THE DETERMINANTS OF CONSUMERS' ATTITUDE TOWARDS ADVERTISING

1. INTRODUCTION The advertising industry worldwide is experiencing tremendous changes. Munusamy and Wong (2007) argue that advertising has become one of the important elements in our modern life. Government intervention in the advertising industry to a certain extent has regulated the content of the advertisement message, and subsequently this created certain impacts on the formation of consumers’ attitude towards advertising (Calfee & Ringold, 1998; Pollay & Mittal, 1993; Rotzoll, Haefner & Sandage, 1986; Wills & Ryans, 1982). The purpose of this research, therefore, is to evaluate the determinants of consumers’ attitude towards advertising. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Advertising Industry in Malaysia The advertising industry is a lucrative business in Malaysia. According to the Nielsen Media Research, the total advertising expenditure in Malaysia reached RM2.39 billion in the first half of the year 2007, and the industry continues to show steady growth with a 9% increase from the RM2.2 billion for the same period in year 2006 (The Report Malaysia, 2008). In addition, advertising expenditure has increased by 76% since year 2000, with cinema, radio and point-of-sale advertising experiencing triple-digit growth over this period (The Report Malaysia, 2008). Traditionally big advertising spenders in Malaysia include telecommunication and fast-moving consumer goods companies (The Report Malaysia, 2008). Table 1 illustrates the total advertising expenditure for all media in Malaysia for the year 2007 and 2008. However the industry is highly regulated by the Malaysian Communication & Multimedia Content Code (MCMCC, retrieved on 15 May 2009). Due to the heavy regulated nature of this business, it is crucial to evaluate the determinants of consumers’ attitude towards advertising to discover what the antecedents that would affect consumers’ preference are. Table 1: Total Advertising Expenditure (All Media) In the Year 2007 And 2008 MEDIA ADEX Growth vs 2007 (RM’000) MARKET Share ADEX (RM’000) MARKET Share Newspapers 3,065,289 56.1% 3,320,832 53.9% 8.3% Terrestrial TV1 1,799,079 32.9% 2,161,195 35.1% 20.1% Radio 241,088 4.4% 291,518 4.7% 20.9% Magazines 166,164 3.0% 156,117 2.5% -6.0% Outdoor2 108,162 2.0% 95,892 1.6% -11.3% Point Of Sale 57,855 1.1% 73,935 1.2% 27.8% Internet3 N/A N/A 32,110 0.5% - Cinema 26,267 0.5% 27,398 0.5% 4.3% Total 5,463,904 100.0% 6,158,995 100.0% 12.7% Source: Nielsen Media Research (NMR) Index Report 2008 Kwek Choon Ling; Tan Hoi Piew; Lau Teck Chai/Canadian Social Science Vol.6 No.4, 2010 116 2.2 Consumers’ Attitude towards Advertising Fishbein (1967, p.53) defines attitude as “a learned predisposition of human beings”. As part of a learned predisposition human behaviour, Kotler (2000) further elaborates attitude as an individual personal evaluation, emotional feeling attached and action tendency toward some objects or ideas. In relations to the advertising industry, Bauer and Greyser (1968) take the view of attitude towards advertising as the audience behaviour towards the advertising. Audience behaviour towards the advertising can be indicated through consumers’ favourable or unfavourable response towards a particular advertisement (MacKenzie and Lutz, 1989). According to Mehta (2000), consumers’ attitude towards advertising is one of the influential indicators of advertising effectiveness because consumer’s cognitive ability towards the advertising are reflected in their thoughts and feelings and subsequently will influence their attitude towards advertising (Mackenzie and Lutz, 1989). Based on extant literature, determinants such as hedonic, good for economy, product information, values corruption, materialism and consumer benefits consistently indicate strong relationship with consumers’ attitude towards advertising (Yang, 2000; Ramaprasad & Thurwanger, 1998; Pollay & Mittal, 1993; Bauer & Greyser, 1968). Credibility, informative, hedonic/pleasure, and good for economy will be tested in this research. All of these factors are adopted from Ramaprasad and Thurwanger (1998) and Bracket and Carr (2001). Table 2 provides the summary of key determinants of consumers’ attitude towards advertising that appeared in the extant literature. Table 2: Summary of the key determinants of consumers’ attitude towards advertising Author Key dimensions Korgaonkar, Silverblan and O’Leary (2001) Seven factors: product information, social role and image, hedonic/ pleasure, value corruption, falsity/ no sense, good for the economy, materialism. Barrio and Luque (2003) Six factors: