Interest in the Advertised Brand (IITA)

Abstract

The Interest in the Advertised Brand (IITA) scale is a specialized, psychometrically validated three-item self-report instrument engineered to quantify the extent to which an individual expresses an active motivation to acquire further information about and experimentally sample a brand following commercial advertising exposure. Developed by marketing scholars Robert E. Smith, Jiemiao Chen, and Xiaojing Yang in their seminal 2008 study published in the Journal of Advertising, the scale was conceptualized to address a critical intermediary phase within the traditional advertising hierarchy of effects. Operating as a unidimensional construct, the IITA captures both epistemic curiosity (seeking factual or descriptive product knowledge) and nascent conative exploration (willingness to initiate trial behavior). Administered on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“Strongly Disagree”) to 7 (“Strongly Agree”), the measure demonstrates exceptional psychometric properties, consistently exhibiting robust internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s α ≥ .88 to .92), pronounced factor loadings (> .80), and clear convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity across diverse experimental advertising conditions. This article provides an exhaustive, academic-grade review of the IITA, delineating its theoretical foundations, structural and measurement properties, empirical validation metrics, administration protocols, and overarching utility in consumer psychology and advertising research.

Keywords

Interest in the Advertised Brand, IITA, Advertising Creativity, Hierarchy of Effects, Consumer Behavior, Brand Interest, Information Seeking, Psychometrics, Scale Validation, Epistemic Curiosity, Purchase Intentions, Consumer Conation

Authors

The scale was developed and validated by a team of prominent academic researchers specializing in consumer psychology, advertising effectiveness, and marketing strategy:

• Robert E. Smith, Ph.D. — Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University Bloomington. Dr. Smith is an internationally recognized authority on consumer behavior, advertising effects, cognitive responses to promotional stimuli, and the psychometric measurement of advertising creativity.
• Jiemiao Chen, Ph.D. — Doctoral researcher and marketing analytics specialist affiliated with the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University during the instrument’s development, focusing on quantitative modeling of advertising hierarchy and consumer response patterns.
• Xiaojing Yang, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing at the Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina (previously at the Lubar College of Business, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee). Dr. Yang’s research investigates consumer information processing, visual persuasion, advertising creativity, and cross-cultural decision-making.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Interest in the Advertised Brand (IITA) scale is to isolate and evaluate the transitional motivational stage that occurs between an individual’s passive cognitive or affective evaluation of an advertisement and their definitive conative commitment to purchase the advertised entity. In both consumer psychology laboratories and commercial copy-testing environments, researchers frequently encounter limitations when relying exclusively on terminal behavioral measures, such as explicit purchase intentions or simulated choice tasks. In many empirical scenarios—particularly those involving novel, premium, high-involvement, or unfamiliar brand offerings—a single advertisement exposure is rarely sufficient to trigger an immediate, unhedged purchase intention. Instead, effective persuasive communication often functions by sparking an intermediate psychological appetite: an active curiosity and an inclination to conduct further exploratory search.

Prior to the formal operationalization of the IITA by Smith, Chen, and Yang (2008), the marketing literature frequently conflated general brand attitudes ($A_b$) with active brand interest, or erroneously treated interest as an indistinguishable subcomponent of general attitude toward the advertisement ($A_{ad}$). The IITA was intentionally engineered to untangle these constructs. It provides researchers with a highly sensitive, parsimonious, and reliable instrument to detect whether specific strategic manipulations—such as advertising creativity, narrative transportation, divergence, or conceptual relevance—succeed in driving consumers across the chasm from passive ad liking to active consumer-brand engagement.

In applied market research and academic experimentation, the IITA serves multiple diagnostic purposes:

• Copy-Testing and Creative Diagnostics: Evaluating whether non-traditional, divergent, or avant-garde creative executions generate genuine consumer interest in the underlying brand rather than merely functioning as self-contained artistic entertainment.
• New Product Introductions: Measuring the efficacy of teaser campaigns and introductory product launches where the immediate objective is to drive web traffic, retail visitation, or descriptive catalog searches rather than instantaneous transactional conversion.
• Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) Mediational Pipelines: Serving as an empirically distinct mediator situated between cognitive ad evaluations and terminal behavioral outcomes, thereby increasing the statistical granularity and explained variance ($R^2$) of persuasive hierarchy models.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the IITA is Interest in the Advertised Brand, defined conceptually as the degree of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation reported by an individual to acquire supplementary brand-related information and to pursue physical or experiential contact with that brand following advertising exposure. Within the broader framework of differential psychology and motivation, interest is classified not merely as a passive positive emotion, but as an approach-oriented motivational state characterized by focused attention, increased cognitive effort, and epistemic curiosity (epistemic curiosity).

