaires de texte et d’images encadre´es (e´tiquete´es). Utilisant des cas te´moins pour l’e´ducation et la familiarite´ avec la destination, on a trouve´ que les jeunes adultes se rappelaient plus de caracte´ristiques, mais il n’y avait aucune diffe´rence pour les e´laborations. On n’a trouve´ aucune diffe´rence de me´moire pour les formats d’image, ce qui sugge`re que les jeunes adultes et les plus aˆge´s assimilent l’information des images de fac¸on similaire. Selon des analyses comple´mentaires, le format serait un de´terminant de la me´moire e´laborative, tandis que l’aˆge ne le serait pas. Mots-cle´s: aˆge, me´moire, format publicitaire. 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION Memory is one of the most highly researched areas in gerontology. Yet, the literature provides an incomplete picture of how the aging memory system functions when everyday stimuli are cognitively processed (West and Sinnot 1992). This would include messages received via mass media (advertising), which could be verbal (aural or written) and/or visual in nature. The tourism industry is one whose messages are typically very visual (Dann 1996). In fact, over 75% of the content in most brochures is pictorial (Jenkins 1999). Today, much of this
Kelly MacKay, Professor of recreation studies at the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2, Canada. Email
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marketing is aimed at older adults, who for the past 20 years have been recognized as a major consumer growth market (Dann 2001; Day, Davis, Dove and French 1987/88; Lawson 1991; Shoemaker 2000). Currently in North America, and most of the Western world, approximately one-third of the population is 55 years of age or older (Muller and O’Cass 2001). Many of these adults are active tourists, as researchers continue to report that they travel farther, more frequently, stay longer at vacation destinations, and spend proportionately more of their income on tourism than younger adults (Baloglu and Shoemaker 2001; Fleischer and Pizam 2002; Huang and Tsai 2003; Rosenfeld 1986). In addition to the more traditional vacations associated with older adults (motorcoach tours), special interest tourism (nature and heritage) research indicates that they comprise a significant portion of those markets as well (Partridge and MacKay 1998; Wight 1996). These patterns, coupled with the demographic trends toward an older, healthier, and more affluent North American society (Zimmer, Brayley and Searle 1995), indicate current and future opportunities for destinations. The magnitude and importance of the senior tourist market in North America and other continents (Europe and Asia) should not be overlooked (Fleischer and Pizam 2002; Huang and Tsai 2003). Given the continued projected growth of this demographic segment (Lohmann and Danielsson 2001), understanding how to market effectively to older adults should increase in importance. Advertising is critical to destination marketing, thus, large amounts of time and money are invested in it (Manfredo, Bright and Haas 1992). Furthermore, photographs are considered paramount to destination advertising strategy as evidenced by their extensive use (Jenkins 1999). Pictures are an established means for inducing imagery (MacInnis and Price 1987), and for destinations that strive to produce memorable advertisements, pictures can affect tourists through the creation of expectations and the desire for image verification (Okoroafo 1989). Furthermore, Wicks and Schuett (1993) demonstrated that brochures are a key representation of the destination under consideration and are used for comparison shopping by potential tourists. Today, websites provide a prominent information channel for destination advertising (Govers and Go 2003). While there is a growing body of knowledge on segmentation of older tourists (Faranda and Schmidt 1999; Horneman, Carter, Wei and Ruys 2002; Zimmer et al 1995), there is limited research on understanding how they, when compared to their younger counterparts, process and remember pictorial destination advertising. Recently, however, Smith and MacKay (2001) studied such age-related differences. Older and younger adults in that study viewed pictures of unidentified destinations and, following a distracter task, were required to recall as much as they could about the picture content. For all dependent measures, no age differences in memory were found. Smith and Park (1990) reported similar findings for recognition of complex pictures. They found no evidence that such memory is worse for older than for younger subjects. One possible explanation for this finding is that both groups cognitively process complex pictures in the same manner
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and that age-related differences typically found with discourse or text as the stimulus, are domain specific. In order to understand the effects of format on memory, the purpose of this research was to examine agerelated differences in memory for tourism advertising using text and visual formats.