product knowledge, message involvement, attention, comparative advertising intensity, claim believability, advertisement cognition. Petrovici and Marinov (2005) Six factors: general attitude, attitude institution, attitude instrument, product information, social role (integration) / image, hedonic/ pleasure. Tsang, Ho, and Liang (2004) Five factors: entertainment, informative, irritation, credibility, relevant demographic variables. Wang, Zhang, Choi, and D’ Eredita (2002) Six factors: entertainment, informative, irritation, credibility, interactivity, demographic. Tan and Chia (2007) Six factors: product, hedonic, social, falsity, good for economy, materialism. Ashill and Yavas (2005) Three factors: control, believability, economic. Zhang and Wang (2005) Five factors: entertainment, informative, irritation, credibility, interactivity. Petrovici, Marinova, Marinov, and Lee (2007) Seven factors: product information, social integration/ image, hedonic/ pleasure, good for economy, promotes undesirable values, alienation/ value incongruence, falsity/ misleading. Wang, Sun, Lei, and Toncar (2009) Five factors: entertainment, information, credibility, economy, value corruption. D’Souza and Taghian (2005) Five factors: favourable, pleasant, convincing, believable, good. Source: Developed for this study 2.3 Credibility Adler and Rodman (2000) define credibility as the believability of the addressor and its perception in the listener’s mind. In the context of advertising industry, MacKenzie and Lutz (1989) identify advertising credibility as consumers’ general perception towards the truthfulness, reliability, trustworthiness and believability of an advertisement. Credibility of an advertisement is affected by various factors, particularly by the company’s credibility and the person who brings a message (Goldsmith, Lafferty and Newell, 2000). Kwek Choon Ling; Tan Hoi Piew; Lau Teck Chai/Canadian Social Science Vol.6 No.4, 2010 117 In the extant literature related to attitudinal studies of credibility, research indicates that printed advertisements are always more interesting, believable and useful at all times and also less excessive, bothersome, aggravating and offensive than their broadcast counterparts (Haller, 1974; Somasundaran and Light, 1991). However, Newhagen and Nass (1989) argue that advertisement in television is perceived as much more credible if compared to advertisement that appears in the newspaper (Newhagen & Nass, 1989). Lafferty and Goldsmith (1999) affirm that advertising credibility is a key factor that affects the formation of attitude and behaviour. In addition, other studies have concluded that credibility of the advertising message has positive influence on consumers’ attitude towards advertising (Tsang, Ho, and Liang, 2004; Haghirian and Madlberger, 2005; Brackett and Carr, 2001). 2.4 Informative Advertising plays an important and legitimate role in delivering information (Rotzoll, Haefner and Sandage, 1989). Rubin (2002) states that one of the most vital functions of advertising is to provide information. Wang. Sun, Lei, and Toncar (2009) argue that the information-seeking factor acts as a positive predictor for the formation of consumers’ attitude towards online advertising. Besides that, Schlosser, Shavitt and Kanfer (1999) affirm that consumers’ attitude towards Internet advertising is influenced by informative and the advertisement’s utility for building purchasing behavioural decisions. Thus, information is considered as a very valuable incentive in marketing because recipients react very positively to advertisements that transfer incentives (Varshney, 2003). Informative of the advertising is also strongly associated to the advertising when it is transferred via traditional media vehicles (Ducoffe, 1995). Consequently, media users may think that advertising has the ability to provide information to the audience and hence the basic reason for accepting the advertising itself (Bauer and Greyser, 1968). According to Ducoffe (1995), when advertising information is shifted through the traditional media vehicles, the advertising value is substantially related to the informative of the advertising information. Consumers’ always want to have quick access to information that they are looking for their current content of use, and it is possible that the information is automatically delivered to the consumers’ (Kaasinen, 2003). Studies such as Ramaprasad and Thurwanger (1998); Haghirian and Madlberger (2005); and Ducoffe (1996), lend support that there is a strong and positive relationship between informative and consumers’ attitude towards advertising.