Consumer Responses to Advertising on the Internet: The Effect of Individual Difference on Ambivalence and Avoidance

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to understand the effect that individual characteristics have on consumer advertising processing under high- and low-interactivity circumstances on the Web. Tests on the relationship between individual differences and advertising responses form the basis of this empirical study on the Web. The results indicated that consumers have a higher tendency to avoid or experience ambivalence about Internet advertisements under low-interactivity circumstances, and attitudinal ambivalence lead to avoidance when responding to advertisements on the Internet. Personality variables are the main factors in consumer decision-making behaviors and Internet characteristics, such as levels of interactivity, can greatly influence the effectiveness of advertising in online environments. Advertising credibility could influence people's consumer attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors over time on the Web.

An Examination of Effects of Credibility and Congruency on Consumer Responses to Banner Advertisements

“…Subsequently, research has investigated the effects of Web site or Web site context, and consumer-related characteristics on banner ad effectiveness (Cho 2003;Goldsmith and Lafferty 2002;Jin and Villegas 2007;Moore, Stammerjohan, and Coulter 2005;Newman, Stem, and Sprott 2004). What so far has received little research in Web advertising contexts, in spite of a plethora of studies in conventional media settings demonstrating the significant role of source credibility in determining advertising effectiveness, is source credibility (e.g., Goldberg and Hartwick 1990;Goldsmith, Lafferty, and Newell 2000;Lafferty and Goldsmith 1999).…”

Consumers' attitude toward Facebook advertising

“…The entertainment component is also positively related to consumer attitude towards advertising (Ducoffe, 1996;Hassan et al, 2013;Schlosser et al, 1999). The entertainment content in advertising arouses interest (Wang and Sun, 2010), thus the ads with higher visual and entertainment complexity tend to generate a more positive attitude in individuals and may also positively influence their buying behaviour toward the advertised brand or product (Ducoffe, 1995;Jin and Villegas, 2007). On the other hand, consumer irritation towards advertising is a result of the ads being perceived as offensive and not informative Prabhaker, 1992, 1994;Ducoffe, 1995), annoying (Ducoffe, 1995(Ducoffe, , 1996Hassan et al, 2013) or evasive (Taylor et al, 2011).…”

“…The negative attitude leads to ad avoidance behaviour (Jin and Villegas, 2007;Rojas-Méndez et al, 2009;Speck and Elliott, 1997). Consumers' ad avoidance strategies encompass all actions the users may take to reduce their exposure to the ad content (Speck and Elliott, 1997), such as performing other tasks during the advertisement, leave the location or site, scroll or close the pop-up windows (Cho and Cheon, 2004;Speck and Elliott, 1997).…”

Online Advertising and Viral Campaigns

“…admuncher.com/). Another solution for organizations or publishers of advertisements is to make online ads more personalized (i.e., more targeted) and with more interaction (Jin and Villegas 2007). Moreover, the literature presents viral campaigns as a possible solution to ad blindness or ad avoidance.…”