AGE, MEMORY AND ADVERTISING When one surveys the gerontology literature on age-related differences in memory, it becomes evident that two broad theoretical perspectives prevail. The first entails a deficit framework, which suggests that with increasing age comes a decline in cognitive abilities that very well might affect the efficiency of the learning process (including how much is remembered). That is, within the deficit view, it is assumed that mental performance peaks at the early adulthood stage of life and during the second half of the life span, mental performance gradually declines. This reduced memory capacity has been hypothesized to be linked with such causes as a biological slowing of the nervous system, a shrinking of working memory, or a decrease in general cognitive resources (Light 1991). Many studies in the aging literature have found that younger outperform older subjects when memorizing such stimuli as word lists, expository text, or narrative text (Light 1991, 1996). In most of these studies, the unit of measurement for memory is directly related to the literal, surface meaning of the text and researchers have found that younger adults consistently recall more than the other group (Hultsch and Dixon 1984, 1990). That is, the former remember more of the idea units actually contained in the text and these results are often interpreted in light of this deficit theoretical framework. A second theoretical perspective of cognitive aging in the gerontology literature views aging as a period where growth and decline can take place independent of each other (Labouvie-Vief 1985; LabouvieVief and Schell 1982). This is known as the lifespan cognitive developmental perspective. Adams (1988) claims that this lifespan perspective brings the potential for the development of a late-life cognitive style (the way a person prefers to organize and process information) in which there is a preference to go beyond surface-level analysis in favor of organizing experiences in terms of their structural relationships that connect objects, people, and events. This is a more holistic perspective in contrast to a literal and analytic cognitive style that seems to be characteristic of early adulthood. Support for this lifespan developmental viewpoint has been reported in the literature, especially when more than just memory for the literal/surface content of the ‘‘to-be-remembered’’ material is examined. For instance, when recalling a narrative text (one that tells a story), older adults tend to produce more elaborations than their younger counterparts (Gould, Trevithick and Dixon 1991), as well as more abstract themes and metaphors (Adams 1991). Additionally, older group’s summaries of stories tend to be deeper as well as more
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integrated and symbolic than those of their counterparts (Adams, Smith, Nyquist, and Perlmutter 1997). Research by Adams (1991) and Adams, Labouvie-Vief, Hobart, and Dorosz (1990) also suggests that older adults remember text in a more thematic fashion and their recall is more evaluative and elaborative in nature compared to the recall of the other group, thus providing evidence that older adults interpret and remember narrative text material in a deeper, more holistic manner (Adams et al 1997). This type of remembering may indicate a level of abstractiveness (Srull and Wyer 1989) indicative of mature thought processes (Adams 1991). Therefore, as Adams et al (1997) suggest, researchers should not exclusively examine memory for literal detail of the text, for to only focus on the surface-level ideas as the unit of measurement may put older adults at a disadvantage. Memory for an ad, an often-used measure of advertising effectiveness (Dubow 1994), is believed to ensure that a recalled brand/destination has a competitive advantage over a less recalled brand/ destination (Goldsmith and Lafferty 2002). While memory for advertising has been researched extensively, the literature on age-related differences in memory for it is sparse. Much of this body of literature has focused only on the quantity of the literal idea units recalled in the ads or comparing younger and older adults’ abilities to search for, learn about, and assess information. Most of these studies have implicitly used the deficit framework (Cole and Balasubramanian 1993; Cole and Gaeth 1990; Cole and Houston 1987; Dubow 1995; Law, Hawkins and Craik 1998) and found that the former recall more of the literal advertising content than the other group who do not search for new