Tilburg University

About: Tilburg University is a education organization based out in Tilburg, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Anxiety. The organization has 5550 authors who have published 22330 publications receiving 791335 citations.

Central Bank Independence : An Update of Theory and Evidence

Abstract: This paper reviews recent research on central bank independence (CBI) After we have distinguished between independence and conservativeness, research in which the inflationary bias is endogenised is reviewed Finally, the various challenges that have been raised against previous empirical findings on CBI are discussed We conclude that the negative relationship between CBI and inflation is quite robust

Breaking Through the Clutter: Benefits of Advertisement Originality and Familiarity for Brand Attention and Memory

Abstract: Rising levels of advertising competition have made it increasingly difficult to attract and hold consumers' attention and to establish strong memory traces for the advertised brand. A common communication strategy to break through this competitive clutter is to increase ad originality. However, ad originality may have detrimental effects when consumers pay more attention to the ad at the expense of the advertised brand. Moreover, the positive effects of originality may quickly wane when the ad becomes familiar. Surprisingly, no research to date has examined such brand attention and memory effects of ad originality and familiarity. The current study aims to fill this void. We use a stochastic model of the influence that ad originality and familiarity have on consumers' eye fixations to the key elements of advertisements--brand, text, and pictorial--and how the information extracted during eye fixations promotes memory for the advertised brand. The model explicitly accounts for heterogeneity due to consumers and advertisements. Infrared eye tracking was applied to collect eye fixation data from 119 consumers who paged through two general-audience magazines containing 58 full-page advertisements. Memory for the advertised brands was assessed with an indirect memory task. The model was estimated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. In support of our hypotheses, original advertisements drew more attention to the advertised brand. More importantly however, advertisements that were both original and familiar attracted the largest amount of attention to the advertised brand, which improved subsequent brand memory. In addition, original and familiar ads were found to promote brand memory directly. Implications of these findings for communication and media planning strategy are discussed.