' " T •

Zapping Behavior during Commerciai Breaks

The impact of consumer channel switching, or "zapping," on the effectiveness of TV

commercials is addressed. Among the more significant findings in this research is the

resuit that nonzappers can recall more of the brands advertised than zappers.

Furthermore, for brands that are successfully recalied by zappers, those piaced

toward the end of a commercial break achieve the highest levei of recail.

ALAN CHING BlU TSE CONSUMERS CAN ALWAYS avoid television advertis-
The Chinese University ing by physically leaving the room or engaging in
of Hong Kong. Shatin. other activities, such as talking to other people
Hong Kong around or performing household tasks, or elec-
alan@baf.msmaii. tronically by pressing a button on the remote con-
cuhk.edu.hk trol to change channels. Channel switching during
commercials, also known as channel surfing, chan-
nel grazing, or zapping, has become a potentially
serious problem for advertisers.
Zapping on the television advertising industry
has been studied by many researchers (e.g., Heeter
and Greenberg, 1985; Kaplan, 1985; Yorke and
Kitchen, 1985; Greenberg and Heeter, 1987;
Greene, 1988; Ainslie, 1989; Boilier, 1989; Gilbert,
1989; Sylvester, 1990; van Meurs, 1998). The ma-
jority of these studies have focused on the descrip-
tion of the extent and pattern of zapping behavior
and profiling the zapping-prone audience. How-
ever, few strong conclusions can be drawn because
RUBY P. W. LEE
these studies used self reports of viewing behav-
Washington State
ior. Later studies by R. D. Percy and Company (see
University
Danaher, 1995) used actual zapping behavior from
people meters rather than retrospective self-
reports, but still it is difficult to make conclusive
statements because all data were aggregated.
Regarding the determinants of zapping behav-
ior, Stewart and Fursc (1986) and Biel (1990) find
that the ability of the advertisement to provide
new and useful information affects the levei of
zapping. Pechman and Stewart (1988), Schumann
et al. (1990), and Goldberg et al. (1993) look at the
wearin and wearout effects produced by advertis-
ing repetition. During wearin, additional expo-
sures to an advertisement have a positive effect,
while at a certain point, wearout effects dominate
when these exposures cease to have a positive ef-
fect—tir may even produce a negative effect. Sid-
darth and Chattopadhyay (1998) found a U- or
J-shaped relationship between repeated exposures
to an advertisement and the probability of zap-
ping, with zapping elasticity reaching its mini-
mum value at around 14 exposures and increasing
rapidly thereafter. The length of advertisements
was studied by Patzer (1991), Singh and Cole
(1993), and Pieters and Bijmolt (1997), while the
number of channels subscribed was studied by
Walker and Bellamy (1991) and Weimann (1995).
Zufryden, Pedrick, and Sankaralingam (1993)
found that commercials aired during prime-time
have a slightly higher likelihood of being zapped.
Kaplan (1985), Heeter and Greenberg (1985), and
Siddarth and Chattopadhyay (1998) found higher
levels of channel switching for commercial pods
around the hour/half-hour mark than at other
times. More recently, van Meurs (1998) looked at
the program before and after the break, program-
ming on the other channels, and characteristics of
the commercials within the break. Finally, the me-
diating effects of attitudes toward advertisements
were studied by MacKenzie, Lutz, and Belch
(1986) and Lee and Lumpkin (1995).
A few other studies looked at the effect of zap-
ping on advertising effectiveness. For example, the
Gallup and Robinson study by Greene (1988)

