Sexually Appealing Ads Effectiveness on Indonesian Customers

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the perception of Indonesian customers toward sex appeals in advertising as well as to understand what people think of sexually content advertising. Moreover, it is intended to also examine the role of conviction both cognitive and affective in sculpturing consumer’s attitude. Data collection methods conducted by web based survey method using snowball sampling. The study included 319 Indonesian respondents of each age-category and multi-background demography. Result from quantitative analysis demonstrating that conviction has influence on customers’ attitude formation process. Advertising should not only be interesting, but must also be convincing, either in the context of cognitive or affective state. Sexually appealing advertisement might be interesting and effective in some countries that have more overt culture, whereas, it is probably ineffective for countries with different cultural backgrounds. Conviction in ads elicited when the ad is successfully developing belief in consumers’ mind, where it matched their personality descriptions and made them pay more attention to the ad.

Keywords: cognitive conviction, affective conviction, attitude toward the ads, attitude toward the brand, purchase intentions