Impact of online advertising on adolescent’s brand attitudes

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of online advertising on advertising message involvement (AMI) and brand attitude formation among adolescent consumers. More specifically, the impact of advertising copy type and individual task orientation on brand attitude is examined through the mediating role of AMI among a sample of adolescents in India. Moderating role of product’s technology intensiveness is also examined.Design/methodology/approachExperimental design with three-way factorial analysis of variance was conducted along with independent t-tests and regressions.FindingsThe results show that the effect of ad copy type and individual task orientation on brand attitude is mediated by AMI. While both narrative and factual ad copies are found to increase AMI among the respondents, narrative ad copies generate greater AMI when compared with factual ad copies, irrespective of respondents’ task orientation or technology intensiveness of the product. Managerial insights regarding the type of online advertising that would generate a greater AMI and more favorable brand attitude among adolescent consumers are discussed.Originality/valueThe contribution of this research lies in providing the empirical evidence regarding the type of online advertising that can help marketers generate a greater AMI and cultivate more favorable brand attitude among the adolescent consumers.