May . June 2 0 0 1 JflUilliflL OF flOUEflTISlllE BESERRCH 2 5

ZAPPING BEHAVIOR
found that zapping does not adversely af-
fect recall of advertising because viewers
need to focus attention on the TV set to
switch channels. However, this study is
limited by its use of a survey-based mea-
sure of day-after TV commercial recall as
well as potentially biased self-reported
data about viewer zapping behavior. An-
other study by Zufryden, Pedrick, and
Sankaraiingam (1993) found that zapped
commercials are significantly more effec-
tive than noninterrupted advertisements
vvith respect to their impact on brand-
purchase behavior, owing probably to a
heightening of viewer attention to the TV
set at the time of a zap. In contrast to Zu-
fryden, Pedrick, and Sankaralingam's
study. Speck ar\d Elliott (1997) electroni-
cally tracked the viewing behavior of a
sample of 1,000 homes. They found that
zapping is indeed a potentially significant
problem for advertisers.
In summary, it is clear that zapping is a
fairly widespread phenomenon anci po-
tentially of considerable concern to adver-
tisers. However, results of studies of the
impact of zapping on advertising effec-
tiveness are inconclusive. Hence, the first
objective of this study is to look into ad-
vertising effectiveness concerning zap-
ping using brand recall as a measure of
effectiveness. This gives rise to the first
hypothesis in this study:
HI: Nonzappers can recall more ad-
vertised brands thzm zappers.
Despite the fact that zapping is a uni-
versal phenomenon, little work has been
done on how to increase advertising effec-
tiveness under habitual zapping behavior.
On introspection, one method that seems
to be useful in dealing with the problem is
to place an advertisement at the starting
positions of a commercial break. The rea-
son why advertisements placed at these
positions may increase their chance of
2 6 JOUIiflflL DF RDOEBTISIflG RESEflllCH May . June 2 0 0 1
. . . zapping is defined iiere as commerciai avoidance
where individuals viewing television programs switch
channels or physically leave the viewing room or concen-
trate on doing some other things while the commercial is
being broadcast...
viewing by the audience is because there
is a reaction time lag between viewers
sensing the outset of a commercial break
and picking up the remote controi to
change to another channel. Similarly,
those at the last positions would also have
a higher chance of being recalled when
viewers come back to the television at the
time when the program is about to resume
after the commercial break. Because of re-
cency effect (Duncan, 2000), advertise-
ments placed at the end of a commercial
break should be more easily recalled than
advertisements placed at the front posi-
tions, when view^ers are interviewed at the
end of a commercial break. Hence, it is
interesting to test the following hypothesis:
H2: Advertisements placed at the last
positions within a program
achieve a higher level of brand
recall than those placed at the
other positions.
To control for commercials aired at the
hour/half-hour mark and those aired at
other times, we only look at those aired
within a program when the recency effect
discussed above would be the strongest.
Our research contributes to the litera-
ture in the following ways. First, we try to
resolve the conflict in the literature re-
garding the effect of zapping on advertis-
ing effectiveness. Second, our study is a
pioneer one looking into the placements
of advertisements in commercial breaks to
increase advertising effectiveness when
zapping occurs.
In the next section we present the meth-
odology used in collecting the data for
empirical analysis. We conclude with a
discussion of the implications of our
findings.
METHOD
A total of 360 telephone interviews were
conducted at the end of each commercial
break within programs at TV prime time
between 8:00 to 10:30 p.m. from Monday
to Friday in March in Hong Kong by a
team of five interviewers. Respondents
were aged 15 and over and were watching
one of the two Chinese channels before
the interview. If there was more than one
member in the household who was over
15, the one whose birthday fell next was
interviewed. The interviews were con-
ducted by telephone immediately after the
end of each commercial break. Respon-
dents were asked to recall the brands that
were just advertised.
About 95.8 percent' of the people in
Hong Kong watch the two free local Chi-
nese channels—the Jade TV channel and
the Asia TV channel. Hence, the choice of
these two channels as the central foci of
the study should generate a good and rep-
resentative sample for the purpose at
hand.
'This is based on a receipt telephone survey conducted by the
author iifiiig a sample of 120 respomtcitts.