information efficiently. Recent studies have reported contrary findings, however. For instance, when examining radio advertisements, Smith and Phillips (2001) found no age-related differences in immediate or seven-day delayed recall of their content. Additionally, Smith and MacKay (2001) reported that younger and older adults recalled the same amount of information from pictures used in destination advertising. This literature suggests that if the stimuli are in text format, agerelated differences in memory for the specific content of the text will emerge in favor of younger adults and the older group will produce deeper, more evaluative memory protocols than their counterparts. When the stimuli are in a different format (such as pictorial), however, age differences do not occur (Smith and MacKay 2001; Smith and Park 1990). One explanation for this incongruity stems from the work of Edell and Staelin (1983) who have proposed that when pictorial and verbal/lexical information is processed, it is carried out via different cognitive processes. They state that memory for a picture which is framed (the picture is labeled or identified) before encoding would be greater than when it is either unframed or when it is framed/ labeled just prior to recall. Edell and Staelin go on to argue that when a message in text format is read, the individual draws on prior schema or knowledge in order to encode the information that is in the text. They believe that the individual also engages in evaluation of the advertised brand (the destina-
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tion) by comparing the new information with the previously stored criteria normally used for evaluating alternative brands (destinations). Frame theories, which relate to representation and use of knowledge for pattern recognition, have utility for research on memory and recall ðFriedman 1979). They further aver that if the stimulus is a picture which is framed, the individual uses this label as a framework for encoding the picture (the destination) similar to that used when a print advertisement (text only) is read. Alternatively when individuals view an unframed picture, they tend not to retrieve relevant information from memory, which identifies how the information is encoded, and fewer evaluative thoughts are generated. Research Questions and Hypotheses The nonsignificant age differences in memory found by Smith and MacKay (2001) were obtained under the condition of unframed pictures at the time of encoding. Therefore, the results may be due to the fact that at the time encoding occurred, the pictures were not linked to any particular destination and in this situation, older and younger adults may carry out cognitive processing of what they see in a similar manner. Alternatively, when subjects view pictures of destinations that are framed or when they read their descriptions, the literature suggests a different mode of processing may take place because framed pictures and text may be processed similarly. Research suggests that older adults recall less of the literal content of text that they have read (Adams et al 1997; Adams, Smith, Pasupathi, and Vitolo 2002; Light 1991, 1996). It also suggests that they naturally produce more evaluations, elaborations, and themes in their memory protocols than younger adults do (Adams 1991; Gould et al 1991; Hultsch and Dixon 1983; Tun 1989). These points led to two main research questions, addressed in two experimental studies. Question one asks if there are agerelated differences in memory for text descriptions of destinations. Study one addresses this question through the directional hypotheses based on the literature reviewed. H11: When a text description of the destination is used as the stimulus, younger adults will recall more of the individual attributes (features) contained in the text than older adults. H21: When a text description of the destination is used as the stimulus, older adults will produce more elaborations about the text than younger adults.
Question two asks if framed (labeled) pictures of destinations are recalled in the same manner by age groups as text descriptions of the destinations. The resulting hypotheses were formulated for study two. H12: When a picture (stimulus) of a destination is framed (labeled), younger adults will recall more of the individual attributes (features) contained in the picture than older adults. H22: When a picture (stimulus) of a destination is framed (labeled), older adults will produce more elaborations about the picture than younger adults.
