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The key research issue addressed in this paper is whether individuals perceive advertisements featuring themes from their own religion more positively, and advertisements featuring religious themes from other religions less positively, than neutral ads. In the process, this paper aims to test whether the in-group bias theory (IGBT) and the polarized appraisal theory (PAT) apply in a religious context.

Respondents in a large Indian University were shown advertisements featuring Hindu and Muslim themes as well as a neutral advertisement in the context of pet adoption. Cognitive and affective response measures were used for evaluation.

Respondents did not evaluate advertisements with their own religion’s symbols any more positively than neutral advertisements but did evaluate advertisements with themes from other religions more negatively than neutral ads. In sum, religious advertisements did not have any positive effect on in-group respondents, but rather worked in antagonizing out-group respondents.

Both IGBT and PAT did not work as predicted when tested on in-group respondents but worked as expected on out-group respondents.

In the Indian market, using religious themes has largely negative consequences in terms of alienating out-group members, with no commensurate advantage on in-group members. Firms are better off not using religious advertising, and this decision would likely have a positive impact on a firm’s bottom line.

Though, the general topic of religious advertising has been much researched, but this paper deals with the role of religious symbols in advertising in the Indian context, which is done for the first time in a multi-religious context. Further, the applicability of IGBT and PAT is also tested for the first time in religious advertisement context.

This paper aims to examine the impact of increasing the intensity of religious cues in financial service advertisements on target and non-target groups.

To test the proposed hypotheses, a 2 (Religion: Muslims versus Non-Muslims) x 3 (Religious identity primes: Low versus Medium versus High) factorial design was used. Both target and non-target groups were randomly exposed to factitious advertisements of an Islamic bank embedded with low, medium and high intensity of religious cues.

The results of this study indicate that within target group the manipulation did result into a more favourable attitudes towards the advertisement (Aad) and attitudes towards the brand (Ab) for the medium intensity advertisement; however, for high intensity advertisement, only Aad was more favourable compared to low intensity advertisement. Relatively strong evidence was found in case of non-target group negative reactions in term of Aad, Ab and purchase intention. The direct comparison between target and non-target groups suggest a general pattern of more positive response from target group as compared to non-target group.

The findings of this study provide an important insight into the effectiveness of identity salience messages in financial service marketing. The study provide empirical evidence that intensifying the rhetoric beyond a certain point will generate negative results from both target and non-target respondents.

The authors integrated the research on symbolism, social identity and target and non-target effects to analyse the attitudinal and behavioural differences between and within target and non-target groups of financial service advertisements with different intensity of religious cues.

The purpose of this study is twofold, first, the study aimed at investigating the impact of celebrities’ credibility on advertising effectiveness by examining the celebrity attributes that are likely to influence consumer attitude towards celebrity-endorsed TV advertising and their purchase behaviour. Second, the study seeks to identify the mediating role of religiosity on consumers’ attitudes towards celebrity-endorsed television advertising and buying behaviour.

The study is based on a survey questionnaire in a sample of 370 Sudanese customers on their attitude towards the celebrity endorsement of television advertising.

The study found that celebrities’ likeability and their attractiveness have the greatest impact on both consumers Attitude and their purchase behaviour. The study also confirms that religiosity partially mediate both the relationships between celebrities’ credibility and the attitude towards the advertisement and purchase behaviour and revealed that religiosity correlates negatively with celebrities’ credibility and attitude towards advertisement.

However, the study has some limitations, as it investigates the effectiveness of celebrities’ endorsement in TV commercials only. Future research could be extended to investigate the effectiveness of using celebrities advertising on other different media such as radio, printed and outdoors media. Further, the study uses a scale based on the Islamic practice dimensions, and using a more comprehensive scale to measure religiosity based on both belief and practices may be a further extension.

These results have important implications for advertising practitioners and business enterprises in Sudan, and other similar communities. They provide guidance in the sense that religiosity should be weighed in and given high importance when using celebrities in advertising campaigns and that the advertisement contents should be compliant with the Islamic law (Shariah).

Understanding how religious beliefs influence the attitude towards the advertising is of great importance to international advertisers to improve advertising effectiveness without offending their Muslim audience. The study enriches the literature on the religiosity and its influence on the consumer behaviour, particularly in the celebrity-endorsed advertisements.

