Online Advertising An Investigation

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate about attitudes toward online advertising (ATOA) among the Malays consumers. Data were collected from adults above eighteen years old with Internet usage experience from the Malays in Malaysia. Four belief factors that underline Malaysian consumers’ attitude toward online advertising were identified: informativeness, hedonism, credibility and good for economy. The findings from this research indicated that informativeness, hedonism and good for economy had a significant impact on ATOA among Malays. The research provides potentially useful insights and directions strategists for marketers in order to optimize the results of their online advertising campaigns.

Keywords: Attitudes, Credibility, Informativeness, Good for Economy, Hedonism, Online Advertising

Introduction

As the Internet has increasingly become an integrated tool for marketing and advertising, the effectiveness of online advertising remains a crucial yet debatable issue among marketers and scholars. Previous studies have mentioned that individuals’ attitudes toward online advertising are an important factor that enables for evaluation of advertising effectiveness (Ducoffe, 1996; Russell et al, 1994).

With consumer confidence up and brands looking to reconnect, it’s no surprise that spending on advertising is on the rise around the globe and across media types. According to most recent advertising report by the Nielsen Company (2012) quarter one, online ads spend was a bright spot for the various industries. Growth was particularly notable in Europe (12.1%), Latin America (31.8%) and the Middle East & Africa (35.2%). In Malaysia increasing ad spend, however, was seen in media with a smaller share of voice such as such as internet (+12.2%) compare with same quarter at 2011.

In spite of this rapid mainstreaming of online advertising around the globe, many marketers still are not observing a range of based tactics and strategies comprehended to considerably improve the effectiveness of online advertising campaigns in Malaysia. In some cases, this is because advertisers aren’t aware of the attitudinal differences when going in new market. This is particularly true for South East Asian countries that have their own different languages, cultures and business environment that are very different from the Western countries. These factors, together with associated legal limitation to protect cultural identity and limit any offence to cultural group have been observed as a main area of involving for marketers entering these markets (Shao and Waller, 1993). The potential for online advertising within the local area had yet to fully comprehend and there are great opportunities for growth.

However, there is still very little research being performed on how consumer values in distinctive ethnic cultures affect consumer behaviour, specifically among the South East Asian. (Tan and McCullough, 1985; Ward et al, 2002). The bulk of researches in consumer behaviour context have mostly been Western bias (Mooij, 2003). In those researches, differences were illustrated in consumption patterns between people of different ethnic groups (e.g. Saegert, Hoover and Hilger 1985). Recently, there have been some studies on the southern Asian ethnic cultures such as the Japanese, the Koreans and the Chinese. It is worthy of notice to indicate that these countries are greatly racially homogenous. This is very dissimilar Malaysia where we see the side-by-side harmonious living of different races such as the Malays, the Chinese, the Indians and other minority ethnic groups with distinctive and different cultures within a single social system. It is in this context that Malaysia provides a good platform to future study on consumer behaviour specifically with its cultural diversity.

The term ethnicity and its effect in advertisement effectiveness first appeared in the seminal work of Deshpande et al. (1986). Ethnic marketing study is driven by the assumption that ethnicity can influence a wide range of consumer behaviour (Burton, 2000). Following from the above, the present study's objective is to examine attitude towards online advertising among Malays consumers as a majority ethnic group in Malaysia. According to the 2010 population census, the total population of Malaysia is nearly 29 million. The Malay and other indigenous groups constitute 65.1% of the total population, with the Chinese composing Malaysia's largest minority (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2010). "Malay", as defined in article 160(2) of the Malaysian constitution, is a person who professes Islam, habitually speaks the Malay language and conforms to Malay customs (Asma & Pedersen, 2003; De Run, 2004).

Antecedents of Attitude toward Online Advertising (ATOA)

In a consumer behaviour context Schiffman and Kanuk (2004) defined attitude as ‘a learned predisposition to behave in a constantly favourable or unfavourable way with respect to a given object.’ This definition indicates that attitude is neither innate nor instinctive, but rather can be influenced by marketing messages. Furthermore, when someone changes his behaviour each time, he does not hold and attitude toward an object.

