Are we measuring the same attitude? Understanding media effects on attitude towards advertising

Abstract

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 (A G ) is an abstract level construct while attitude towards television advertising (A TV ) and attitude towards print advertising (A PRINT ) are experience-based constructs in the consumer's structure of attitudes towards advertising. We found a significantly negative reciprocal relationship between A TV and A PRINT , a significantly positive reciprocal relationship between A TV and A G , and a non-significant relationship between A PRINT and A G . Macro level belief factors like 'good for the economy' and 'materialism' are related positively and negatively to A G , respectively. The personal experience belief factor of 'product information' is positively related to A PRINT while personal experience belief factors like 'hedonic' and 'falsity/no sense' are related positively, and 'social image' is related negatively, to A TV . Implications for future research and advertising practices are discussed. Key Words • attitude towards advertising • attitude towards print advertising • attitude towards television advertising • media effects • structural equation model

Attitudes toward Specific Advertising Media (AM): Informative or Manipulative?

“…For example, one of the functions of television which is highly inter-correlated with people's attitudes towards television advertising is its entertainment function: people find television advertisements fun to watch (Alwitt & Prabhaker, 1992). Research by Tan and Chia (2007) also supports the notion that the hedonic/pleasure function of advertising is positive and significant in predicting attitudes towards television advertising.…”

“…Print advertising is a good source of product information, and many previous studies support this view (Tan & Chia, 2007;La Ferle et al, 2000). Leong et al (1998) carried out a cluster analysis and produced a dendrogram showing that attributes such as creating brand, product or corporate awareness; communicating product, brand image and corporate image, are the best way to characterize the press (or print advertising media).…”

“…Tan and Chia (2007) also measure this construct with a set of Likert-scaled items, for example 'Overall, I consider television advertising to be a bad thing'; 'Overall, I like television advertising' and 'I consider television advertising to be very essential'. This study uses semantic differential scale items in order to be consistent with the items used by (Tan & Chia, 2007) therefore, three semantic differential pairs of adjectives are utilized in this study. The adjectives are good/bad, negative/positive and essential/not essential.…”

“…This research study adopts indicators used by Pollay and Mittal (1993), Petrovic and Marinov (2007) and Tan and Chia (2007) to measure the correlation between personal experience and use of advertising and attitude toward advertising in specific media. Therefore, the research framework has multiple indicators of personal experience and use of advertising: (i) product information, (ii) social role/image, (iii) hedonic/pleasure and (iv) falsity (the potential to distort, mislead, misinform and exaggerate)…”

“…This scale is developed based on the items based on research by (Larkin, 1977) and (Tan & Chia, 2007). The items are 'in general advertising in misleading'; 'advertising should be more realistic'; 'most advertising insults the intelligence of the average consumer'; 'in general, advertisements present a true picture of the product advertised'; 'advertising often persuades people to buy things they really don't need or should not buy'; and 'there are too many exaggerations in advertising'.…”