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Study Methods Participants for both studies were recruited using the procedure described here. Young adults between 18 and 25 were recruited from various introductory marketing classes at a major university in western Canada. Older adults, between 60 and 75, were recruited from various community and church groups in the province’s capital city. No older adults over the age of 75 were included to reduce the chance of health problems interacting with the ability to carry out the memory task (Perlmutter and Nyquist 1990). Recruiting information advised that the study would take approximately 75 to 90 minutes to complete. Participants from each age group were randomly assigned to either the text (study one) or picture (study two) experiment. Data collection for both studies occurred in small groups (maximum of 15 people at one time). In the case of the older adults, data collection sessions were run at community centers or church halls. The younger adults participated in the study outside of class time but on the campus of the university. Ten Canadian dollars for each participant was donated to the associations to which the older adults belonged. The younger adults received extra credit for their participation. Study One Procedures. The purpose of study one was to examine agerelated differences in memory for textual descriptions of destinations, thereby testing H11 and H21. The stimuli used in this study were written descriptions of the four destination pictures used by Smith and MacKay (2001). They were: the Cabot Trail, Nova Scotia; Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Bermuda. An employee of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind was retained due to his expertise in communicating visuals to verbal text. The intent was to transform the pictures to text as accurately as possible to obtain two formats of the same stimulus. To ensure consistency of reading levels across descriptions of the four destinations, each description fell within the sixth-grade reading level as determined by the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (Schuyler 1980). The 45 younger and 48 older participants in study one were given two minutes and thirty seconds to read each description (This time was determined in a pretest with a small independent sample from both age groups prior to commencing the study). In each data collection session, participants began by signing an informed consent form. This was followed by a brief questionnaire to measure demographic characteristics, health, and overall tourism experience (within the province, country, and worldwide). This confirmed participants’ age and education, as well as health status, through a self-rated (1 very poor; 7 excellent) report on eyesight, hearing, overall health, and a checklist of health problems (chronic headaches, regular dizziness, long lapses of memory, fainting, serious illness). Only one person was omitted from the data set, due to age (82 years). Tourism experience measures included open-ended questions on the number of trips taken (in a typical year) for pleasure as day trips, short (two to four days) trips, and long (five or more days)
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trips, as well as series of questions on experience measured on a 5-point agree/disagree scale (Table 1). The participants were then given the locations and written descriptions of the destinations, and told that they would be asked some questions about them once they finished reading them. The order of the descriptions was varied from group to group to avoid any primacy or recency effects. After reading the descriptions, to avoid short term memory rehearsal (Adams et al 1997) the participants completed a card sorting distracter task (Kogan, Connor, Gross and Fava 1980). This consisted of participants organizing a package of 25 cards containing patterns of lines/shapes into five piles however they chose to do so, and then telling the group their rationale for how they organized their card piles. Following the distracter task, they were cued to the locations of the destination descriptions they had read and asked to recall in writing what they could remember from each description. No time limit was placed on this memory task. Finally, the participants completed a series of questions to assess their perceptions of the attractiveness of each place (1 strongly disagree; 5 strongly agree) and how familiar they were with each destination (1 not at all familiar; 5 extremely familiar). Lastly, participants reported on their tourism history to these locations, including whether they had ever traveled there and if yes, the number of times. First, the participants’ questionnaires were screened and any respondents who did not meet the age categories or reported poor health were omitted from the data analysis. The written memory protocols were transcribed so that the coders would not be able to guess the ages of respondents by their handwriting. Each typed protocol was assigned an identity number and then parsed into idea units following a method described by Frederickson (1975a, 1975b). In this method, a unit consisted of a noun–verb–object, an adjective or adverb, or a clause.
Table 1. Tourist Experience: Study One (Text Participants) Average Number of Trip Types Per year
Older
Younger
t-value
d.f.
1 day 2–4 days 5+ days
10.3 4.7 1.6
7.8 4.1 1.2
1.072 0.559 1.953
77 76 76
I’ve traveled a lot in . . .a Manitoba Canada United States
4.1 3.4 2.9
3.1 3.3 2.6
3.772b 0.371 1.392
90 86 88
Tourist Profile: I. . .a Am well traveled Know about travel Am a skilled traveler
2.8 2.4 2.8
2.9 2.4 2.6
0.397 0.051 0.723
88 87 87
a b
Based on 5 point scale; 1 strongly disagree; 5 strongly agree. Significant at p < .05.
