A consensus emerging from writings about attitudes towards advertising in general is that such attitudes consist of two dimensions: the social and economic effects. However, as is the case with other marketing concepts and propositions, the findings pertaining to the structure of advertising attitudes are primarily based on American research. This study investigates the dimensionality of advertising attitudes in a non-US setting. The results obtained from a survey of Saudi adult consumers suggest that advertising attitudes do indeed decompose into social and economic effects dimensions as espoused in the US-based literature. The measures developed to capture the two dimensions demonstrate satisfactory internal consistency reliability and pass the tests for convergent, discriminant and concurrent validity. The implications of the findings are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided.

Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2009. / Communication Dept. Includes bibliographical references.

The thesis examines attitudes towards outdoor advertising, with strong emphasis on gender-based differences. The research intends to reveal the most influencing factors, including gender, format, different images and recall. Earlier researchers have argued that females are inclined to rate advertisements more positively than men. Five different, but interconnected studies, one content analysis and four surveys, were implicated in order to measure the responses to advertising. It is further suggested that positive attitude towards outdoor advertising affects the purchase intent. The theme of sexualised advertising is also discussed within this research. After detailed examination of the advertisements in the centre of St. Petersburg it was concluded that females’ rating is considerably more positive compared to males in the situation of high processing opportunity. However, men were more positive when respondents were asked about more general attitudes to outdoor advertising. Recall of advertising was studied within the field settings and showed that women indeed demonstrate better visual memory. Such factors as format, content were proved to have influence on the recall. In addition, different visual preferences were tested within one study. The findings prove that gender differences in perception of outdoor advertising do exist and should be taken into consideration by advertisers in order to raise the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.

This study analyzes the relationship between the information search of internet users and the keywords advertising effects. According to the result of literature review, this study takes ¡§information search on the internet¡¨, four perceptual antecedents of keywords advertising including ¡§informativeness¡¨, ¡§irritation¡¨, ¡§entertainment¡¨ and ¡§credibility¡¨, ¡§advertising value¡¨ and ¡§advertising attitudes¡¨ as our dimensions to analyze the keywords advertising effects. This study adopts questionnaire survey method to collect sample information and the research targets are users who searched information on the internet and understood keywords advertising. This study finds that the higher degree of search of internet users, the greater the informativeness of keywords advertising they perceive, and the keyword advertising is more valuable thus, however, the search degree has no direct effect on keywords advertising. Moreover, informativeness, irritation, entertainment and credibility of keywords advertising all have effects upon the value of keywords advertising; irritation, entertainment and credibility of keywords advertising all have effects upon the attitudes toward keywords advertising. Finally, this study discovers that the value of keywords advertising has effect on the internet users¡¦ attitudes toward keywords advertising.

Although digital marketing and social media advertising for the past decades has become an integral factor for commercial companies in order to succeed, the group of older consumers seems to have been overlooked. The purpose of this study was to explore and increase the understanding about how Facebook advertising better can be utilized for older consumers [55+] in order to provide professionals with insights about how to better capture this opportunity. With the aim of identifying and examining the factors having an effect on older consumers’ attitudes towards Facebook advertising a conceptual framework with the foundation of Ducoff’s advertising value model was created. The factors anticipated to have an effect on older consumers attitudes towards Facebook advertising were informativeness, entertainment, irritation, credibility, emotional appeal, and perceived ad relevance. A quantitative method was used where empirical data was collected by a questionnaire and tested with a regression analysis. The analysis revealed informativeness, entertainment, perceived ad relevance and irritation as having a significant effect on older consumers’ attitudes toward Facebook advertising, whereas entertainment and perceived ad relevance was determined as having the most impact. These results indicated that when targeting older consumers’, the focus should be on entertaining content perceived informative and relevant by the receiver which expands both the theoretical and managerial knowledge about advertising for older consumers.

I en värld där konsumenten dagligen överöses av kommersiella budskap är det många gånger svårt, för att inte säga omöjligt, för företag att synas. Ett tuffare klimat kräver tuffare tillvägagångssätt, vilket har resulterat i nya marknadsföringsmetoder. En av dessa nya metoder är provokativ marknadsföring som vänder sig till betraktarens känslor genom provokation. Provokativ reklam och dess effekter på konsumenter har undersökts tidigare. Dessa studier har emellertid övervägande fokuserat på provokation i form av sexuella stimuli, varför det råder stor osäkerhet om hur andra provokationsformer i reklamsammanhang mottas av konsumenter. Som ett första led att ge råd i denna fråga har därför en kvalitativ studie med fokusgrupper som undersökningsmetod utförts, i syfte att identifiera vilken typ av känslor och attityder som väcks hos konsumenter när de exponeras för provokativ reklam innehållande andra element än sex, nakenhet och erotik. Fyra reklamfilmer innehållande provocerande element har studerats och resultaten visar att nämnd form av provokation väcker många känslor som är av både bipolärt och komplext slag. De attityder till avsändaren som uppstår har visat sig vara av främst positivt slag när ändamålet är gott. Vidare har provokativ reklam visat sig vara mer lämplig när målet är att uppnå erinran snarare än att informera om specifika produkter. / In a world where consumers are showered with commercial messages, being noticed is hard, not to say impossible. A tougher climate requires tougher approaches, which has led to new marketing methods. One of those new methods is provocative advertising, which appeals to the consumer’s feelings by means of provocation. Provocative advertising and its effects on consumers might have been studied before. However, those studies have mainly been focused on provocation in terms of sexual stimulus. How other provocations than those affect consumers are therefore associated with a lot of insecurity. As a first step in giving advice in this matter, a qualitative study with focus groups has been executed, with the aim of identifying which kind of feelings and attitudes take place in the consumers’ mind after being exposed for provocative TV commercials, including other elements than sex, nudity and erotic. Four TV commercials containing provocative elements have been studied and the results show that the kind of provocation mentioned above raises a lot of feelings which are both bipolar and complex. The attitudes to the sender that arises have appeared to be positive when it is for a good purpose. Provocative advertising furthermore appears to be more useful when the aim is to remind consumers rather than giving information about specific products.