The Unconscious Persuasion: A Conceptual Model about The Media Multitasking Effects on Consumer’s Processing Fluency

Abstract

Objective: Provide directions to new processing fluency studies in the relatively new context of the multitasking media, a behavior that has become popular in recent years.

Method: Review of the robust literature of processing fluency, perceptual fluency and conceptual fluency, including its various effects, different behavioral contexts and theories that explain the phenomenon. In addition, it was made a brief review about the recent literature of multitasking and media multitasking was.

Originality / Relevance: Fluent stimuli have several positive effects on the consumer in comparison to non-fluent stimuli; however, all fluency studies so far have considered individuals focused on a single activity during stimulus exposure, which does not represent the realistic behavior during exposures, since individuals usually engage in more than one activity at a time, especially when consuming media. This article highlights this gap and provides directions for future work.

Results: From the literature review, this article offers study propositions and a conceptual model that can guide future research on processing fluency (perceptual and conceptual) in situations where the consumer performs more than one activity at the same time.

Theoretical / methodological contributions: This article contributes to a better understanding of the effects of stimulus exposures through a better understanding of the effects of perceptual and conceptual fluency and how these effects can be affected by multitasking media behavior.