Abstract: As one of the most important concepts in market research, involvement is particularly of interest in the field of advertising psychology. It is shown that almost all the stages in the process of advertising communication are subject to the influence of involvement, such as brand searching, information processing, attitude changing, and the formation of purchase intention. The present study was to have an investigation into how information processing of rational advertising appeal could be influenced by the combination of personal involvement and product involvement with eye-tracking technique to 32 (18 females and 14 males) college student volunteers, based on the ELM model and the FCB Grid model.
The design formed a 2(high versus low personal involvement)×2(high versus low product involvement)×2(strong versus weak rational advertising appeal) mixed factorial, with personal involvement as the between-subject and product involvement and rational advertising appeal the two within-subject independent variables. The dependent variables were number of fixations, the index of information amount the participants receive, and duration of fixation, which indicates the depth of information processing.
The results of number of fixations revealed that the main effects for personal involvement and product involvement were significant. Audience had a bigger number of fixations under high than low personal involvement condition and the advertising products of high product involvement received a bigger number of fixations than those of low product involvement. The results of fixation duration showed that the interaction between personal involvement and product involvement was significant. The simple main effect for product involvement was not significant when personal involvement was low, but when it was high, however, advertising products of high product involvement had a significant longer duration of fixation than that of low product involvement. The interaction between product involvement and rational advertising appeal was significant. The difference of fixation duration between strong and weak rational advertising appeal was not significant at the level of low product involvement, but at the level of high product involvement, however, audience had significantly longer fixation duration for the product advertisement of strong rational advertising appeal than for that of weak rational advertising appeal.
It was concluded that the participants could obtain more advertisement information as the degree of personal involvement or product involvement increased. The processing depth of brand information could be greater for the advertisement of strong than weak rational advertising appeal only when the product involvement was high. Meanwhile, only when personal involvement was high could product information of high product involvement receive higher degree of processing than that of low product involvement. Therefore, rational advertising appeal could mainly be appropriate for the communication of the product of high product involvement, which could only be efficient when personal involvement was also high. Besides, the study also provided some suggestions on further research and discussions on the implication for advertising activities.

Key words: personal involvement, product involvement, rational advertising appeal, eye movements