The Bridge from Text to Mind: Adapting Reader-Response Theory to Consumer Research

Abstract

Consumer research on advertising response has gradually separated the act of reading an ad from the acquisition of brand information. Because the advertising text is the pathway through which brand information is accessed, current models truncate the process that leads to response in a way that distorts our view of both advertising and the mind that reads it. This author proposes that reader-response theory would help researchers study the process of reading as an essential link between advertising text and consumer response. Reader-response theory is a movement within literary criticism that emphasizes the study of reading over formal textual analysis.