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Coding of the protocols for dependent variables (features and elaborations) followed previous research methods (Adams 1991; Adams et al 1997; Smith and MacKay 2001). Each memory protocol was then scored for the total number of individual features contained in the stimulus and the number of elaborations evoked by the stimulus. Features were defined as objects or attributes actually present in the description (such as, there was a car; there was a boat, etc.) or adjectives used in the description that objectively modified an object (blue car; green boat). Elaborations were defined as adjectives, adverbs, interpretations, evaluations, or themes produced by the participants themselves; that is, they were not actually written in the description (majestic, brilliant, a peaceful scene) but rather evoked by the stimuli per se (Smith and MacKay 2001). For each participant, a total score for features was calculated by summing the total number of features recorded across all four destinations. Total elaboration scores for each participant followed the same procedure. Obvious errors, such as the color or location of an object, were coded as mistakes. Two researchers independently coded the protocols and then met to record their results for each participant on a two-way grid to highlight discrepancies. Percentage agreement was 86% and discrepancies in coding were resolved in conference between the researchers. Data were entered into the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Prior to testing the hypotheses, descriptive statistics and t-tests were run to provide demographic and tourist behavior profiles of the participants in the studies. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) tests were used to examine the hypotheses. Participants’ total features and total elaborations scores were used as dependent variables. Years of education and overall destination familiarity were selected as covariates due to their obvious possible links to improved memory for destinations. Familiarity, while advanced as both a positive and negative factor in destination evaluation, is typically associated with a more realistic impression of a destination (Gartner and Hunt 1987) or a more affective image that is based on visitation experience (MacKay and Fesenmaier 1997; MacKay and McVetty 2002). Education was self-reported as actual school years. An overall measure of destination familiarity was computed for each participant by summing the ratings for all four scales (maximum score 20; minimum score 4) as per Smith and MacKay (2001). In study one, the mean age of the younger adults (n = 45) was 20 (SD = 1.6) and of the older adults (n = 48) was 69 (SD = 5.7). In this group of participants, the younger adults had significantly more years of education (t(93) = 8.291, p < .00) with an average of 15.6 years (SD = 1.4), compared to their counterparts who had 11.6 years (SD = 2.9), thus confirming the inclusion of education as a covariate in hypothesis testing. Both age groups were predominantly female in composition: 73% of the younger and 71% of the older adults. There were no significant differences in terms of overall level of familiarity with the destinations for these participants. The summated mean score for familiarity for younger was 9.2 (SD = 3.3) and for older participants 10.7 (SD = 4.4).
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Table 1 displays the summaries of the participants’ tourism experience. There were no significant differences between the two age groups regarding the number and types of trips taken each year. As can be seen in Table 1, older adults in this study were more experienced tourists in their home province (Manitoba) than were their counterparts. For the self-assessments regarding tourism knowledge and skills, there were no differences between the age groups. In study one, while controlling for education and destination familiarity, there was a significant age-related difference in the number of features recalled (F(1,89) = 15.60, p < .001), but not in the number of elaborations produced (F(1,89) = 2.30, p > .05). Younger adults recalled an average of 89.2 features (SD = 40.0) across all text descriptions while the other group recalled less than half that number, 37.2 (SD = 33.2). On average, the former produced 13.8 (SD = 7.6) elaborations, and the latter 7.7 (SD = 6.7) when they read the text descriptions. As a result, H11 was supported, but not H21 (Table 2). The results indicate that younger adults recall more of the content of a written description of a destination than do older participants. This result is consistent with many studies on text memory reported in the gerontology literature (Light 1991). However, the finding of no age-group differences in the number of elaborations produced is somewhat surprising. In fact, the pattern of results reflects the reverse of what was expected. When recall protocols are analyzed for elaborative content, the older typically are shown to produce more than the younger group (Gould et al 1991; Hultsch and Dixon 1984). One explanation could be that the texts were expository in nature (they simply described the scene) and were not narrative (they did not have a story
