Perceptual Predictors of Global Attitude toward ...

Perceptual Predictors of Global Attitude toward Advertising: An Investigation of Both Generalized and Personalized Beliefs Xiaoli Nan This research examines people's generalized and personalized beliefs about advertising and the relationships between these beliefs and global attitude toward advertising. Results of a survey consisting of a student sample and a non-student sample show that people's generalized beliefs about advertising (e.g., advertising insults the intelligence ofthe average consumer) differ significantly from their perso?mlized beliefs (e.g., advertising insults the intelligence of me). Furthermore, personalized beliefs appear to be better predictors of global attitude toward advertising than generalized beliefs. Theoretical and practical implications of this research are discussed. Consumers' attitudes toward advertising have long been of great interest to both academics and practitioners. According to Zanot's (1984) review, initial studies regarding attitudes toward advertising were conducted in as early as the 1930s. The field has since then seen persisting research interests and efforts. The emphasis put on consumers' attitudes toward advertising by researchers in North America has recently inspired many more studies involving international markets (e.g., Zhou, Zhang, and Vertinsky 2002; Ramaprasad 2001). Researchers' preoccupation with consumers' attitudes toward advertising attests to the in^portance of this phenomenon. Shavitt, Lowrey, and Haefner (1998) argue that consumers' attitudes toward advertising likely influence their exposure and attention to advertisements, political and regulatory activities, and other outcomes that impact the advertising industry in crucial ways. Lutz (1985) emphasized the importance of attitudes toward advertising in determining attitudes toward specific advertisements, which in turn influence attitudes toward brands and purchase intention (Mackenzie, Lutz, and Belch 1986). Still some other researchers believe that unfavorable attitudes toward advertising partly reflect distrust in the advertising industry and therefore may reduce marketplace efficiency (Calfee and Ringold 1988; Calfee and Ringold 1994). Over the years, researchers have achieved some in^plicit consensus regarding two issues, consistent Xiaoli Nan (Ph.D., University of Minnesota-Twin Cities) is an assistant professor in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

with the general attitude toward the object model (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975). First, consumers hold a general attitude toward advertising in its various forms (often called attitude-toward-advertising-ingeneral). This global attitude represents "a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner to advertising in general" (Lutz 1985, p. 53). Second, global attitude toward advertising emanates from more specific beliefs about advertising. Different from attitudes, which represent overall and relatively enduring evaluations of objects (Petty, Unnava, and Strathman 1991), a belief is an expressed likelihood that an object possesses or is associated with an attribute (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975). Considerable efforts have been devoted to identifying specific beliefs about advertising that best explain global attitude toward advertising (e.g., Bauer and Greyser 1968; Sandage and Leckenby 1980; Muehling 1987; Andrews 1989; Alwitt and Prabhaker 1992). A close examination of the various models of beliefs about advertising developed by previous researchers revealed that these models tend to focus on advertising beliefs in generalized terms rather than personalized terms. That is, advertising beliefs are often measured at the generalized level, related to others or people in general, rather than at the personalized level, pertaining to the individual. For example, the classic Bauer and Greyer's (1968) advertising belief model almost exclusively focuses on generalized terms such as "advertising persuades people to buy things they joiirncil of Current Issues and Research in Adzvrfising, Volume 28, Number I (Spring 2006).

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should not buy," "rTiost advertising insults the intelligence of the average consumer," and "advertising results in better products for the public." Apparently, there has been limited research examining advertising beliefs at the personalized level. This neglect has led to a number of answered questions: How are personalized beliefs different from generalized beliefs? And to what extent do personalized beliefs predict global attitude toward advertising, relative to generalized beliefs? The purpose of the current study was to provide answers to these questions.

likelihood that an object possesses or is associated with an attribute (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975). In an effort to integrate previous research on advertising beliefs and their relationships with global attitude, Pollay and Mittal's (1993) formulated a model that encompasses many of the belief dimensions previously proposed. This aggregate model posits the following belief dimensions: 1) product information (i.e., beliefs related to advertising's role in providing product/service information), 2) social role and image (i.e., beliefs related to advertising's role in providing information about social roles and images associated with certain products/services), 3) entertainment value (i.e., beliefs related to advertising's value in providing entertainment), 4) economic value (i.e., beliefs related to advertising's role in promoting healthy economy), 5) materialism (i.e., beliefs related to advertising's role in fostering materialism), 6) value corruption (i.e., beliefs related to advertising's role in promoting undesirable values), 7) falsity (i.e., beliefs related to advertising's misleading and untrustworthy nature), and 8) intrusiveness (i.e., beliefs related to advertising's intrusive nature). Pollay and Mittal's advertising belief model has arguably been the one that is most widely used.

