INTRODUCTION
It has been almost a decade since consumer researchers first used attribution theory to explicate some effects of advertising messages (e.g., Settle, 1972; Settle and Golden, 1974). During this period authors sought to establish the applicability of attribution concepts to the advertising communications context and to validate some predictions derived from the various attribution theory frameworks. Despite the fact that attribution theory became an extremely popular subject of research in social psychology and despite the early intense interest of consumer researchers, attribution theory has never become a dominant force in the consumer behavior literature. Although some might claim that the field was simply overrun with more cognitively-based information processing concerns, others might also note the seemingly difficult task of finding the right place for attribution theory concepts within the sort of substantive problem areas generally investigated by consumer researchers.
The three papers presented in this session all bring attribution ideas to bear on the substantive area of advertising effectiveness. Two of the papers, those by Sparkman and by Hunt, Domzal, and Kernan, test some ways of influencing attributions about the source of communications messages and illustrate perhaps why attribution research seems to be fading away. These studies apply attribution theory with considerable skill. but in doing so they show how inadequate the theory is for dealing with some of the important questions concerning the effects of advertising messages and their ultimate persuasive power. The third paper, by Dillon, Allen, Weinberger, and Madden, is methodologically based, but ironically may show one way out of the theoretical thicket. These authors explore some fundamental premises of attribution theory, and in doing so they indirectly show us how we may extend it and integrate it with other views of how communications work.
My comments on the three papers will deal with selected conceptual issues, and not primarily with methodological o philosophical ones. I begin with an examination of two assumptions underlying the papers by Sparkman and by Hunt et al. that affect the application of attribution theory to the area of communications. The second section expands the discussion to explore the limitations of current applications for explaining advertising effectiveness.