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The purpose of this study is to develop a framework to investigate the mediating role of attitude toward advertising for the relationship between the exogenous constructs – advertising puffery and celebrity trustworthiness, and an endogenous construct purchase intent.

This paper has proposed a conceptual model based on the previous relevant studies and conducted a survey of 223 youth respondents from India. Further, structural equation model with the help of AMOS software was used to test the relationship among the proposed constructs.

This paper has considered advertising puffery and celebrity trustworthiness as exogenous constructs, attitude toward advertising as a mediating construct and purchase intent as an endogenous construct. The results revealed that advertising puffery influenced purchase intent and attitude toward advertising inversely, whereas celebrity trustworthiness positively influenced both purchase intent and attitude toward advertising. Additionally, attitude toward advertising was found to be a significant predictor of the purchase intent. Moreover, attitude toward advertising is found to have significant partial mediation between the constructs, celebrity trustworthiness and purchase intent.

This paper is useful for the marketers of soft drinks and other low-involvement products in India to understand the perceptions of the youth toward advertising with puffery content and celebrity endorser.

This study is a unique attempt to build a framework involving a combination of advertising puffery and celebrity trustworthiness to analyze the mediating effect of attitude toward advertising on the purchase Intent.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between determinants and primary antecedents of advertising and attitudes to advertising in the context of European Union accession countries.

Drawing on data from consumer surveys conducted in the major urban areas of Bulgaria and Romania the study conceptualises an extended version of Pollay and Mittal's model of beliefs and attitudes toward advertising. It tests a comprehensive range of attitudes toward the institution of advertising and its instruments in each country to identify similarities and differences in consumer perceptions.

Findings confirm that consumers in the two countries are more positive about advertising as an institution than the instruments used to promote advertising. While product information acquisition is the main personal use of advertising which influences general attitudes to advertising in Bulgaria, the entertaining value of advertising was found the strongest personal use in Romania. No significant differences were found in the attitudes toward the institution and instruments of advertising in the two countries.

As data used in this study come from major urban areas in Bulgaria and Romania this might account for small research bias if the overall population of the two countries is considered. Interview bias were reduced by eliminating the verbal or non‐verbal cues to the respondents. The diverse composition of the two samples and the random selection of respondents have limited the research bias which is often a problem with other studies in Central and Eastern Europe that use predominantly convenience student samples.

The paper suggests that managers should focus on and exploit the overall positive general attitudes toward advertising in Romania and Bulgaria. Marketers should prioritise the informative power of advertising and use it cautiously in view of its perceived manipulative role especially to children. Advertisers need to devote more specific attention to re‐enforce the credibility of the institution of advertising in both countries.

The paper is a result of an original research that has extended theoretical concepts and compared their applicability to comparable EU accession contexts. Its findings suggest that advertising should be adapted to the personal uses and attitudes to advertising in the researched contexts by putting more emphasis on image building in order to increase its persuasive power and raise public trust in the institution and instruments of advertising.

Portraying sex in advertisements is a widely used technique by many marketers in their promotional programmes. Some previous research has explored the relationship between attitudes toward advertising and effectiveness of sexy advertisements. However, there are gaps in this research and the authors describe an investigation which attempts to fill these gaps.

The objective of this paper is to uncover the underlying dimensions of, and examine the similarities and differences in, personal uses of advertising, perceived socio‐economic effects of advertising, and consumer beliefs and attitudes toward advertising in Bulgaria and Romania. Moreover, it aims to identify the relative importance of the predictors of attitudes toward advertising in the two countries.

The paper draws upon findings of previous research and theoretical developments by Bauer and Greyser, Sandage and Leckenby, and Pollay and Mittal. The study uses a stratified random sample of 947 face‐to‐face interviews with adult respondents from major urban areas in Bulgaria (507) and Romania (440). Variables are measured on multi‐item scales as a typical application of the reflective indicator model.

Results show that there are significant differences between Romanian and Bulgarian respondents in terms of their attitudes toward advertising. Romanians are more positive about advertising as an institution than the instruments of advertising. Romanians seem to accept the role of advertising in a free market economy, but have less confidence in advertising claims and techniques. Bulgarian respondents seem more sceptical toward advertising in general and are less enthusiastic about embracing the role of advertising as an institution. Moreover, Bulgarians are highly negative towards the instruments advertising uses to convey its messages to consumers.

The research findings reflect the views of urban dwellers and may not be generalisable to the wider population of the two countries. Interviewer bias was reduced by eliminating verbal or non‐verbal cues to the respondents, and by the use of stratified random sampling.