Table 2. ANCOVA Results for Text Stimuli Source Corrected Model Features Elaborations Intercept Features Elaborations Education Features Elaborations Familiarity Features Elaborations Age group Features Elaborations Error Features Elaborations Total Features Elaborations Corrected Total Features Elaborations
Sum of Squares d.f. Mean Square 60159.767 1189.063 934.600 17.056 2324.845 123.863 1533.715 204.673 20441.795 103.875 111363.514 3841.814 546509.000 16021.000 171523.281 5030.876
3 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 85 85 89 89 88 88
F
20053.256 15.306 396.354 8.769 934.600 .713 17.056 .377 2324.845 1.774 123.863 2.740 1533.715 1.171 204.673 4.528 20441.795 15.603 103.875 2.298 .133 1310.159 45.198
Sig. .000 .000 .401 .541 .186 .102 .282 .036 .000
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MEMORY FOR ADVERTISING
line). Older adults have been shown to produce more elaborations than other participants when the text is in narrative form (Adams et al 1997). It is interesting to note, however, that the number of elaborations generated in the present study was quite low for both age groups. This is consistent with other studies examining elaborations in text recall, which typically have reported low frequencies (Gould et al 1991). Given that Edell and Staelin (1983) suggest that framing a picture is analogous to text for triggering prior schema or internal knowledge of the place, study two was conducted to test that proposition. Accordingly, hypotheses H12 and H22 paralleled the directions of H11 and H21. Study Two Procedures. The purpose of second study was to examine the age-related differences in memory for framed pictures of destinations, thereby testing H12 and H22. Study participants were told that they would be viewing pictures of four destinations and that they would be asked some questions about them. These were the same pictures used by Smith and MacKay (2001). Participants viewed each picture in a slide format for 30 seconds, the order of which was rotated from group to group to avoid any primacy and recency effects. Slide format provided consistency of image viewed by all participants and control over viewing time by the researchers. Each picture was framed by informing the participants (verbally and visually) of the location of each destination before viewing. With the exception of the different format for the stimuli and the time exposed to them, the recruiting of participants, procedures used, coding, and methods of analyses replicated those employed in study one. In this study, the mean age of the younger adults (n = 44) was 20 (SD = 1.7) and the other group (n = 45) was 69 years (SD = 4.9). Of the former subjects, 59% were female and of the latter 66%. The older adults in this study reported a significantly higher level of familiarity (M = 11.2) with the destinations (t(86) = 2.117, p < .05) than did the other group (M = 9.6), thereby confirming use of familiarity as a covariate in the analysis. Younger participants reported an average of 15.7 years of education, while older ones reported 14.3 years (nonsignificant). Table 3 displays summaries of participants’ general tourism experience. The results indicated no significant differences between the two age groups for the number of day, short, or long trips taken each year. The older adults in study two were generally more experienced tourists based on travel within North America. For the self-assessments regarding their tourism knowledge and skills, no significant differences were found between the two age groups. The results of the one-way ANCOVA indicated that when education and destination familiarity are controlled, no significant age-related differences for number of features recalled (F(1,86) = 2.72, p > .05) were evident. On average, the younger adults recalled 39.2 features (SD = 17.5), while the older ones recalled 46.1 (SD = 26.6). Likewise, the results of the ANCOVA for elaborations, when controlling for edu-
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Table 3. Tourist Experience: Study Two (Framed Pictures Participants) Average Number of Trip Types Per year 1 day 2–4 days 5+ days I’ve traveled a lot in . . .a Manitoba Canada United States Tourist Profile: I . . .a Am well traveled Know about travel Am a skilled traveler a b
Older
Younger
t-value
d.f.
11.4 5.1 2.4
14.0 7.3 1.8
0.969 1.840 1.451
80 81 84
3.7 4.0 3.4
3.3 3.9 2.7
1.542 2.633b 2.811b
86 85 85
3.6 3.0 3.9
3.2 2.8 3.1
1.479 0.535 1.278
86 85 86
Based on 5 point scale; 1 strongly disagree; 5 strongly agree. Significant at p < .05.
cation and familiarity, showed that the younger group produced 18.0 elaborations (SD = 10.4) on average, and the other 16.4 (SD = 10.5), which were again, nonsignificant (F(1,86) = 0.024, p > .05). Thus, H12 and H22 were not supported (Table 4). The results of study two indicated that younger and older adults recalled the same amount of information and produced similar numbers of elaborations after viewing pictures of destinations framed. While contrary to the hypotheses, it is consistent with Smith and MacKay’s (2001) research, which found no age-related differences for these dependent variables when unframed pictures were used as stimuli.
