A Non-Intrusive Experiment to Examine the Visual Attention Data on Exposure to a Brand Using Eye Tracking

The objective of this study is to understand the influence of articulation on sports sponsorship posters of a sporting event. An eye tracking experiment was conducted to examine the visual attention data on exposure to the sponsor’s brand while viewing an advertisement poster. The respondents were asked to fill out a questionnaire based on what they could recall while viewing the poster. Quantitative data, along with the eye tracking data, was analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U test and ANOVA. Respondents between the age group of 20 to 42 years were approached using the convenience sampling method. The findings of the study ascertained that articulating an advertisement sports poster is unlikely to have a substantial impact on visual attention and brand awareness of the consumer, instead diverting the attention away from the brand to the articulated text. Furthermore, the articulation effects of sports posters depend on the degree of congruence between sponsor-event pairing, which influences visual attention, resulting in a stronger brand recall when congruence is low. This study adds to the body of knowledge on the impact of articulation in sports sponsorship, where the extant literature is still limited. Future research could consider other types of articulation, such as analogical and socio-financial, and use other techniques, such as Electroencephalogram (EEG) and Functional Magnetic Resonance (FMR), to arrive at better results. This study aimed to empirically test the effect of articulation on sports posters considering the impact of ad-design elements on attention and media planning.