Informational and Transformational Advertising Content Scale

What it measures

The ITAC operationalises Puto and Wells' (1984) foundational typology of advertising message content as either informational or transformational. Informational advertising provides consumers with factual, verifiable, and relevant data about the product — information that allows rational evaluation of product benefits and that facilitates pre-purchase decision making (e.g., ingredient claims, price comparisons, performance specifications). Transformational advertising creates associations between the experience of using the brand and a set of psychological characteristics that become linked to brand usage — it transforms the subjective experience of using the brand by imbuing it with richness, warmth, excitement, or other psychological benefits not intrinsic to the product itself (e.g., aspirational lifestyle imagery, sensory pleasure appeals). The distinction has profound implications for advertising strategy: informational ads are more effective for high-involvement, high-risk, utilitarian product categories; transformational ads are more effective for hedonic, experiential, and image-based categories. The two dimensions are partially independent — an advertisement can contain both informational and transformational elements simultaneously. The ITAC enables researchers and practitioners to classify ad content along both dimensions and test their differential effects on attitude toward the ad, brand attitude, and purchase intention.

Response format

7-point Likert (1=strongly disagree to 7=strongly agree); two subscales scored separately; subscales averaged

Scale items

Informational Ad Content — INF (4 items): the degree to which the advertisement presents factual, verifiable, and decision-relevant product information. 7-point Likert (1=strongly disagree to 7=strongly agree). Items averaged.

• This ad presents factual information about the product.
• This ad gives me useful information about [brand].
• This ad tells me about product features that are relevant to my decision.
• This ad communicates concrete facts that I can evaluate and verify.

Transformational Ad Content — TRN (4 items): the degree to which the advertisement creates a rich imagery and psychological experience associated with brand use. 7-point Likert. Items averaged.

• This ad makes me feel that using [brand] would be a pleasant experience.
• After seeing this ad, I can almost imagine what it is like to use [brand].
• This ad connects [brand] with a feeling or experience I find appealing.
• This ad is more about the feeling of using [brand] than about the product itself.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

The informational and transformational dimensions are not mutually exclusive; an ad may score high on both. Report subscales separately. The ITAC can be used as a manipulation check in studies where informational vs. transformational ads are experimentally varied, or as a measure of perceived ad content in naturalistic studies. Transformational content is strongly predictive of Aad in low-involvement and hedonic product categories; informational content is more predictive of attitude confidence and resistance to counter-persuasion. Substitute the target brand name for '[brand]' throughout.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Puto, C.P., & Wells, W.D. (1984). Informational and transformational advertising: The differential effects of time. Advances in Consumer Research, 11, 638–643.

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