Table 4. ANCOVA Results for Framed Picture Stimuli Source Corrected Model Features Elaborations Intercept Features Elaborations Education Features Elaborations Familiarity Features Elaborations Age group Features Elaborations Error Features Elaborations Total Features Elaborations Corrected Total Features Elaborations
Sum of Squares d.f. Mean Square 2598.705 1617.428 2165.723 36.534 1806.002 1130.448 88.237 160.583 1392.675 2.262 41998.748 7673.327 200105.000 35349.000 44597.709 9290.756
3 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 82 82 86 86 85 85
866.235 539.143 2165.723 36.534 1806.002 1130.448 88.237 160.583 1392.675 2.262 512.180 93.577
F
Sig.
1.691 5.761 4.228 .390 3.526 12.080 .172 1.716 2.719 .024
.175 .001 .043 .534 .064 .001 .679 .194 .103 .877
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Additionally, these results seem to be contrary to Edell and Staelin’s (1983) proposition that framing a picture acts like text and triggers prior schema or internal knowledge of the place, which in turn leads to enhanced memory. The results of these studies indicate that younger and older participants process information from framed pictures of destinations in a similar manner. That is, on average, they recalled the same number of features and produced the same number of elaborations when the stimuli were in a totally visual/picture format. In contrast, when the stimuli were presented in a written format, age differences emerged for the number of features recalled in favor of the younger adults. These results are in light of the fact that participants’ education and familiarity with the destinations were controlled. In consideration of these findings, a follow-up analysis was performed to examine within age-group differences by stimuli. A 2 (age-group) · 2 (type of stimulus) ANCOVA was run with education and total familiarity score used again as covariates. The results revealed a significant Age-Group · Stimulus interaction (F(1,175) = 30.37, p > .001). Thus, when one asks whether ‘‘younger adults always recall more features than older adults’’, the answer is ‘‘it depends’’. Younger adults recall more of the features (M = 61.75, SD = 36.48) than their counterparts (M = 39.91, SD = 29.86) when the stimulus is text based, but not when the stimulus is pictorial in nature. The same follow-up analysis was conducted with elaborations as the dependent variable. Although the number of elaborations more than doubled for older adults from study one to two, a similar pattern was true for the younger adults. The results here show that there were no age-related differences in the number of elaborations produced; however, this number was statistically different based on the stimulus used (F(1,175) = 14.41, p < .001). On average, when the stimulus was in a picture format, there were more elaborations (M = 17.40, SD = 10.45) produced than when in text format (M = 11.11, SD = 7.56). This indicates that while age is not a determining factor of elaborative memory, the format of the stimulus is.
CONCLUSION Results of these studies have both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, they indicate that the context of the memory task can play a role in memory performance. This study showed that age differences occurred in the typical text-based testing format, but not in a situation where framed pictures were the stimuli even when controlling for education and familiarity with the destination. This finding is in agreement with Edell and Staelin (1983) who posited that processing of pictorial and lexical information is carried out by different cognitive processes—and may result in different amounts of learning/memory— but contrary to their position that framing or labeling the picture would trigger encoding similar to text.