Conceptual Background Models of Beliefs about Advertising Studies on consumers' attitudes toward advertising generally fall into two categories: 1) studies that identify dimensions of beliefs about advertising and determine their relationships with global attitude and 2) studies that utilize developed belief models to measure the public's views of advertising. Over the years, researchers have developed a number of belief models that have been widely used in both academic and practical settings. Bauer and Greyser's (1968) two-dimensional model is among the foremost advertising belief models that were developed, which dominated studies on consumers' attitudes toward advertising for more than two decades. The two-dimensional model reduces people's beliefs about advertising into two categories: 1) those related to advertising's social effects (e.g., advertising persuades people to buy things they should not buy) and 2) those related to advertising's economic effects (e.g., advertising results in better products for the public). A consistent finding from studies that utilized Bauer and Creyser's model has been that people praise advertising's economic effects while criticizing its social effects. A more analytical approach was taken by Sandage and Leckenby (1980), who argue that beliefs about advertising can be viewed as having two dimensions, based on the differences of attitudinal objects: 1) beliefs about advertising as an institution, focusing on advertising's effects and consequences (measured by adjectives such as good /bad, valuable/worthless) and 2) beliefs about advertising as an instrument, focusing on advertising's executions (measured by adjectives such as honest/dishonest, clean /dirty). It should be noted, though, that in Sandage and Leckenby's model, some beliefs may better be interpreted as attitudes (e.g., good/bad), representing an overall evaluation of advertising, rather than an expressed

It is important to note that most models of advertising beliefs developed to date do not make a distinction between generalized and personalized beliefs. Thus, there has been great ambiguity as to how consumers will think of advertising differently when they are asked about their beliefs on a generalized level versus when they are asked on a personalized level. In addition, it remains generally unknown the extent to which personalized beliefs, relative to generalized beliefs, predict global attitude toward advertising. Given these questions, one may ask: should we expect people's personalized beliefs about advertising to be different from their generalized beliefs in the first place? The well-established literature on the thirdperson effect suggests that people's personalized beliefs about advertising may indeed differ from their generalized beliefs. The third-person effect was first hypothesized by Davison (1983), who argues that individuals who are members of an audience that is exposed to a persuasive communication will expect the communication to have a greater effect on attitudes and behaviors of other people than on those of themselves. Following this original proposition, researchers have found the third-person effect in a variety of settings as a robust phenomenon (e.g., Perloff 1993; Price and Tewksbury 1996). The third-person effect has often been explained in light of the attribution theory (Heider 1958; Jones and

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Davis 1965; Kelley 1973), which states that people often commit what is called the fundamental attribution error, referring to the fact that whenever people are making attributions about an action, they tend to over-emphasize dispositional factors about the actor, and under-emphasize situational factors. In the context of media exposure, individuals often interpret media effects on themselves in terms of situational factors, but rely on dispositional explanations for the impact of media on others (Shah et al. 1999). According to Gunther (1991), individuals typically underestimate other people's awareness of situational factors such as the persuasive intent of media content and therefore hold the belief that other people are more susceptible to the impact of media content than themselves. Research has also shown that the discrepancies between beliefs regarding others and selves tend to increase when the impact of media content is perceived as negative, the so-called negative influence corollary (Gunther and Mundy 1993). Gunther and Thorson (1992) showed that people believed advertisements had a stronger impact on other people than on themselves, and this perceptual discrepancy increased as the advertisements increasingly created a less positive emotion in the viewer. The negative influence corollary is similar to a number of other effects or biases observed in a broader literature including the "better-than-average effect" (Alickeetal. 1995), referring to people's tendency to maintain unrealistically positive images of themselves relative to others (p. 804), the selt-positivity bias, referring to the tendency for people to believe that they are invulnerable to disease (Menon, Block, and Ramanathan 2002), and the optimistic bias, referring to the tendency for people to underestimate their own risk relative to others (Weinsteinl989). The above discussion suggests a general tendency for people to overestimate the effects of advertising on others. Many beliefs about advertising are related to the negative effects or consequences of advertising (e.g., materialism, value corruption, falsity, intrusiveness), whereas other beliefs about advertising are related to the positive effects or consequences of advertising (e.g., providing product information, providing information about social role and image, entertainment value, economic value). Based on the literature of the third-person-effect (e.g., Davison 1983) and the general literature on the self-other perceptual biases (e.g., Alicke et al. 1995; Menon, Block, and Ramanathan 2002; Weinstein 1989), it is reasonable to expect that people will think of advertising differently when they are asked about their beliefs on a personalized level versus on a generalized level. More

