The influence of targeted digital advertising on consumers' purchase intention: Comparative analysis based on the perspective of ads content source

Abstract

AbstractTargeted digital advertising (TDA) is immensely popular among marketing practitioners; investigating its effects is increasingly becoming a subject of academic research. Brands can push advertisements of the same product from different sources to consumers in a targeted manner; however, the differences in the impact on consumers of TDA with different content sources are surprisingly understudied. Therefore, this study analyzes the consumers' purchase intentions in the context of TDA with different content sources (stars vs. bloggers vs. top e‐commerce streamers), and the perceived differences between consumers with different thinking styles. Through two experimental studies, this study finds that TDA with top e‐commerce streamers' recommendation source can better improve consumers' purchase intentions more than TDA with a star endorsement and TDA with a blogger evaluation. For consumers who prefer the rational thinking style, TDA with a star endorsement and TDA with top e‐commerce streamers recommendation can be better; For consumers who prefer the empirical thinking style, TDA recommended by bloggers and TDA with top e‐commerce streamers recommendation can be better. Furthermore, this study finds that consumers' mental simulation and perceived usefulness can mediate the relationships described above, and that the two play a chain mediation role. The findings contribute to the precision marketing literature by enriching the understanding of the psychological mechanism underlying consumers' perceptions of and decision factors toward the TDA.