DISSERTATION

TITLE:A STUDY ON CONSUMER ATTITUDE TOWARDS ADVERTISING

Submitted to
INTRODUCTION
This article empirically explores the relationship between the general attitude towards
advertising and the attitude towards advertising in specific media: television and print. Our
results support the proposition that attitude towards advertising in general (AG) is an abstract
level construct while attitude towards television advertising (ATV) and attitude towards print
advertising (APRINT) are experience-based constructs in the consumer’s structure of
attitudes towards advertising.atitude towards advertising is an important concept as it is one
of the determinants of attitude towards specific advertisements can influence the way
customer respond to any particular advertising the proposed models empirically tested using
belief dimensions established I the literature and the result are important in helping us to get a
better understanding of attitude towards advertising in general and determinants. The
literature review examines extant literature on attitude towards advertising to set the proposed
model and hypothesis, which are detailed in conceptual framework, the methodology
section contains detailed about empirical study carried out.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Early research on attitude towards advertising (AG) has shown it to be a multidimensional
component, most often considered in economic or social terms (Bauer and Geyser, 1968;
Larkin, 1977; Anderson et al., 1978; Reid and Soley, 1982; Andrews, 1989). In addition,
Sandage and Leckenby (1980) proposed that AG is made up of an ‘instrument’ and an
‘institution’ component. For the beliefs about the institution of advertising, O’Donohoe
(1995) included beliefs about economic and social effects of advertising. Unfortunately,
O’Donohoe (1995) does not highlight the importance of determining the relationship between
attitude towards advertising in general and attitude towards advertising in specific media.
People hold different expectations about different media. For instance, it has been found that
people are likely to seek information from print and entertainment from broadcast (Speck and
Elliott, 1997). In most public surveys of attitudes towards advertising, only the abstract
attitude(AG) was asked when examining consumers’ attitude towards advertising in general
(see, for example, Zanot, 1981, 1984; Ducoffe, 1996; Previte, 1998; Shavittet al., 1998;
Schlosser et al., 1999; Mehta, 2000). People hold different expectations about different
media.
For instance, it has been found that people are likely to seek information from print and
entertainment from broadcast (Speck and Elliott, 1997), while many people still believe that
the internet is a tool or task-performing medium rather than an entertainment medium (Cho
and Cheon, 2004). Television and print media are also very dissimilar with respect to the way
they are used by their audience: television is a display medium with external pacing (which
means that the medium decides the moment and speed of information transfer), while print
media are search media with internal pacing by the reader (Smit, 1999). It has been found that
the internet ads are perceived to be more intrusive when compared with other media ads (Li
etal., 2002). In most public surveys of attitudes towards advertising, only the abstract attitude
(AG) was asked when examining consumers’ attitude towards advertising in general (see, for
example, Zanot, 1981, 1984; Ducoffe, 1996; Previte, 1998; Shavitt et al., 1998; Schlosser et
al., 1999; Mehta, 2000). For instance, in Shavitt et al.’s (1998) survey, they asked the
respondents to think of all forms of advertising when answering questions relating to their
thoughts and feelings about advertising. This kind of ambivalence in the treatment of media
context when asking subjects about their attitude towards advertising is problematic in that
when respondents answer questions relating to advertising beliefs, we do not know whether
their frame of reference is based on attitude towards print advertising, attitude towards
television advertising, or attitude towards online advertising, rather than attitude towards
advertising in general. Studies have shown that one’s predisposition to avoid ads in a medium
is related to categorical beliefs and perceptions about them (see, for example, Cronin and
Menelly, 1992; Lee and Lumpkin, 1992; Speck and Elliot, 1997, Cho and Cheon, 2004). Thus
given existing findings about different categorical beliefs and perceptions that people have
about media, including the predisposition to avoid ads in certain media, the resulting attitudes
towards advertising that are obtained in the extant attitude towards advertising studies may be
confounded. For instance, several studies have examined attitudes towards online advertising
in general (Ducoffe, 1996; Previte, 1998; Schlosser et al., 1999), but since there are many
different formats of online advertising (e.g. buttons, banner ads, pop-up ads, paid text links,
target sites, superstitials, etc.) each possessing distinctive features, this could complicate the
consumers’ perception of what constitutes online advertising and hence the reported attitudes
towards online advertising may differ (Burns and Lutz, 2006).

