Public Perceptions of Subliminal Advertising: Why Practitioners Shouldn't Ignore this Issue
Martha Rogers and Kirk H Smith
What is commonly referred to as 'subliminal advertising' - that is, embedding material in print, audio or video messages so faintly that they are not consciously perceived - has been the focus of a great deal of attention for more than three decades (Saegert, 1979; Hart and McDaniel, 1982; Synodinos, 1988). The term 'subthreshold effects', first popularized by Packard in 1957, preceded the popular notion of 'subliminal advertising', whose originator is James Vicary. Vicary was a New Jersey marketing researcher who...