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specifically, people will tend to believe in a stronger impact of advertising, either negative or positive, on others than on themselves, although the perceptual discrepancies will be larger when negative rather than positive effects are involved, reflecting the negative influence corollary (Gunther and Mundy 1993). Reid and Soley (1982) provided initial empirical evidence for the above proposition. In a survey of 260 households, they constructed the questionnaire such that each respondent would be asked twice about his/ her beliefs about advertising, once in a generalized term (e.g., advertising misleads and deceives people) and the other time in a personalized term (e.g., advertising misleads and deceives me). They found that people tended to perceive themselves as being less susceptible to advertising as a social force (e.g., misleads people, persuades people to buy unnecessary things) than other people while also as profiting less from advertising's economic benefits (e.g., results in better product and lower prices). Both theories and initial empirical evidence provide rationales for the following hypotheses: HI: An individual wiU perceive people in general to benefit more from advertising as a source for product information than him/herself. H2: An individual will perceive people in general to benefit more from advertising's role in providing information about social roles and images associated with products/services than him/herself. H3: An individual will perceive people in general to benefit more from advertising's entertainment value than him/herself. H4: An individual will perceive people in general to benefit more from advertising's economic value than him/herself. H5: An individual will perceive people in general to be more adversely influenced by advertising in terms of materialism than him/herself. H6: An individual will perceive people in general to be more adversely influenced by advertising in terms of value corruption than him/herself. H7: An individual will perceive people in general to be more misled by advertising than him/herself. H8: An individual will perceive advertising to be more intrusive to people in general than him/herself. The current research also aims to answer a second question: To what extent do personalized beliefs, relative to generalized beliefs, predict global attitude to-

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Table 1 Sample Demographics

Gender Male Female

Student sample (N=95)

Percent Non-student sample (N=95)

Overall (N=190)

34 66

44 53

40 60

99 1 0

72 22 5

85 12 3

60 17 7

23 35 18 24

41 26 12 21

Age 18-35 36-55 >56 Household Income < 20,000 20,000-39,999 40,000-59,999 > 60,000 Education < High school graduate High school graduate Some college College graduate Post graduate Race White Nonwhite

18

8

13 34 31 13 92

69 31

80 20

In some cases, the sum of percentages is not 100 because of missing data or rounding.

ward advertising? There has been almost no study that examines the relative contributions of generalized and personalized beliefs about advertising to global attitude toward advertising. The accessibility/ diagnosticity framework (Feldman and Lynch 1988) may provide some insights here. According to the accessibility / diagnosticity framework, the likelihood that any piece of information will be used as an input into a decision depends on the accessibility and diagnosticity of the input in memory as well as alterative inputs. Fishbein and Ajzen's (1975) general attitude toward the object model posits that attitude is an overall evaluation of an object originating from various beliefs an individual holds about the object. Thus, the various beliefs can be viewed as input information in the accessibility / diagnosticity framework. Presumably an individual's personalized beliefs are more proximal and thus more accessible than generalized beliefs'. In addition, personalized beliefs can be seen as being more personally relevant and thus more diagnostic than generalized beliefs. Therefore, we can

reasonably expect personalized beliefs be better predictors of global attitude than generalized beliefs. Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed: H9: Personalized beliefs about advertising, compared to generalized beliefs, will be better predictors of global attitude toward advertising.

Method Samples and Procedure A survey was administered to 95 undergraduate students recniited from a large midwestem university and 97 adult consumers intercepted in shopping malLs located in a midwestem metropolitan area. Each respondent filled out a questionnaire with about 50 survey items. The survey on average took 20 minutes to complete. Two cases in the nonstudent sample were discarded due to largely incomplete information. Thus, the final subject number was 190 (see Table 1 for detailed demographics).