NEED FOR THE STUDY

The study will help us to get a better understanding attitude towards advertising in general
and its determinans.this understanding is needed before one can fully examine the many
theoretical relationships proposed in models of attitudes towards the ad, Advertisers may also
be interested in knowing consumers’ attitude towards different media advertising when
formulating their media strategy, also by measuring the attitude of general towards specific
medium will give us a glance about what customer prefer more for e.g. print advertising is
often associated with a provision of product information while television advertising is
perceived to provide more entertainment value(Haller,1974),so the study will give us a proper
insight about consumer attitude

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

 To find the relationship between personal belief and general advertising
 To find out relationship between personal belief and attitude towards print and
television advertising
 To find out the relationship between general attitude towards advertising and attitude
towards specific media advertising
HYPOTHESIS

H1: The personal experience belief construct ‘Product Information’ is positively related to
APRINT

H2: The personal experience belief construct ‘Hedonic’ is positively related to ATV

H3: The personal experience belief construct ‘Falsity/No sense’ is negatively related to ATV.

H4: The personal experience belief construct ‘Social Image’ is positively related to ATV.
H5: The macro belief construct ‘Good for the Economy’ is positively related to AG

H6: The macro belief construct ‘Materialism’ is negatively related to AG

SCOPE OF STUDY
The focus of this study is not to determine the already well-researched belief dimensions of
attitude towards advertising, but rather to determine the structural relationships between
general and specific attitude towards advertising. This research is focussing on customers
who are watching TV ads and reading print ads and it can be tested by using spss frequency
program.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Dependent Variables
+
Dependent Attitude towards print
• Variables
Independent variables
• Product advertising
• Attitude towards print advertising
• Attitude towards TV advertising
• Hedonic • Attitude
• Attitude towards
towards general TV
advertisement
• Social
• Falsity advertising
• Good for economy
• Attitude towards general
• Materialism
advertisement
 Product Attitude towards print

Advertising

Hedonic

Social
Attitude towards TV Advertising

Falsity

Good for economy

Attitude towards general

advertising

Materialism

RESEARCH QUESTION
Is there a relationship between the general attitude towards advertising and attitude towards
specific media advertising?
RESEARCH DESIGN
The proposed structural model (see Figure 2) consists of six exogenous and three endogenous
variables. The indicators used to measure each exogenous variable were the same as those
used by Pollay and Mittal (1993), except for the values corruption/materialism variable since
these two constructs were collapsed into one by Pollay and Mittal (1993). Three indicators
from these two constructs that were deemed to be most representative of the construct in
question were chosen.descriptive and explorartive research design and manipulation
checkwillbe done spss frequency program will be considered.
Sampling Unit(universe of the study)-The consumers who watch advertisements and reading
print advertising will be taken as the population for this study

Sampling Size

150-200 20-45 aged people in kerala

Sampling Technique

Stratified Random Sampling

METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION

The basic research method used in this study is self administratered questionnaire survey.the
questionnaire was adopted from pollay and mittal’s(1993) study except for those indicators
that were used to measure attitude towards television and print advertising.the indicators used
to measure attitude towards television advertising were adopted from mittal,s(1994)study on
the ‘public assesmenr of tv advertising’.the indicators used for print advertising are same as
those used for television
Questions were scaled using a five pin interval likert scale ranging from
‘1=strongly disagree to ‘5=strongly agree

DATA ANALYSIS

Altrough our sample was non-random,normality testing using the SPSS frequency program
showed that the skewness and kurtosis statistics for all the variables used in the model were
within the accepted range.frequency histograms also showed all variables having distributed
fairly evenly above and below the line of zero deviation from expected normal
values(Tabachnick and Fidell,2001)