The paper suggests that the regulatory role of codes of advertising practice and industry regulating bodies should be enhanced, and their ability to protect consumers enforced. Marketing campaigns should be more inclusive to involve diverse social groups and reflect generally‐accepted social norms.

This study reveals that, while general attitudes toward advertising may be similar, attitudes toward the institution and instruments of advertising may differ even in countries with geographic proximity and low cultural distance.

This study aims to examine how young consumers perceive the advertising effectiveness of endorsements by virtual idols and how endorsements by virtual idols differ from endorsements by real human celebrities such as traditional celebrities and online influencers.

An experimental study was conducted with 400 randomly selected young respondents in China in December 2022. A 3 × 2 factorial design was used to test how the type of celebrity endorser and level of product involvement influence the persuasiveness of advertising aimed at young adults. Among 400 respondents, the average age was 21.5 years. A total of 193 male and 207 female respondents participated in the experiment.

Young consumers find virtual idols, online influencers and traditional celebrities attractive. Although virtual idols are the least credible among the three types of celebrity endorsers, young consumers tend to be more convinced by their endorsements of products with low levels of consumer involvement than those with high levels of involvement. Among the three types of celebrity endorsements, young consumers find traditional celebrities the most effective. In addition, young consumers’ attitudes toward celebrity endorsers mediate the impact of celebrity endorsers’ attractiveness and credibility on their attitudes toward the advertisements. The perceived level of product involvement moderates the transfer of meaning from the attitude toward the celebrity endorsers to the attitude toward the advertisement.

First, when choosing celebrity endorsers to advertise products targeting young consumers, marketing communication practitioners should give priority to the endorsers’ perceived credibility, as young consumers have a variety of views about them that can significantly affect their attitudes toward the advertisement. Second, real human celebrity endorsers are more effective than virtual idols in celebrity endorsements. However, virtual idols may be suited for use in advertisements to promote products with low involvement levels, such as soft drinks.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first experimental study to attempt to analyze the effectiveness of virtual idols in advertising aimed at young consumers. This is also the first comparative study to introduce virtual idols as celebrity endorsers in product advertising and to compare their effectiveness with that of the two other types of commonly discussed celebrity endorsers, traditional celebrities and online influencers.

With the increasing dependence on market-based distribution of health-care resources in the USA, spending on health-care service advertisements directly targeting consumers has also increased. Previous research has shown that the ads fail to deliver information deemed essential by regulators. Nevertheless, the attitude of consumers toward health-care service advertising has been more positive than negative. The purpose of this study is to create a taxonomy of advertising information features to better describe the relationships between information features in the advertisements and consumer attitudes toward them.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 128 health-care consumers in a western state in the USA.

Factor analysis generated seven groups of information features. Among them, information features about access, cost and quality of care were rated as most helpful, whereas providers’ clinical qualifications and communication were rated least helpful. The advertising attitude measure was validated to contain two subscales, one regarding health-care service advertising and the other regarding physicians who advertise. People who highly rated the consumerism features had more positive attitudes toward health-care service advertising and people who highly rated provider clinical qualification features had more negative attitudes toward advertising physicians.

This study made methodological improvements in health-care service advertising research that would be crucial for its theoretical development. It also shed light on consumer characteristics and perceptions about information features that could influence their attitudes toward health-care service advertising.

This paper aims to view the role of religiosity in moderating the relationship between ego-defensive function of Muslim consumers’ and attitude toward advertising of controversial product. There is a rising concern among Muslim consumers’ with regards to the halal status of many food outlets in Malaysia. This came out because many food operators do not understand what halal really means. Many of them are from Kopitiams food and beverages industry.

Survey method was used for the purpose of data collection in April 2014, and quantitative approach has been used as well. This study applied functional theory of attitudes to support this framework. Respondents consisted of 375 Muslim consumers’ in Malaysia.

The paper provides empirical insights about how religiosity moderates the relationship between ego-defensive function and consumer attitude toward advertising. Consumers with a high level of religiosity are more likely to respond less favorably toward the advertising, while consumers who have a low level of religiosity are more likely to respond more favorably toward the advertisement. In addition, it can be postulated that religiosity reduces negative effects of ego-defensive function.

The fact that religious groups are more organized, equipped and motivated to register their concern, demands better understanding of such groups by marketers. To avoid any controversies, or potential business loss, a better understanding of what could ignite their reaction seems to be an appropriate preventive strategy.

Only a few studies directly examined the influence of religion on marketing communication. The effects of religion on the advertising of controversial products remain largely unstudied to date. Therefore, this paper fills the gap in the research area.