To the best of the authors knowledge, this study is the first study of its kind in Sudan to explore the impact of celebrities’ endorsement on consumers attitude and buying behaviour and provide empirical evidence to verify the existence of a mediating role of religiosity on both the attitude and purchase behaviour in the Sudanese context. It provides an understanding of Sudanese attitudes and purchase decision, as Muslims, and thus provides practitioners with guidelines on how to design celebrity-endorsed TV advertisements to influence consumers’ attitude and buying behaviour.

Although religiosity and advertising messages have been extensively examined in the existing literature separately, studies which correlatively examine both these aspects are very limited. This paper aims to reveal the influence of the widely used religious messages on consumer attitudes and of purchase intentions on subjects with different levels of religiosity.

In this study, four different printed advertising messages with and without religious messages were developed for two different products. In this respect, the consumer attitudes toward advertisements and the degree to which purchase intention changed were measured.

The attitude and purchase intention toward the advertisements with religious messages was found to have a higher mean value compared to the advertisements without religious messages, and a statistically significant difference was found between the two. The highly religious participants’ attitudes and purchasing intention toward the advertisements with religious messages differed as compared to the participants with low levels of religiosity.

Indeed, it was observed that the attitude toward different advertising messages and purchase intention differed regarding the level of religiosity. In the last section of the study, the influence of the level of religiosity on purchasing intention and consumer attitudes has been discussed with academic and practical results.

This study has also extended the practical implications of social judgment theory, which suggests that the further the consumers’ initial position to the new message the less is the acceptance of that message, and it contributes to its methodological and theoretical development. Whether a religious advertisement message is considered more or less acceptable depends on the level of religiosity and the positioning strategy adopted in the advertisement. In the present study, it is observed that as the level of religiosity increases, purchase intention and the attitude towards the advertisement with religious message increase in permissible(halal) goods. However, when prohibited (haram) services are considered, an increase in the subjects' level of religiosity brings about a decrease in the purchase intention and the attitude towards the advertisement with religious message. Therefore, this study validates social judgment theory.

A significant implication for the marketing practitioners is that religiosity could be one of the criteria in segmenting market. A religiously prohibited product might gradually feel more irritating as the intensity of religious message increases in an advertisement. Thus, it is an important consideration for an organization offering faith-based products in mono-religious societies. Clearly, marketers need to be very careful when they use religious symbols in the secular marketplace, which raises the question – What factors underlie a positive response to religious message use in advertisement?

Religion was a taboo subject in society in the recent past; it has not been comprehensively investigated in marketing literature; moreover, it is evident that this situation continues to exist at present. It can, therefore, be said that the efforts to conceptualize religion’s influence on marketing and consumer behavior have been scarce.

This paper aims to provide insight into the relationship between religiousness, trust in advertising and advertisement avoidance.

A survey of 4,984 participants from the USA, the UK, Germany, Spain and France was conducted.

This paper shows that religiousness is a (negative) predictor of avoidance of advertisements in traditional and digital media and that advertisement trustworthiness mediates this effect. Higher perceived trustworthiness of advertising among the more religious people leads to less advertisement avoidance. Less religious people trust advertising less and, consequently, show higher advertisement avoidance. The role of religiousness is explained by a positive relationship between religiousness and perceived advertisement trustworthiness because of religious people’s general conformity to authority and because of religion’s emphasis on the good of fellow human beings.

One limitation is that response bias may have occurred because of the self-reported data on advertisement avoidance in different media. Another limitation is that though the use of existing panels has advantages, it also has disadvantages. Two such disadvantages of the sampling procedure are the considerable non-responses and the impossibility of a non-response analysis for our study. Although all the respondents had Internet access and responded fairly quickly to the survey, we do not know whether they are special in any systematic way.

The implication of the current paper is that advertisers might also benefit from more closely examining religion and religiousness as a key variable for segmentation. Religiousness constitutes a relatively stable society grouping, and media vehicles also are available for targeting people with different religions within societies (e.g. Websites, social media, magazines, television channels).