Consumers’ belief and attitudes toward advertising are important indicators of advertising effectiveness (Mehta, 2000). Presently, there exist two typical views about the relationship between consumers’ beliefs and their general attitudes toward advertising. The first treats the two constructs as equivalent and interchangeable, both conceptually and operationally (Mehta, 2000; Schlosser & Shavitt, 1999), whereas the second postulates that beliefs are antecedents of attitude and these two things are separate from each other (Brackett & Carr, 2001; Fishbein, 1967). In this study, our model is built upon the second perspective.

Most studies trying to measure attitude toward online advertising extract their theoretical frameworks from previous studies of attitude toward advertising in general (Burns, 2003; Cowley et al, 2000). Based on previous studies, determinants such as hedonic, product information, good for economy and credibility consistently indicate strong relationship with consumers’ attitude towards advertising (Sadeghvaziri and Seyedjavadian, 2011; Kwek et al, 2010; Petrovici et al, 2007; Zhang and Wang, 2005).

Wang et al (2009) used information seeking, value corruption, entertainment, good for economy and credibility as main antecedent of attitude toward online advertising. The present study proposes a model of online advertising based on the traditional advertising model.

Informativeness (INF)

A key role of advertising is to generate awareness of products and to make consumer aware of how competing products are different (Soberman, 2004).One of the advertising purposes is to make customers aware of new products or new features of existing products also inform them about changes in products’ price (Kotler and Keller, 2009).

Previous researchers examined that the information-seeking factor acts as a positive predictor for the forming of consumers’ attitude towards online advertising (Wang and Sun, 2010; Wang et al, 2009).Albion and Farris (1981) supported that the positive roles of advertising as a source of product information generates many benefits as producing "competition", promoting "new product and brand entry", and aiding "consumer shopping". Based on the previous literature, the following hypothesis is formulated:

H1: There is positive relationship between informativeness and attitude toward online advertising among Malays.

Hedonic (HED)

Hedonism is essential that the message is concise and funny, and can be captures consumers’ attention (Katterbach, 2002). People’s feeling of pleasure related with advertisements play the greatest role in accounting for their attitudes toward them in general (Shavitt, 1998). The degree of entertaining of advertising information is significant to advertising delivered. The entertaining advertising message could influence on the attitudes towards it. Consumers like and prefer to see advertisements that have more entertainment and pleasurable elements, the more the pleasure the better it is (Pollay and Mittal, 1993; Alwitt and Prabhaker 1992).

Saadeghvaziri and Seyedjavadian (2011) cited that hedonism and entertainment of advertising leads positive attitude toward mobile advertising among students. Kwek et al (2010) demonstrated that there is positive relationship between hedonism and attitude toward advertising among students. Tsang and Tse (2005) demonstrated that the Hedonic factor is significantly important in effective Web marketing. Entertainment services can add value for the customer and increase customer loyalty (Haghirian and Dickinger, 2004). By applying these we hypothesized:

H2: There is positive relationship between hedonic and attitude toward online advertising among Malays.

Good for Economy (ECO)

Belch and Belch (2009) suggested that the concept of ‘good for economy’ reflects the point of view that advertising speeds up the adoption of new goods and technologies by consumers. The economic benefit of advertising is the skill of the advertisers to provide precise and credible information about their products or services to the viewers (Petrovici et al, 2007).

Kwek et al (2010) examined that Good for economy of an advertising message is positively related to consumers’ attitude towards advertising. Wang et al (2009) concluded that ‘good for economy’ is positively related to Chinese consumers’ attitude towards online advertising. It means, the more positive belief in ‘good for economy’, the more positive are customers’ attitude towards online advertising.

Other researchers support that good for economy of an advertising message positively influence consumers’ attitude towards advertising (Munusamy and Wong, 2007; Tan and Chia, 2007). By applying these we hypothesized:

H3: There is positive relationship between good for economy and attitude toward online advertising among Malays.

Credibility (CRE)

Advertising credibility is "consumers’ perception of the truthfulness and believability of advertising in general" (Mackenzie and Lutz, 1989). Wang et al (2009) concluded there was not significant relationship between credibility of online advertising and attitude toward online advertising among Chinese Consumers. Munusamy and Wong (2007) examined that there is positive relationship between credibility and students attitude toward advertising in private universities in Selangor Malaysia. Based on previous researches among Malaysian consumer we hypothesized:

H4: There is positive relationship between credibility and ATOA among Malays.

Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework was designed with the dependent variable attitude towards online advertising(ATOA) being influenced positively or negatively by the independent variables, based on these conjectures and the arguments to support the conjectures. The independent variables include, Informativeness (INF), Hedonic (HED), Good for economy (ECO) and Credibility (CRE) (see Figure 1). These were developed based on the review of relevant literature.

Good for economy

Informativeness

H3

H1

Attitude towards Online Advertising

H2

H4

Credibility

Hedonic

Figure 1: Conceptual Framework

Research Methodology

The population consisted of adults above 18 years old with Internet usage experience from the Malays in Malaysia. Overall, 351 questionnaires were collected from Malaysian. 37 surveys were excluded from the Malaysian sample because of the large amount of missing data. Finally, a total of 314 questionnaires were subjected to data analysis. Data were collected from Internet users in Malaysia. Data for the main study was collected with mail survey and directly from individuals. Five days after the initial mailing a postcard was sent to respondents who had not retain their survey. Personally surveys were conducted in Kelang Valley area to obtain information directly from individual consumers. No intensive was provided for respondent to complete the questionnaire.

Research Finding

For the Malays sample, respondents 69.2% were male and 30.8% were female. Fifty-six (56%) percent of Malaysian range in age were between 18 to 26 years. More than half of respondents visited online websites multiple times during a day and spend more than 57 minutes in each connection.

To measure subjects’ beliefs about online advertising, a 17-item was adapted from previous studies (Pollay & Mittal, 1993; Yang, 2004). The scale consisted of items pulled from different dimensions of beliefs including informative (e.g., the Internet is a valuable source of information), good for consumers (e.g., Online advertising is essential) and hedonic (e.g., Online advertising is entertaining and enjoyable), credible (trustworthy and believable), Responses were measured on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).Descriptive statistics of the belief items are presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Items of belief factor

Online advertising…

M

SD

1.My general opinion of online advertising is favorable

3.76

.870

2. Tells me which brands have the features I am looking for

3.04

.764

3. It is a good source of product information

3.01

.762

4. Provides timely information.

3.06

.793

5. Makes product information immediately accessible.

3.07

.838

6. Is often amusing and entertaining

3.13

1.098

7. Is enjoyable

3.30

.922

8. Is sometimes even more enjoyable than other media contents.

3.31

.855

9. Gives me pleasure when I think about what I saw or heard or read.

3.47

.846

10. In general helps our nation’s economy

3.03

.778

11. Generally helps the local economy

3.04

.786

12. Helps raise our standard of living

3.27

.993

13. Advertising in general is truthful

3.25

.949

14. I use online advertising as a reference for purchasing

3.53

.800

15. Advertising is not exaggerating products

3.63

.837

16.I’m frequently misled by advertising

3.37

1.044

Principal axis factor analysis with Promax rotation through SPSS 17 was conducted to examine the underlying structure of those 15 items measuring beliefs about advertising. The KMO was 0.741, indicating that the sampling adequacy which should be greater than 0.5 for satisfactory factor analysis to proceed was acceptable. Bartlets test was significant whit a chi sq of 2367.809 (p=0.00). Factor loadings are presented in Table 2.

Table2: Rotated component matrix for belief factor toward ATOAa

Component

Variables

1

2

3

4

INF1

.894

INF2

.874

INF3

.925

INF4

.790

CRE1

.833

CRE2

.839

CRE3

.885

CRE1

.833

HED1

.618

HED2

.891

HED3

.916

HED4

.564

ECO2

.741

ECO3

.776

ECO4

.767

Eigenvalues

3.388

3.170

2.253

1.710

% of Variance

22.585

21.132

15.019

11.402

Cumulative %

22.585

43.717

58.736

70.139

Alpha

.894

.872

.757

.669

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Rotation Method: Promax with Kaiser Normalization.

a. Rotation converged in 5 iterations.