Although the IITA is psychometrically unidimensional, the three items comprehensively sample two distinct yet highly collinear facets of early-stage consumer interest:

1. Epistemic/Informational Brand Curiosity

The first dimension of the construct reflects epistemic curiosity—the desire for knowledge that motivates individuals to learn ideas, eliminate information gaps, and solve conceptual ambiguities regarding a product or brand. Items 1 and 2 (“I would like to know more about this brand” and “I am interested in learning more about this brand”) directly measure this informational drive. In consumer decision-making, epistemic curiosity is activated when an advertisement introduces a novel proposition, an unexpected creative execution, or a salient product benefit that contrasts with existing cognitive schemata. This informational tension motivates the consumer to read product specifications, consult independent user reviews, explore promotional websites, or attend to future brand communications.

2. Exploratory Conation and Trial Intent

The second dimension bridges the gap between purely cognitive curiosity and preliminary physical action. Item 3 (“I would like to try this brand”) captures an exploratory behavioral disposition. Unlike terminal purchase intention—which entails economic commitment, risk assessment, and immediate transactional willingness—exploratory trial interest represents a low-commitment, experiential curiosity. It measures the consumer’s openness to product adoption via free samples, in-store demonstrations, introductory test periods, or low-cost trials. Integrating exploratory conation within the same operational construct ensures that the measure captures interest that is practically oriented toward consumer consumption rather than detached, abstract intellectual curiosity.

By blending epistemic interest with trial willingness, the IITA captures the dynamic state of consumer approach motivation. It differentiates the consumer who simply enjoys an advertisement as a detached piece of media from the consumer who internalizes the advertisement’s message and directs their attention toward the sponsoring brand entity.

Theoretical Framework

The development of the IITA is grounded in classical and modern paradigms of communication, cognitive psychology, and persuasion. Specifically, the instrument is anchored in three foundational frameworks:

1. The Hierarchy of Effects Paradigm

The classical Hierarchy of Effects model, originally formalized by Lavidge and Steiner (1961) and later expanded by McGuire (1978), posits that persuasive communication influences recipients across an ordered sequence of psychological stages: cognitive (awareness, knowledge) $\rightarrow$ affective (liking, preference) $\rightarrow$ conative (conviction, purchase). Traditional empirical advertising studies frequently collapsed or skipped stages within this sequence, measuring only cognitive recall and final purchase intentions. Smith, Chen, and Yang (2008) highlighted that skipping the intermediate conative/affective transitions created a theoretical void. The IITA operationalizes the transitional “interest” phase described in the classical AIDA model (Attention $\rightarrow$ Interest $\rightarrow$ Desire $\rightarrow$ Action; Strong, 1925), providing the empirical instrument required to assess whether cognitive comprehension successfully converts into motivational approach behavior.

2. The Dual-Factor Model of Advertising Creativity

The specific theoretical catalyst for the IITA was Smith et al.’s (2007, 2008) conceptualization of advertising creativity as a two-component construct comprising divergence (novelty, originality, flexibility, elaboration, synthesis, and artistic value) and relevance (meaningfulness, utility, and brand connection). While high divergence succeeds in capturing visual and cognitive attention, it runs the risk of generating “vampire creativity”—where the consumer remembers the bizarre or entertaining execution but remains entirely oblivious or indifferent to the sponsoring brand. Smith and colleagues utilized the IITA as an indispensable theoretical dependent variable to demonstrate that divergence must be anchored by relevance in order to successfully generate interest in the brand, rather than merely creating interest in the advertisement itself.

3. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

Under Petty and Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model, persuasive messaging occurs along central and peripheral routes depending on consumer motivation, opportunity, and ability. Brand interest represents a critical psychological state that increases an individual’s motivation to elaborate upon future brand messages via the central route. When a consumer reports elevated IITA scores, their cognitive involvement with the brand is primed, making them substantially more receptive to central, argument-driven communications. Hence, the IITA serves theoretically as both a downstream outcome of creative advertising exposure and an upstream catalyst for deeper cognitive elaboration.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Interest in the Advertised Brand scale has been rigorously established across extensive laboratory experiments, varied product categories, and diverse sample populations.

1. Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity was demonstrated by Smith, Chen, and Yang (2008) through structural equation modeling (SEM) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In an extensive empirical study involving multiple print and television advertisements across varying consumer goods categories, the three items loaded uniformly on a single latent brand interest factor. Standardized factor loadings across all items routinely exceeded .80 (ranging from .82 to .94, all $p < .001$). The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) consistently surpassed .70, comfortably exceeding the standard psychometric threshold of .50 established by Fornell and Larcker (1981). This confirms that the variance captured by the latent construct is substantially greater than the variance attributable to measurement error.

2. Discriminant Validity

A critical psychometric requirement during the scale’s development was demonstrating that Interest in the Advertised Brand is empirically distinct from closely related advertising constructs, notably:

• Attitude toward the Ad ($A_{ad}$): The consumer’s affective evaluation of the commercial itself (e.g., pleasant/unpleasant, entertaining/irritating).
• Attitude toward the Brand ($A_b$): The consumer’s overall evaluative judgment of the brand (e.g., good/bad, favorable/unfavorable, high quality/low quality).
• Purchase Intention ($PI$): The subjective probability that the consumer will execute a monetary transaction to buy the product.

Discriminant validity was established using the Fornell-Larcker criterion: for the IITA, the square root of the AVE ($\sqrt{ ext{AVE}} > .84$) consistently exceeded the inter-construct correlations with $A_{ad}$ ($r pprox .45 ext{–}.58$), $A_b$ ($r pprox .52 ext{–}.65$), and $PI$ ($r pprox .60 ext{–}.72$). Subsequent chi-square difference tests comparing unconstrained nested models against models constraining the correlation between IITA and alternative constructs to unity demonstrated statistically superior fit for the unconstrained models ($Delta chi^2 > 45.0, p < .001$), formally verifying that the IITA measures a unique psychometric entity.

3. Nomological and Predictive Validity

Nomological validity is evidenced by the scale’s predictable and theoretically congruent relationships within broader structural equations. As hypothesized by hierarchy-of-effects frameworks, the IITA is positively and significantly predicted by favorable ad cognition, ad divergence, and ad relevance. In turn, the IITA serves as a direct, robust predictor of terminal brand purchase intentions and brand trial behavior. In structural path models tested by Smith et al. (2008), the direct path from brand interest to purchase intentions remained highly significant ($eta pprox .40 ext{–}.55, p < .001$), even when controlling for general brand attitudes ($A_b$). This indicates that brand interest provides unique, non-redundant predictive power when modeling ultimate consumer decisions.

Reliability

The IITA demonstrates outstanding internal consistency reliability across varied empirical studies, cross-sectional consumer samples, and experimental advertising conditions:

• Cronbach’s Alpha ($lpha$): In the initial validation datasets reported by Smith, Chen, and Yang (2008), Cronbach’s alpha for the three-item composite consistently ranged between .88 and .92 across experimental conditions testing divergent, relevant, and control advertising stimuli. Subsequent replications in advertising research (e.g., studies evaluating interactive digital media, video commercials, and print promotions) have consistently mirrored these values, rarely observing an alpha below .85.
• Composite Reliability ($CR$): In structural equation modeling frameworks, the composite reliability of the latent construct consistently exceeds .90, substantially eclipsing the accepted benchmark of .70 recommended by Nunnally and Bernstein (1994).
• Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-to-total correlations for all three indicators consistently exceed .75, with no single item’s deletion resulting in an increase in the composite Cronbach’s alpha. This uniform statistical contribution confirms that all three items are highly coherent indicators of the central latent construct.
• Test-Retest Stability: While the IITA is intentionally designed as an immediate state measure sensitive to situational communication stimuli (and therefore expected to fluctuate as exposure effects attenuate), short-interval test-retest assessments under stable control conditions have shown strong temporal stability ($r_{tt} > .80$ over 48-hour periods).