Drawing on extant literature on narrative persuasion, online advertising, and transportation theory, this research aims to study Internet‐based online narrative advertising and investigate the effects of four pertinent advertising design elements, interactivity, entertainment, vividness, and self‐referencing, on consumer products and the moderating effects of advertisement involvement on these relationships.

Data were collected using an online questionnaire that contained measures adapted from prior studies. Participants first selected a product that they would seriously consider purchasing and answered a set of questions prior to viewing a narrative online advertisement, which was followed by a different set of questions. Structural equation modeling was used to empirically test the authors’ proposed model.

Greater levels of interactivity, vividness, entertainment, and self‐referencing in narrative online advertisements led to more favorable attitudes toward a product. In particular, self‐referencing had a substantial effect on transportation in forming product attitudes. Advertisement Involvement moderates (i.e. enhances) the effect of self‐referencing on attitudes toward a product.

If properly designed, a narrative online advertisement can fully utilize Internet‐enabled features and can maximize their potential to produce a favorable consumer attitude toward a featured product.

This study advances narrative advertising research and provides empirical evidence to highlight the effects of the pertinent characteristics of Internet‐based advertising, interactivity and entertainment in the conversion process of transportation and consumer attitudes. Moreover, this study identifies and sheds light on important contingencies (i.e. advertisement involvement) of the focal relationships.

This paper aims to examine the structural relationships among the variables of social cause involvement, attitudes toward the endorser, attitudes toward advertising, attitudes toward the brand and social cause behavioral intentions. Additionally, by using the persuasion knowledge model (PKM) as the guiding framework, the moderating effects of ad perception on the proposed relationship were investigated.

By using Amazon Mechanical Turk, a total of 291 usable surveys were retained for analysis. Following the participants' exposure to the Nike commercial, they completed a survey containing questions about advertising perception and their consequent responses to the advertisement. Structural equation modeling was used to test the conceptual model. Multigroup analysis was also performed to discover any moderating effects of consumers' advertising perception in endorsement effectiveness.

This study highlights the extensive impact of social cause involvement in the domain of celebrity endorsements, while attitudes toward the endorser are not a significant antecedent of celebrity endorsement effectiveness in the sport contexts. Additionally, this study demonstrates and confirms the presence of the moderating effects of advertisement perception on the proposed relationship. This supports the general premise of the PKM that consumers' attitudes and thoughts are influenced based on consumers' judgment of persuasion attempts.

The current study extends the line of research on the role of advertising perception in the domain of celebrity endorsement. In particular, this study found that the PKM is a theoretically sound model that can be used to predict sports fans' attitudinal and behavioral responses.

Researchers emphasized that only a small effort has addressed the beliefs and attitudes of millennials toward advertising. The purpose of this study is also to respond to researchers’ recognition of the dearth of cross-national advertising and globalization studies in emerging markets. To fill this theoretical gap in the literature, this study aims to assess attitudinal differences and similarities, as well as the underlying structures of the attitude toward advertising in general (AG), of millennial consumers from developed and emerging markets (USA, UK, France, Spain and Morocco).

Data were obtained from millennials through self-administered survey questionnaires. It drew from findings of previous research and theoretical development by Bauer and Greyser, Pollay and Mittal, Sandage and Leckenby, Muehling, Durvasula and Netemeyer, and Andrews, Lysonski and Durvasula. Various statistical analyses were used to explore differences and similarities in AG.

The paper concludes that the two-factor solution framework of AG is inadequate. Research results also indicated that millennials from each of the five different countries studied did not indicate overwhelmingly favorable or unfavorable AG. This study found eight factors/constructs (i.e. promote bad things as good, product information, social role and image, hedonism/pleasure, good for the economy, materialism, falsity and “not interpretable”) as descriptors of the millennials from the five nations’ AG.

The differences in advertising beliefs and attitudes among samples in the five countries studied may be because of such factors as historical values, practices and regulations. Cultural values and dimension may influence millennials’ perceived AG and need to be taken into consideration.

Academicians and practitioners in the advertising field need to appreciate the country’s cultural peculiarities. In understanding the advertising preferences of millennial consumers in these five markets, marketing and advertising executives may have localized their advertising messages for each studied market, resulting in different responses from these millennial consumers.

Millennials need not be conceptualized as a single niche market. While the focus of most of research in the determinants of AG had been within the Western business/consumer construct, the goal is to include assessment of AG in a non-Western, emerging market. This paper addresses the dearth in determinants of AG research in North Africa and other emerging markets.