Table 3 reveals the correlation matrix of the conceptual variables. A two-tail test at 0.05 significance level indicates that there are positive correlations among the independent variables and the dependent variable.

Table 3: Pearson correlation coefficient matrix

ATOA

INF

CRE

HED

ECO

ATOA

1.000

INF

.075

1.000

CRE

.168**

.093

1.000

HED

.266**

-.128*

.017

1.000

ECO

.676**

-.039

.184**

.115*

1.000

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Table 4 shows R=0.714 and R2 value = 0.510. This means that 51.0% of the variation in Y can be explained by all predictors (or accounted for by) the variation in X Regression coefficients of Three out of four positive belief factors such as information seeking, economy and hedonism beliefs significantly and positively predict ATOA among Malays. Credibility, however, did not emerge as significant predictors of ATOA among Malays.

Table 4: Regression Weights

Model

Unstandardized Coefficients

Standardized Coefficients

t

Sig.

B

Std. Error

Beta

1

(Constant)

3.761

.035

108.657

.000

INF

.107

.035

.123

3.048

.003

CRE

.029

.035

.033

.819

.413

HED

.179

.035

.206

5.096

.000

ECO

.567

.036

.651

15.943

.000

R

R2

Adj R2

F

Model 1

.714a

.510

.503

80.289**

a. Dependent Variable: ATOA

** p<.05

Discussion and Conclusion

This research indicated four common belief factors across the Malay samples: hedonism, information, credibility and economy. According to the findings, informativeness of advertising leads to positive attitude toward online advertising among Malays. Prior studies have been found the importance of mobile advertising informativeness (Saadeghvaziri and Seyedjavadain, 2011) and the importance of informativeness toward attitude in general (Munusamy, 2007). It is not surprising that those consumers who perceive that online advertising provide needed information have a more favorable attitude toward online advertising. Internet use motivation research reveals that information seeking is the primary reason people use the internet (Rubin, 2002). One reason could be the interaction nature of online advertising that allows consumers to acquire real-time account information that was not in the past (Stewart and Pavlou, 2002). Therefore, advertising with information produce greater marketplace competences in Malaysia, as the target customers are better able to match their needs and wants versus a producer’ offerings (Pollay and Mittal, 1993).

The effect of the hedonism has been confirmed among the Malay. This is consistent with the previous studies. As Wang et al (2009) noted entertainment of the advertising is significantly related to consumer attitude toward online advertising. Also according to (Munusamy, 2007) there is positive relationship between Malaysian consumers and their attitude toward advertising. Marketers should also think about hedonism/pleasure as an important way to increase consumers’ advertising likeability. Characteristics such as humor, enjoyable messages can easily attract consumers’ attention. Bauer and Greyser (1968) shown that people might enjoy watching and hearing advertisings with hedonism/pleasure without thinking about their interest in what is advertised. A more clear comprehension of the influence of hedonism/pleasure on attitude would benefit marketers in that they could design ad campaigns that emphasize hedonism/pleasure to create positive feelings from a market segment.

As results show, good for economy of advertising results in positive attitude toward online advertising among Malays, which is consisted with previous study about attitude toward advertising (Towler, 2001).

Based on the findings credibility is not significant predictor for Malays Consumers. Previous researches indicated different results. Zhou et al (2002) have supported the Credibility of advertising while Beard (2003) has criticized the Credibility of advertising. Due to the immaturity of the market and a lack of regulation systems, consumers in emerging markets often hold deep concern about the trustworthiness of online advertising. To establish credibility of online advertising, researchers have suggested that marketers should consider strategies such as money-back guarantees, improved customer services, and affiliations with credible organizations for a ‘‘seal of approval’’ (Wolin et al., 2002).

This research contributes to the knowledge in two important areas of consumer behaviour research. Firstly, it advances to a better understanding of consumer attitudes in Malaysia. Secondly, it enhances the understanding of how ethnicity background influences general attitudes towards online advertising.

Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research

Future research may also consider including respondents from other states including east Malaysia. In addition, future research should include other significant variables that affect student online attitude in the model. For example, value corruption and materialism as factors that affect online advertising. This research does not consider non-internet users' attitude toward online advertisement.

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