Respondents in this study were selected
from the telephone directory using a 1 to
5,000 systematic random sampling. The
use of systematic random sampling is jus-
tified, because in Hong Kong virtually all
families have a telephone with very few
having an unlisted number.
Since the term zapping has been used to
refer to somewhat different viewer behav-
ior by different authors, a clear opera-
tional definition of the term is required for
this study. The term zapping has been
used to connote "channel sv^'itching" by
Kaplan (1985), "fast forwarding of video-
taped commercials" by Tauber (1985),
"physically leaving the room" by Cronin
and Menelly (1992), and so on. To avoid
confusion, zapping is defined here as
commercial avoidance where individuals
viewing television programs switch chan-
nels or physically leave the view^ing room
or concentrate on doing some other things
while the commercial is being broadcast
(for example, having conversation, pre-
paring refreshment, washing dishes, and
EMPIRICAL RESULTS
Of the 360 respondents interviewed, 69 of
them watched every advertisement dur-
ing a commercial break. The rest (80.8 per-
cent) avoided the advertisements in one
way or another and were therefore classi-
fied as zappers.
HI was tested by first computing the
percentage of brands that could be cor-
rectly recalled by zappers and nonzap-
pers. The percentage for nonzapper was
found to be 23.25 percent and 2.91 percent
for zappers, A paired difference f-test
shows that nonzappers can recall more of
the advertised brands than zappers at p =
0.0506. This is logical because when a
commercial is zapped, part of the message
is lost, and recall ability should be lower.
Regarding the best positions to place an
advertisement within a commercial break
. . . it pays for advertisers to place their advertisements
near the end of a commercial break even if it is more
costly to do so.
in order to maximize its recall rate by zap-
pers (H2), it was found that of the brands
that could be recalled by the zappers in
the sample, 77 percent of these brands
were advertised in the last two positions,
while only 4 percent were advertised in
the first two positions. T-tests show that
advertisements placed at the last two po-
sitions have a significantly higher recall
rate by zappers than an advertisement
placed at other positions (p = 0.000).
DISCUSSION
In this study, we focused on the impact of
zapping behavior on advertising effective-
ness measured by the percentage of suc-
cessful brand recall, as well as the best
position to place an advertisement during
a commercial break.
Among the more significant findings in
this research is the result that the majority
of respondents switch channels during
commercial breaks. Regarding the impact
of zapping on advertising effectiveness,
the data obtained from this study support
the hypothesis that nonzappers tend to re-
call brands more correctly than zappers.
Meanwhile, it was found that placing ad-
vertisements toward the end of a commer-
cial break would maximize its recall prob-
ability by zappers. The latter result sug-
gests that it pays for advertisers to place
their advertisements near the end of a
commercial break even if it is more costly
to do so. This should be done together
with the more commonly used techniques
such as "roadblocking" (i.e., placing com-
mercials on all major channels at a given
time), "commercial wraparound" (split-
ting a 30-second commercial into two 15s),
May . June 2 0 0 1 JOOflllRL OFflDOEflTISinGRESEfleCH 2 7
ZAPPING BEHAVIOR
and other strategies designed to enhance
the attention-getting characteristics of ad-
vertisements and thereby reduce conmier-
ciat avoidance (e,g., see Pahwa, 1990).
Clearly, the attractiveness of the pro-
gram would affect the level of advertising
recall at the different positions where we
place our advertisements. If the program
is not attractive, then advertisements at
the last positions might not achieve the
same high level of recall as we have ob-
tained in this study. Hence, further study
should be conducted to look into the ef-
fects of program attractiveness on zap-
pers' level of recall as well.
Another variable worthy of future in-
vestigation is the commercial breaks
around the hour/half-hour mark versus
commerciai breaks within a program.
Logically, the level of recall for advertise-
ments put at the last positions of commer-
cial breaks within a program should be
higher than those at the hour/half-hour
mark, because viewers do not want to
miss any part of the program they are
viewing and would very likely switch
back when a commercial break is about to
end. The tendency to switch back is par-
ticularly strong if the program is attrac-
tive. Again, further research is needed to
substantiate fhese assertions. i^^
AiAN C. B. TSE is an associate professor of marketing
at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, His current
research interests are web cottimercials, customer
relationship marketing, and data mining.
RUBY LEE is a Ph,D, student at Washington State
University. Her research interests include consumer
behavior, international marketing, and organizational
behavior.
ZAPPING BEHAVIOR
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