An Investigation into the Antecedents of Overall Attitude toward General Advertising

Abstract

The study, an investigation into the antecedents of overall attitude towards advertising in general focused on the factors that influence consumers’ perceived attitude towards advertising characteristics. The research effort is geared towards examining whether the institution of advertising and instrument of advertising are important construct in the study of overall attitude towards advertising in general. Cross sectional survey research with descriptive design was used. The principal instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire. The instrument contained questions with multiple indicators relating to attitude towards advertising instrument, advertising institution and overall attitude towards advertising in general. Copies were administered to a convenience sample of 250 respondents. Out of the 180 instrument returned, only 147 copies were found valid hence used for analyses. All hypotheses were tested at 0.01 levels of significance using Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Pearson correlation coefficient (r). The findings revealed that there was a joint contribution of the components of advertising institution and advertising instrument to overall attitude towards general advertising. This result is an indication that attitude towards advertising is a mediating variable through which advertising influences brand attitude and purchase intention. It is then concluded that attitude to advertising institution and advertising instrument are strongly predictors of overall attitude to general advertising. Since the research did not involve consumer characteristics of socio-demographic variable to determine its influence on overall attitude, there is need to recognize that future research in such area is necessary.

Keywords: Advertising Institution, Advertising Instrument, General Advertising, Overall Attitude