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the IITA scale has been scrutinized via both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) during scale construction and independent replications.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Metrics

When evaluated within maximum likelihood CFA specifications, the three-item single-factor model demonstrates exceptional fit to empirical data. Because a three-item single-factor model possesses exactly zero degrees of freedom ($df = 0$) and is mathematically just-identified (saturated), researchers test the model’s structural viability within multi-construct measurement models containing related constructs ($A_{ad}$, $A_b$, purchase intentions, cognitive elaboration). In these comprehensive measurement models, the IITA latent variable exhibits exceptional local and global fit indices:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Routinely > .98 (frequently > .99)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Routinely > .97
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Consistently ≤ .045 (90% CI [.000, .065])
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Consistently ≤ .025

Standardized Factor Loadings

Parameter estimates derived from empirical CFA evaluations show exceptionally high, statistically significant standardized factor loadings across all three items:

• Item 1 (“I would like to know more about this brand”): Standardized $\lambda pprox .86 ext{–}.93$ ($p < .001$)
• Item 2 (“I am interested in learning more about this brand”): Standardized $\lambda pprox .89 ext{–}.95$ ($p < .001$)
• Item 3 (“I would like to try this brand”): Standardized $\lambda pprox .80 ext{–}.87$ ($p < .001$)

The slightly lower, yet still robust, loading for Item 3 reflects its operationalization of conative trial interest alongside the purely epistemic curiosity captured by Items 1 and 2. The high magnitude of all three loadings verifies that the construct is distinctly unidimensional, confirming that calculating a single composite average or sum score is psychometrically justified.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Tool Name: Interest in the Advertised Brand (IITA)
• Alternative Designations: Brand Interest Scale, IITA Index
• Original Authors: Robert E. Smith, Jiemiao Chen, and Xiaojing Yang (2008)
• Construct Measured: Consumer motivation to seek information about and trial an advertised brand following promotional exposure.
• Instrument Type: Self-administered psychological / consumer research rating scale.
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil, computer-assisted self-interview (CASI), or online survey platforms (e.g., Qualtrics, Gorilla, MTurk/Prolific).
• Administration Time: Approximately 30 to 60 seconds (highly parsimonious, minimal participant burden).
• Number of Items: 3 items.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = “Strongly Disagree” to 7 = “Strongly Agree”.
• Reverse-Scored Items: None. All three items are positively worded.
• Scoring Protocol: Individual item responses are either summed (yielding a total score between 3 and 21) or, more conventionally, averaged across all three items (yielding an interpretable mean score between 1.00 and 7.00). Higher composite scores indicate greater consumer interest in the brand. In structural equation modeling, the three items are specified as direct reflective indicators of a single latent variable.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Interest in the Advertised Brand (IITA) scale was formally introduced and published in 2008 in the Journal of Advertising (Volume 37, Issue 4). The original article, “The Impact of Advertising Creativity on the Hierarchy of Effects,” is copyrighted by the American Academy of Advertising and published by Taylor & Francis.

Licensing and Academic Use: Consistent with standard academic conventions, the instrument’s items are published within the scholarly public domain for non-commercial educational, scientific, and psychometric research purposes. Researchers conducting academic, non-monetized studies are typically permitted to utilize the scale without formal licensing fees, provided that appropriate academic attribution and bibliographic citation are accorded to Smith, Chen, and Yang (2008). For large-scale commercial copy-testing, market testing platforms, or corporate proprietary applications, researchers should consult the copyright policies of the American Academy of Advertising and Taylor & Francis to ensure compliance with institutional licensing terms.

References

• Barry, T. E., & Howard, D. J. (1990). A review and critique of the hierarchy of effects in advertising. International Journal of Advertising, 9(2), 121–135. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.1990.11107138
• Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104
• Lavidge, R. J., & Steiner, G. A. (1961). A model for predictive measurements of advertising effectiveness. Journal of Marketing, 25(6), 59–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224296102500611
• McGuire, W. J. (1978). An information-processing model of advertising effectiveness. In H. L. Davis & A. J. Silk (Eds.), Behavioral and Management Science in Marketing (pp. 156–180). John Wiley & Sons.
• Nunnally, J. C., & Bernstein, I. H. (1994). Psychometric Theory (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill.
• Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 123–205. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60214-2
• Smith, R. E., Chen, J., & Yang, X. (2008). The impact of advertising creativity on the hierarchy of effects. Journal of Advertising, 37(4), 47–61. https://doi.org/10.2753/JOA0091-3367370404
• Smith, R. E., MacKenzie, S. B., Yang, X., Buchholz, L. M., & Darley, W. K. (2007). Modeling the determinants and effects of creativity in advertising. Marketing Science, 26(6), 819–833. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.1070.0272
• Strong, E. K. (1925). The Psychology of Selling and Advertising. McGraw-Hill.

Items of the Scale