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.
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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