Consumers' skepticism toward advertising claims

This research provides some empirical findings of the relationships between the antecedents as well as the outcomes variables of consumers’ skepticism toward advertising. Consumer skepticism toward advertising is defined as the tendency toward disbelief of advertising claims (Obermiller and Spangenb...

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Main Authors: Tien, Cheryl, Phau, Ian
Other Authors: Harry Timmermans
Format: Conference Paper
Published: Recent Advances in Retailing and Services Science 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/33939
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author Tien, Cheryl
Phau, Ian
author2 Harry Timmermans
author_facet Harry Timmermans
Tien, Cheryl
Phau, Ian
author_sort Tien, Cheryl
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description This research provides some empirical findings of the relationships between the antecedents as well as the outcomes variables of consumers’ skepticism toward advertising. Consumer skepticism toward advertising is defined as the tendency toward disbelief of advertising claims (Obermiller and Spangenberg, 1998). The beauty product industry is used as a context of study, due to the proliferation of manipulative ad claims in the industry. For the purpose of a preliminary study, this paper will employ one product category and a fictitious brand to examine consumers’ skepticism toward advertising. The fictitious brand choice and product category choice has been derived from a focus group study. Analysis has revealed that self-esteem, consumers’ susceptibility to interpersonal influences to informational factors and marketplace knowledge does not have a significant relationship with consumers’ skepticism toward advertising as hypothesized. However, cynicism and consumer susceptibility of interpersonal influences to normative factors are found to be strong predictors of consumers’ skepticism toward advertising. Consumers’ skepticism toward advertising is also found to influence inferences of manipulative intent positively; this finding empirically supports the gap in Campbell’s (1995) study on inferences of manipulative intent. Inferences of manipulative intent also have significant relationships with attitude toward the advertisement and product judgment. The implications and recommendations are also discussed.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-339392017-01-30T13:40:13Z Consumers' skepticism toward advertising claims Tien, Cheryl Phau, Ian Harry Timmermans culture-public relations relationship public relations education heuristic This research provides some empirical findings of the relationships between the antecedents as well as the outcomes variables of consumers’ skepticism toward advertising. Consumer skepticism toward advertising is defined as the tendency toward disbelief of advertising claims (Obermiller and Spangenberg, 1998). The beauty product industry is used as a context of study, due to the proliferation of manipulative ad claims in the industry. For the purpose of a preliminary study, this paper will employ one product category and a fictitious brand to examine consumers’ skepticism toward advertising. The fictitious brand choice and product category choice has been derived from a focus group study. Analysis has revealed that self-esteem, consumers’ susceptibility to interpersonal influences to informational factors and marketplace knowledge does not have a significant relationship with consumers’ skepticism toward advertising as hypothesized. However, cynicism and consumer susceptibility of interpersonal influences to normative factors are found to be strong predictors of consumers’ skepticism toward advertising. Consumers’ skepticism toward advertising is also found to influence inferences of manipulative intent positively; this finding empirically supports the gap in Campbell’s (1995) study on inferences of manipulative intent. Inferences of manipulative intent also have significant relationships with attitude toward the advertisement and product judgment. The implications and recommendations are also discussed. 2010 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/33939 Recent Advances in Retailing and Services Science fulltext
spellingShingle culture-public relations relationship
public relations
education
heuristic
Tien, Cheryl
Phau, Ian
Consumers' skepticism toward advertising claims
title Consumers' skepticism toward advertising claims
title_full Consumers' skepticism toward advertising claims
title_fullStr Consumers' skepticism toward advertising claims
title_full_unstemmed Consumers' skepticism toward advertising claims
title_short Consumers' skepticism toward advertising claims
title_sort consumers' skepticism toward advertising claims
topic culture-public relations relationship
public relations
education
heuristic
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/33939