Exploring the effect of regulatory focus on ad attitudes: The moderating roles of message sidedness and argument quality

Abstract

This research explores the interaction effects of message sidedness and argument quality of ads on how either promotion-focused or prevention-focused individuals engender their ad attitudes. Two hundred and forty undergraduates were randomly assigned to a 2 (regulatory focus: prevention-focus/promotion-focus) × 2 (message sidedness: one-sided messages/two-sided messages) × 2 (argument quality (AQ): weak/strong) between-subjects design. Results indicate that promotion-focused individuals tend to engender more favourable attitudes to weak AQ ads than strong AQ ads, whereas prevention-focused individuals tend to engender more favourable attitudes to strong AQ ads than weak AQ ads. In addition, results indicate more favourable attitudes for one-sided messages over two-sided messages for promotion-focused individuals, as well as more favourable attitudes for two-sided messages over one-sided messages for prevention-focused individuals. Furthermore, one-sided messages result in more favourable ad attitudes when linked with weak AQ for promotion-focused individuals; in contrast, two-sided messages elicit more favourable ad attitudes when linked with strong AQ for prevention-focused individuals. Results suggest that message sidedness and argument quality are closely related to regulatory focus, which has a direct impact on ad attitudes. Practical implications, theoretical contributions, limitations and directions for future research are discussed.