Does constant advertising change consumer attitude?

Abstract

It is argued that advertising must be utilitarian, however the perception of viewers’ response indicate that it is far from the truth. This study investigates these issues from a consumer point of view and explores the attitudes and their perceptions towards Television advertising. For the last 25 years, there has been a massive spurt of television channels offering a plethora of programs are interceded by commercial breaks. This paper explores the attitudes of the viewer’s towards television advertising. The results indicate that the information content is very low, there is too much of falsity and deceptiveness. There is no effective regulation by regulatory authorities; and much of television advertising goes unnoticed by viewers. With all these negative perceptions about advertising, the viewer’s still feel that advertising is essential but not at the level that it is being telecast with so much frequency. The viewers also feel that advertising creates affluence attitude and leads to cultural degradation of society, but these issues have low priority. To conclude, advertising per se is not bad but an obsession by the advertisers will have a bad effect on the society. Corresponding author: Mohammed Usman Email addresses for the corresponding author: jscho@hufs.ac.kr First submission received: 18th March 2018 Revised submission received: 6th July 2018 Accepted: 17th September 2018 Introduction Exposure to television is almost inevitable in modern life (Russell and Lane 1996). In fact, television has changed our use of time far more than any other technological development (Robinson 1990). For many, watching television has become the main leisure experience (Davies and Rojas-Mendez: 2002). Despite the growing popularity of the Internet and computer games, television is still the primary electronic medium with which children engage (Roberts et al: 2005). In the United States, there are more TV sets than there are toilets (American Psychological Association, 1993). In India, a household may not have an independent toilet or own toilet but owns a television set. Television reaches more of an advertiser’s potential customers than does any other medium, and adults spend significantly more time with television than with any other medium (Television Bureau of Advertising, 2003). In recent years, the share of commercials has substantially increased. Arora (2009) quotes a market survey of 2001, which reveals that advertising has a direct influence on the consumption habits of 431 million people in India and an indirect impact on 275 million ‘aspirants’ from the lower income group. Attitude Towards AD (Aad) People are exposed to unfathomable depths of advertising. With repeated exposure to a phenomenon like television advertising, a person is said to form an attitude, which refers to a settled opinion or a way of thinking. An attitude is regarded as having two components: belief about a topic or a phenomenon followed by an evaluative factor (Lutz: 1985; Muehling: 1987). Hence the attitude towards ads starts with a belief and ends with an attitude, the latter being a summary evaluation (Pollay and Mittal: 1993). Belief is the result of frequent observation and attitude is a conclusion of belief to be true or false, positive or negative, favorable or unfavorable. One’s attitude towards an object or a phenomenon shapes one’s behavior (Foddy: 1993). Thus, attitude towards ad (Aad) is a process of Belief→Attitude→Behavior. Journal of Business and Retail Management Research (JBRMR), Vol. 13 Issue 4 July 2019 www.jbrmr.com A Journal of the Academy of Business and Retail Management (ABRM) 266 Problem Description Opportunities to advertise on television have grown over the past decades due to technical developments such as cable and satellite, the introduction of commercial television and the growing number of television channels (Van Meurs 1999). Consumers in the United States were on average exposed to 95 commercial messages on television per day in the year 2000 (Media Dynamics, Inc. 2002). Besides being exposed to advertising messages on television, consumers are exposed to more than one thousand commercial messages in a day (Aaker, Batra and Myers 1992). The willingness of consumers to pay attention to TV advertising is decreasing (Van Meurs 1999). Consumers are inundated with advertisements on a daily basis whether they like it or not (McClellin: 2003). Hence an understanding of the attitude towards ad (Aad) has become a research issue for the last three decades. Literature Review Interest in the attitude-towards-advertising-in-general gained momentum as researchers showed that it was an important underlying determinant of attitude-towards-the-ad (Lutz: 1985). Over time, the attitude towards advertising has changed and research shows that the public’s opinion on advertising is mixed (Mittal, 1994; Andrews, 1989; Reid & Soley, 1982; Bauer & Greyser, 1968). The empirical research on Aad