In today’s scenario, where half of the business if fetched alone through advertising, the need for understanding the impact of advertising on consumer attitudes toward particular products or brands has increased. Advertisers have paid a considerable attention in developing attitude – toward – the – ad – model.
The consumers form various judgements and feelings as and when they are exposed to an ad. These judgements and feelings in turn affect the consumer’s attitude toward the ad and beliefs about the brand acquired from exposure to the ad. Finally, consumer’s attitude towards the ad and beliefs about the brand for his/her attitude the brand.
The model says that to assess consumer’s attitude towards an ad it is important to distinguish between cognitive evaluations of the ad (i.e. whether it is informative or humorous) and affective responses toward the ad (i.e. feelings like sense of fear, or smile, or laughter, etc.) and also measures them separately.
According to this model, researcher suggests that the feelings conveyed by an ad not only influence the attitude toward the ad but also affect the consumer’s evaluations of the brand and also the attitude towards the brand. However, if the gap appears after exposure of an ad (around one week) the positive effect of a liked ad an the attitude towards a brand may change. This usually happens when the purchase order is postponed or delayed by the consumer after an exposure of ad.
Researchers say that both positive and negative feelings toward tend to exist side by side where both affect attitude uniquely. So, in this wide variety of feelings (both positive and negative) are to be assessed to study the influence of ad exposure.
It is also seen and tested through research that the consumer’s attitude toward the ad for a novel product (new one) will have a stronger impact on brand attitude and purchase intention than for a familiar product. Researchers also found that beliefs about a brand that result from ad exposure play much stronger role in determining attitudes towards the brand for a familiar product. So, in this research nature of attitude – object is used in assessing the potential impact of advertising exposure.
It is observed that attitude towards a specific type of advertising (eg. comparative) may have some impact on the attitude toward a specific ad (eg. liking or disliking it). But attitudes toward ads in general seem to have little impact on the attitude toward a specific ad.
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