Table 1: Recommendations to enhance the theoretical and ecological validity of methodologies tackling non-conscious perception in marketing communication.
1 Refer to awareness definition and the two thresholds of Cheesman and Merikle [10].
2 Rigorously check the non-conscious nature by adopting up a four-step procedure:
  1. Conceptually dissociate conscious from non-conscious processing through an operational measure of unawareness.
  2. Use by this measure to show that the considered stimulus is below the subjective threshold.
  3. Highlight the presence of non-conscious processing and effects via a second measure (dependent variables measure).
  4. tudy non-conscious processing and effects according to an experimental design.
3 Associate a set of unawareness control criteria:
  1. Control via direct measures, whenever possible: verbalization and/or psycho-sensorial techniques (e.g. eye-tracking).
  2. Control via post-hoc verbal measures as soon as possible after exposure, in order to check:
    1. the absence of experiment-demand awareness;
    2. the absence of perception awareness, either by means of a post-experiment recall questionnaire while giving progressive cues, or if possible, by testing subliminal stimulus recognition.
  3. Do check-ups for each subject in view of inter-subject variability.
4 Conduct research specific to marketing communication and closer to everyday life conditions, on:
  1. Visual or auditory perception of a brand appearing in the central section of the sensorial field, though non-detectable in focused-attention mode (e.g. distant vision of a brand).
  2. Non-conscious processing and effects of a brand displayed in the peripheral visual field.
  3. Non-conscious processing and effects of a brand explicitly present in the auditory field (radio in dichotic listening) or in the central visual field, though non-perceived through lack of attention.