Attitude Toward Advertising: A Case Study

Impacts of Attitude towards advertising The underlying assumption of the theory of reasoned action (TRA) is that human behavior is rational and systematic or primarily under the control of unconscious motives. “A person’s purchase or use of a product is determined by her intention to purchase or use of a product is determined by her intention to purchase or use it, and the choice among different brands is a function of the relative strength of her intention with respect to each brand. Her intention to buy or use a given product is in turn determined by her attitude toward buying or using it..” (Ajzen and Fishbein,1980: 159). Attitude has been found to be a good predictor of consumer behavior (e.g. Mitchell and Olson,1981: Shimp and Kavas,(1984).

Researchers have also been interested in the structure of advertising attitude, but their studies have tended to used smaller and less representative samples which may not be generalizable to the public in the United States (e.g. Muehling, 1987; Polly and Mittal, 1993). Another focus has been an attempt to understand the effect of general attitude towards advertising on involvement in specific advertisements (James and Kover, 1992), advertisement recall (Donthu, et al.,1993; Metha, 2000), brand switching and behavioral loyalty (Deighton, et al., 1984), buying interest (Metha, 2000) as well as consumer purchase behavior (Bush, et al., 1999). However, the effect of attitude towards advertising in general on purchase intention has not received specific academic attention. The TRA suggests that the attitude towards an act will influence an individual‘s behavioral intention and action. Applying TRA model, this study suggests that consumers‘attitude towards reading and receiving mobile advertising (attitude towards an act) will influence intention to read and receive mobile advertising (behavioral intention). A review of overall attitude towards different kinds of advertising (traditional advertising and Internet advertising) is needed in order to understand the attitude towards mobile advertising and its

This marketing strategy is often employed in mobile advertising and SMS is the major communication tool. This type of marketing often promotes free content by putting the advertisements on browsed wireless platform. The number of SMS ads would increase from 676 million in 2002 to 18.6 billion by 2006 (Borozo, 2002). Research showed that SMS was a more effective advertising channel for the age group of 15-24 years, who were very difficult to be reached by other media

(Puca, 2001). Simple push advertising is a prevalent advertising type in current, which is mainly carried out through simple text messages, i.e. SMS. Limited by existing technology, each SMS only contains 160 characters at the maximum. In other words, the maximum characters that carried by a SMS ad is 160. In general, according to the Wireless Advertising