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Table 2 Measures of Beliefs about Advertising^ Codes

Dimensions/Items

P1 P2 P3

Product Information Advertising provides people (me) with valuable information for local sales. From advertising, people (I) learn which brands have the features they are (I am) looking for. Advertising keeps people (me) up to date about products/services available in the market.

51 52 53 E1 E2 E3 Ed Ec2 Ec3

Social Role and Image From advertising, people (I) learn about fashions and about what to buy to impress others. From advertising, people (i) learn what other people with lifestyles similar to theirs (mine) are buying and using. From advertising, people (I) leam which products will or will not reflect the sort of person they are (I am). Entertainment Value Very often, advertising is a good source of entertainment for people (me). For most people (me), advertising is sometimes more enjoyable than other media contents. For most people (me), advertising is oftentimes entertaining and amusing. Economic Value In general, advertising promotes competition which benefits average consumers in the society (me as a consumer). Advertising results in lower prices for products that people (I) buy. Advertising results in better products for people (me).

M2 M3

Materialism Advertising is making us a materialistic society {me materialistic) - overly interested in buying and owning things. Advertising makes people (me) buy unaffordable products just to show off. Because of advertising, people (1) buy a lot of things that they (I) do not really need.

VI V2 V3

Value Corruption Advertising tends to corrupt some of the society's (my) good values. Our society (I) will maintain better values without advertising. Advertising tends to pose a threat on the society s (my) desirable values.

F1 F2 F3

Ealsity Oftentimes, people are (I am) misled by advertising. Advertising insults people's (my) intelligence. Oftentimes, people are (I am) deceived by advertising.

11 12 13

Intrusiveness For most people (me), advertising is oftentimes intrusive. For most people (me), advertising is oftentimes annoying. For most people (me), advertisements are oftentimes unwelcome interruptions.

Ml

' Personalized terms are in parentheses.

Measures The survey contained four components. The first component measured global attitude toward advertising by three statements: "overall, I like advertising," "my general opinion about advertising is unfavorable," and "1 consider advertising a good thing," all of which have been used in previous stud-

ies (e.g., Pollay and Mittal 1993; Mittal 1994). Respondents indicated their agreement with each of the statements on a 1-5 scale with " 1 " representing "strongly disagree" and "5" being "strongly agree." The second component included measures of beliefs about advertising in generalized terms. Some exemplary items were: "advertising is making us a materialistic society—overly interested in buying and owning

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things," and "oftentimes, people are misled by advertising." The third component included measures of beliefs about advertising in personalized terms. Some exemplary items were: "advertising is making me materialistic—overly interested in buying and owning things," and "oftentimes, I am misled by advertising." Most belief items were adopted from Pollay and Mittal's (1993) study (see Table 2 for details of the belief measures). Respondents rated their agreement with each item on a 1-5 scale anchored by "strongly disagree" and "strongly agree." The fourth component collected demographic information such as age, gender, household income, highest education (in the non-student sample), and ethnicity.

the models. In general, indices of fit can be classified into two categories: absolute indices such as x^ and the Root-Mean-Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) and relative indices such as the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and the Incremental Fit Index (IFI). Since the chi-square goodness-of-fif test is highly sensitive to sample size and non-normality in the underlying distribution of the input variables, it is generally recommended that both absolute and relative indices be examined. The following traditional standards were used to assess the fit of the models: CFI greater than 0.90 (Bentler 1990), IFI greater than 0.90 (Hoyle and Panter 1995), and RMSFA lower than 0.08 for a good fit and lower than 0.05 for an excellent fit (Browne and Cudeck 1992). Results indicated a good fit for both the generalized belief measurement model (X"^348.47, ^

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Table 4 Paired-Samples /-Tests^ Beiief Dimensions

Generaiized Mean (S.D.)

Product Information Social Role and Image Entertainment Value Economic Value Materialism Value Corruption Falsity Intrusiveness

3.75 3.22 3.21 3.10 3.58 2.84 3.33 3.51

Personalized Mean (S.D.)

(.71) (.88) (.78) (.76) (.91) (.85) (.79) (.79)

3.53 (.81) 2.84(1.00) 3.11 (.91) 3.10 (.84) 2.44(1.08) 2.29 (.82) 2.65 (.89) 3.32 (.89)

t statistics 4.69"* 6.60"* 1.88* .08 14.31'" 9.54*" 11.50"* 3.58***

' Means display pro-dimension agreement;+p