Assessing beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral responses toward online advertising in three countries

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Abstract

The study is aimed to investigate the relationships among consumers’ beliefs about online advertising, attitudes toward online advertising (ATOA), and consumer behavioral responses in three different nations. Among the major findings, (1) all five belief factors (i.e., information seeking, entertainment, economy, credibility, and value corruption) were statistically significant predictors of ATOA, which in turn, significantly predicted online ad clicking and frequency of online shopping, and (2) consumers’ beliefs, attitudes and behavioral responses toward online advertising, and relationships thereof, varied across countries (i.e., the U.S., China, and Romania). Romanians had the most positive ATOA and were most likely to click on advertisements. Americans, however, made the most online purchases.

Section snippets

Beliefs and attitudes toward online advertising

Consumers’ beliefs 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 and Shavitt, 1999), whereas the second postulates that there are fundamental distinctions between beliefs

A conceptual model, hypotheses, and research question

This study tests a proposed model of ATOA in a cross-cultural context. The following graph presents the conceptual model underlying the study. The model posits that belief factors (e.g., information, entertainment) influence ATOA, which in turn affects consumers’ behavioral responses. Culture exerts a broad and profound impact on people's beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. Cultural background is included in the conceptual model. The model also posits that culture influences belief factors, ATOA,

Procedure and sampling

A questionnaire was developed first in English and then translated into Chinese and Romanian. Back-translation was conducted by bilingual third parties to improve the translation accuracy. Data were collected from Internet users in the U.S., China and Romania. A purposive sample was recruited with the assistance from professional survey research companies. Overall, 202 questionnaires were collected in China, 384 in Romania, and 196 in the U.S. Two surveys were excluded from data analysis in the

Results

Two structural models were fitted to the pooled data of Chinese, American, and Romanian participants. For model I, the indicator of online behavior was ad clicking, whereas frequency of online buying was the indicator of online behavior for model II. Hence, in both models, behavioral response was treated as a single-indicator construct. The sample size for model I was 777. For model II, surveys missing on the item of online shopping frequency were excluded from data analysis, and a sample size

Links between belief factors, ATOA, and behaviors

This study identified five common belief factors across the U.S., Chinese and Romanian samples: entertainment, information, credibility, economy, and value corruption. The results showed that all five factors were significant predictors of ATOA, which was consistent with previous research (e.g., Ducoffe, 1996, Wolin et al., 2002). Among the five factors, the economy belief played the most important role in predicting ATOA. People who believe online advertising has a positive impact on the

Acknowledgments

This project is supported by a grant the second author received from the State Innovative Institute for the Studies of Journalism & Communication and Media Society at Fudan University. Here, we would like to extend our thanks to Professor Tong Bing.

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