Structured Equation Modelling Is used

DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

Descriptive Statistics

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation

PRODUCT 178 1.33 5.00 3.9532 .70755

SOCIAL 178 1.00 5.00 3.4813 .85918
HEDONIC 178 1.00 5.00 3.6199 .78653
GOODFORECONOMY 178 1.67 5.00 3.3352 .69117
FALSITY 178 1.33 5.00 3.1629 .62410
MATERIALISM 178 1.33 5.00 3.4139 .79886
AGA 178 1.00 5.00 3.3727 .65168
ATA 178 1.00 5.00 3.3109 .67657
ATPA 178 1.00 5.00 3.2210 .64939
Valid N (listwise) 178

Here we can see that the mean value which the population taken as 3.5 which most of them
agree to the questions product information has the highest mean and ATPA has least mean
there most of them prefer neutral

RELIABILITY ESTIMATES

Reliability Statistics

Cronbach's N of Items
Alpha

.716 9

Item-Total Statistics

Scale Mean if Scale Variance Corrected Item- Cronbach's

Item Deleted if Item Deleted Total Correlation Alpha if Item
Deleted

PRODUCT 26.9176 9.776 .578 .656

SOCIAL 27.3895 9.311 .531 .661
HEDONIC 27.2509 9.004 .680 .629
GOODFORECONOMY 27.5356 9.935 .555 .661
FALSITY 27.7079 13.098 -.145 .770
MATERIALISM 27.4569 11.116 .202 .729
AGA 27.4981 10.320 .499 .673
ATA 27.5599 10.868 .338 .700
ATPA 27.6498 11.066 .311 .704

It is shown that cronbachs alpha is above 0.7 hence we can see the data is reliable and
coefficient

STRUCTURED MODEL

Model fit and quality indices

-----------------------------------------------------------

Average path coefficient (APC)=0.214, P<0.001

Average R-squared (ARS)=0.271, P<0.001
Average adjusted R-squared (AARS)=0.260, P<0.001
Average block VIF (AVIF)=1.306, acceptable if <= 5, ideally <= 3.3
Average full collinearity VIF (AFVIF)=1.821, acceptable if <= 5, ideally <= 3.3
Tenenhaus GoF (GoF)=0.396, small >= 0.1, medium >= 0.25, large >= 0.36
Sympson's paradox ratio (SPR)=0.889, acceptable if >= 0.7, ideally = 1
R-squared contribution ratio (RSCR)=0.986, acceptable if >= 0.9, ideally = 1
Statistical suppression ratio (SSR)=1.000, acceptable if >= 0.7
Nonlinear bivariate causality direction ratio (NLBCDR)=0.944, acceptable if >= 0.7

MODEL 1

Here we can interpret that materialism has no positive relationship materrilistic thinking is
not valid in this era

People who which have mutually same attitude persist towards ATPAand ATV

Good for economy has positive relationship between ATGA people think advertising is good
for economy

MODEL 2
Model 2

Here we can interpret attitude towards print advertising has also the same relationship with
TV advertising like the model above

Since interlinking is not possible separating the model and analyse the model

FINDINGS

 Product information and attitude towards print advertising has no relationship

 Hedonic pleasure influence attitude towards print advertising
 Attitude towards print advertising has relationship with attitude towards tv advertising
 Customers who often like print advertising have same attitude towards tv advertising
 Good for economy is significant between attitude towards general advertising
 Social image is not supported hence the hypothesis is not supported
 ATPA remains as a separate construct in the consumer’s mind and that ATV and AG
are mutually reinforcing one’s attitude towards advertising in general may actually be
a reflection of one’s attitude towards television advertising

REFERENCE

1. Alwitt, L.F. and Prabhaker, P.R. (1992) ‘Functional and Belief Dimensions of
Attitudes to Television’, Journal of Advertising Research 32(5): 30–42
 2. Reid, L.N. and Soley, L.C. (1982) ‘Generalized and Personalized Attitudes Towards
Advertising’s Social and Economic Effects’, Journal of Advertising 11(3): 3–7.
3. Resnik, A. and Stern, B.L. (1977) ‘Analyses of Information Content in Television
Ads’, Journal of Marketing 41( January): 50–53.
Sandage, C.H. and Leckenby, J.D. (1980) ‘Students’ Attitudes Towards Advertising:
Institution vs. Instrument’, Journal of Advertising 9(2): 29–32.
4.Zanot,E (1984) ‘Public Attitude toward Advertising’ The American Experience’,
International journal of advertising 3(1);3-15