has been done from the viewpoint of (i) Information Content; (ii) Economic Benefits; and (iii) Social Costs. The most important studies on each of these strands of research have been presented below. (i) Information Content Kaldor (1950) observes: “The social function of advertising is undoubtedly the provision of information concerning the prices and qualities of goods and services available in the markets.” Evidences show that advertisements are informative (Gallup: 1959; Nelson: 1974; Aaker and Stayman: 1990; Becker and Murphy: 1993; Ducoffe: 1995) and help in better decision-making by consumers (Alwitt and Prabhaker; 1992;). However, several studies find that advertising has (i) lower information content (Grossman and Shapiro: 1984;); (ii) lower information value: Mehta and Purvis: 1995); (iii) Declining information content (Pollay: 1984; Moon and Franke: 1996; Abernethy and Franke: 1998); (iv) less of information appeals and more of persuasive appeals (Chandy, Tellis, MacInnis, and Thaivanich, 2001; MacInnis, Rao and Weiss, 2002); and (v) Product misinformation (Shavitt et al: 1998). Empirical researches on economic benefits of advertising find ads resulting in income growth (Albion and Farris: 1998); ads enhancing consumption (Ashley et al: 1980); ads stimulating demand (Mehta and Purvis: 1995; Rettie and Mojsa: 2003; Katrandjiev: 2007); Ads reducing business fluctuations (Cowling et al: 1975); and reducing the monopoly power (Becker and Murphy: 1993). Several studies find a positive association between ads and better product quality (Nelson, 1970, 1974; Milgrom and Roberts, 1986; Mehta and Purvis: 1995; Bagwell, 2005). However, several studies find an inverse relationship between ads and product quality (Schamlensee: 1978; Liefeld and Heslop: 1985; Urbany,). With mixed results in both information content and economic benefits of television advertising, much of the research on ad perceptions has been more critical of social aspects and less of economic aspects (Ramaprasad: 2001; Larkin: 1977; Haller: 1974). An array of themes has been researched since a long time and the themes continue to expand. The discussion on social costs of television advertising unfurls with advertising being favored as an institution rather than as an instrument (Reid and Soley: 1982; Petrovici and Marino: 2007). With a few studies finding positive attitude towards advertising (Heyder, Musiol and Perters: 1992; Shavitt, Lowery and Haefner: 1998), several studies find growing negative attitudes (Barnes: 1982; Pyun and James: 2010;). The main reason for the negative attitude basically stems from the lack of trust in advertising. In this regard, Taylor and Raymond (2000) find a decrease in the trust level over the years, and Katrandjiev (2007) evidences low trust level. These conclusions are further solidified with the finding that advertisers are uneasy about truthfulness and social impact (, Zhang and Vertinsky: 2002). Amidst this decreasing credibility in advertising, the advertisers continue to fool the people with deceptive and misleading advertisements (Nelson: 1974; Russo et al: 1981; Pollay and Mittal: 1993;) by (i) omission of material facts (Taylor and Crocker: 1981; Alba and Hasher: 1983; Johar: 1995); (ii) playing with consumer sentiments (Hoek and Maubach: 2005; Martinez et al: 2006); (iii) semantically confusing Journal of Business and Retail Management Research (JBRMR), Vol. 13 Issue 4 July 2019 www.jbrmr.com A Journal of the Academy of Business and Retail Management (ABRM) 267 language or images (Alba and Hasher: 1983; Gaeth and Heath: 1987;Harris et al: 1989); (iv) expert-source misleadingness (Hastak and Maxis: 2003, 2004); (v) Shocking appeals (Dahl et al: 2003); (vi) fear appeals and arousals (Horowitz & Gumenik: 1970;); (vii) vividness (e.g., Sherer & Rogers, 1984); (viii) presence or absence of imagery (e.g., Shahab, Hall & Marteau, 2007; and Hale and Dillard (1995); (ix) Too much sexual and sensual content (Boddewyn: 1991; Pardun: 2002; Katandjiev: 2007); and (x) unlimited surrogate advertising (Taylor and Raymond: 2000). The incessant rain of television commercials has several ramifications. Basically, ads cause intrusiveness (Aaker and Bruzzone: 1985; Ha: 1996) and in fact much of advertising is irritating (GrysellL 2007). Amidst this irritation, people seem to live with it silently paving the way for their changes in value system and lifestyles through attitudinal changes. The ill-effects of television advertising have been pronounced in ads targeting children. The unmitigated ads targeting children have resulted in (i) advertising-induced materialism and purchase requests (Moschis & Churchill: 1978; Buijen and Valkenburg: 2003); (ii) advertising exposure leading to purchase requests by children (Atkin: 1975a, 1975b; Buijzen & Valkenburg: 2000); (iii) advertising making children unhappy (Atkin: 1975b,1980; Richins: 1991); and (iv) parent-child conflict (Ward and Wackman: 1972; Robertson: 1979). The negative social effects of television