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With respect to the results obtained for text descriptions, one might ask whether ‘‘this supports the deficit viewpoint of cognitive aging’’. On the surface the answer is yes; however, there is at least one explanation as to why this may not necessarily be so. While reading and recall of a text is an everyday occurrence for many younger adults (who are still at or recently graduated from educational institutions), perhaps the older adults did not find this to be a particularly relevant everyday task. Past research has indicated that when the memory task is relevant to both younger and older adults, age differences in memory disappear (Adams et al 2002; Smith and Phillips 2001). Future research should manipulate and/or measure the subjects’ perceived relevance of the task and its effect on the dependent measures. However, the nonsignificant findings from study two, support the findings of Smith and MacKay (2001) who argued that younger and older adults may process and encode information from pictures of destinations in a similar manner. The findings presented here would add to this argument indicating that this may happen whether or not the picture is framed. While the result of no-age differences when subjects viewed framed pictures is not in agreement with the deficit viewpoint of cognitive aging, it does agree with Smith and Park (1990) who found no age-related differences for memory of complex pictures. The fact that no significant age differences in elaborative memory emerged in either study is an interesting finding and contrary to the past literature base on the lifespan developmental view of aging (Adams et al 1997). In most studies that report age differences in elaborations recalled in favor of older adults (Adams 1991), a narrative text format was used. In this way, the ideas are presented in a logical sequential order and allow for the reader to embellish the story naturally upon recall. As stated above, the texts used here were more expository in nature and the order of the idea units could easily have been placed either at the beginning, middle, or end of the description, thus possibly making it more difficult to add embellishments. In fact, there were relatively few elaborations produced for the text, indicating that elaborative processing may not have occurred spontaneously. In the case of the framed pictures, the subjects produced significantly more elaborations than when the stimulus was in a text format, although the number was still quite low. While there were no age-related differences in the number of elaborations produced in either text or picture presentation format, this finding is in agreement with Adams et al (2002). On the practical side, this is of interest to destination marketers. There is ample evidence of the role of information in stimulating destination choice, and/or modifying motivations, expectations, and activities (Bieger and Laesser 2004; Bloch, Sherrell and Ridgway 1986; Fodness and Murray 1999; Sternthal and Craig 1982). Pictorial representations, in particular, contribute to tourists’ destination images and expectations (MacKay and Fesenmaier 1997; Okoroafo 1989). Regardless of age, framed pictures evoked the type of elaborations and impressions that are often the objective of image advertising.
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When the objective is focused on memory of specific attributes of a destination, it is important that the stimulus is in a format that will maximize impact on the target market. The findings in this study suggest that if the target market is younger in age, a text format will facilitate the best memory; however, for older adults, when the objective is memory for features, text or pictures are equally effective. Most destination advertising consists of a combination of visual and text. In this research the visuals were separated from the text to understand the full impact of each factor on the memory performance of the two age groups. The text also was a transcription of a picture rather than a description of the destination, which would have been more realistic in an advertising context. While this approach ensured a higher standard of stimulus comparability in the experiment (internal validity), it lessened its relevancy to practice (external validity). As suggested previously, understanding narrative or story text may involve different procedures than those employed to remember static representation of a picture (Friedman 1979). Furthermore, Smith and Park state that, ‘‘relying on only one presentation format may lead to incomplete conclusions about age differences in memory’’ (1990:71). Future studies should combine the use of both formats to investigate their interactive effects on memory. While advertisers increasingly favor web-based information channels over more traditional destination promotions, the content remains visuals and text, hence this type of basic research is relevant to a wide array of contexts. Another possible limitation of this research is that most participants had some prior knowledge of all destinations used and the pictures may have matched their expectations of what they would ordinarily find in advertisements for these locales. Thus, these pictures may have been congruent with the existing knowledge bases of the participants. Future research could examine the effects on memory of pictures and/ or information that is not congruent with existing schema for a destination. Such advertising strategy has been used in the field by some destination marketers (‘‘Texas—It’s a Like a Whole Other Country’’) and little is known about the effects of using such incongruent visuals. In summary, these current findings extend previous work by Smith and MacKay (2001) who examined age-related differences in memory for unframed pictures of destinations. The two studies reported here examined framed pictures and text formats based on literature from cognitive gerontology and advertising as well as frame theory. While some results do not differ from Smith and MacKay, the results of study two contradict what lifespan developmental theory would predict. Thus, the findings presented here not only extend that earlier work, but also contribute to the body of knowledge on how younger and older adults process different formats of destination advertising. While intuitively the format of the stimulus should be a determining factor of elaborative memory, this is one of the first investigations to examine this phenomenon scientifically. There are still many outstanding issues yet to be resolved in the area of age, format, and memory for tourism advertising. This research is an important initial step in this direction.
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Acknowledgements—The authors would like to acknowledge the Health, Leisure and Human Performance Research Institute, University of Manitoba Small Grant Program for support of this research.
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Submitted 22 April 2004. Resubmitted 15 September 2004. Resubmitted 11 January 2005. Accepted 28 January 2005. Final version 3 February 2005. Refereed anonymously. Coordinating Editor: William C. Gartner