Antecedents of General Consumer Attitude Towards Religious Advertising in Pakistan

Abstract

Using positivistic perspective, this paper seeks to investigate the antecedents of general consumer attitude towards religious advertising in Pakistan. We tried to check the impact of various aspects including affection, hedonic pleasure, social image, product information, attitude as an instrument and attitude as an institution on religious advertising. For this purpose a research design based on regression analysis was used as it is an appropriate way to test relationships between six predictor variables and one predicted dependent variable. Online survey was used to investigate the antecedents of the General Attitude towards Religious Advertising (GARA). In total, 576 closed-ended questionnaires were filled from respondents. After analysis, the research shows that Attitude Institution (AI), affection and social image are strong predictors of the GARA. However, other variables like attitude instrument, product information and hedonic pleasure are not significant predictors. Moreover social image and product information have negative relation with GARA. As this study involved students as a sample, not diverse as a group in terms of demographics, the results cannot be generalized to the population. The findings of this study serve as the guiding tool for marketing professionals especially for top management. This study helps in adopting the appropriate appeal to influence customers through religious advertising. This paper fills a gap in the research as there were few studies done on the subject. This paper has presented the ways to improve practices of religious advertising.