This paper is the first to examine the relationship between religiousness, trust in advertising and advertisement avoidance from an international perspective. This is important because religiousness may have an impact on marketing communication efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of religious salience on consumer purchase intentions in the multicultural environment of the UAE, more specifically on the willingness of a Muslim consumer to purchase a product labelled or packaged to include an Islamic appeal, i.e. an appeal with a heightened religious salience. While some attempts have been made in the literature to examine the impact of religious salience on purchase intentions, research amongst Muslim consumers remains under-explored.

The authors used a randomized survey experiment administered to 148 Emirati educated female nationals. The survey consisted of pairs of advertisements, where each advertisement promoted the same product and the same brand, varying on whether they included an Islamic appeal or not in the labelling, packaging or slogan. The respondents were asked about their attitude to the different versions of the advertisements, as well as their willingness to purchase the product. The authors used causal mediation analysis to explore the mechanisms through which causal effects on purchase intentions are determined.

This study shows that including an Islamic appeal, and therefore increasing the religious salience in product promotion, leads to higher purchase intentions amongst Muslim consumers. The authors also identified a number of additional moderating factors that influenced the consumer’s purchase intentions, such as product and/or brand awareness and the type of product being promoted, as well as the nature of the artefact that was included in the ad as the Islamic appeal. Finally, the causal mediation analysis suggests that Islamic appeals increases product attractiveness, which in turn leads to higher purchase intentions.

This paper investigates the effect of religious salience on consumer behaviour and their purchase intentions. This paper makes an empirical contribution to understanding consumer behaviour with particular relevance to retail hubs with a majority Muslim population.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the use of a male decorative model, so called Kkot Minam in Korean, can be effective in Indonesia as well as in Korea, and whether consumers from different cultural and religious backgrounds will respond differently to this kind of advertisement.

A personal interview survey was used to collect the data. The respondents, 159 Koreans and 149 Indonesians, were female consumers in their twenties. They represent the target market of “The Face Shop” brand, whose advertisement was used in this research. Structural equation model was employed to test the hypotheses.

Overall results indicate that the use of Kkot Minam in cosmetics advertisement is effective in Indonesia. The findings also showed that religiosity affects Indonesian consumers’ attitudes toward Kkot Minam. However, when attitudes toward Korean wave were used as a moderating variable, the negative effect of religiosity on attitudes diminished.

Companies in emerging markets may use decorative male models in advertising once the social and economic status of women reaches a certain level.

The present study investigates the effect of a decorative male model on the attitudes of consumers with different cultural and religious backgrounds, using Korean wave as a moderating variable in the same research setting.

The purpose of this study is to verify the factors affecting the use of emotional and rational appeals in online advertising among Muslim customers in Iran.

By reviewing the literature of advertising appeals and developing a comprehensive theoretical model, the effect of rational and emotional appeals on online advertising was examined. Expert questionnaire was administered to verify the validity of collected features. The Student's t-test was utilized to analyze the data collected from 271 participants.

Five latent variables, namely user type, product involvement, e-lifestyle, advertising strategies, and internet motives were examined to explain factors affecting online advertising appeals among Muslim customers in Iran. It was found that “advertising strategies” and “user type” are the most effective factors influencing Muslims customers in developing an online advertising campaign.

The sample of this study was Iranian experts and it is necessary to conduct a survey with a larger sample size.

This study provides insights into factors affecting the selection of emotional and rational appeals in Muslims countries. Moreover, it reports the primary columns of online advertising appeals.

The purpose of this paper is to find out whether a global advertisement will be effective and how it is perceived; is it affected by consumers' age, education, religion besides collectivism, and individualistic behavior?

Descriptive research involving 1,000 respondents. Global advertisements of fast moving consumer goods and consumer durable products are taken for study using questionnaire technique. The focus is to elucidate information on the perception of a global advertisement and how it will be affected by education, age, religion and collectivism, and individualistic behavior.

It is found that culture does affect the perception of global advertisement. Religion, age, and education do play a role in perception of global advertisement – they play an important role in buying intention.

The study is limited to the Indian scenario and can be applicable to SARC countries or South‐East Asian countries as they are the fastest growing emerging world markets.

This is an original research paper and its findings could be important in minimizing wastage. India, Thailand, Brazil, China, and Russia are important emerging markets. Understanding their culture, education, age, and religion could improve global advertisements' effectiveness.