Ad skepticism: the consequences of disbelief.

Advertising is an industry that involves billions of dollars per year (nearly $250 billion for 2003 [McCann-Erickson 2003]), employing bright minds with access to state-of-the-art theory in human behavior. Despite its sophistication, subtlety, vast resources, and ubiquity, advertising faces enormous challenges to the objective of influencing sales, not least of which is that many consumers simply do not believe advertising claims. Our aim is to examine the consequences of disbelief--to discover what happens when people don't believe the ads they see.

Sorting through ad claims, many of which are difficult to substantiate, requires effort, and consumers are generally not highly motivated to process advertising information (MacInnis, Moorman, and Jaworski 1991). It is, therefore, reasonable that simple disbelief may be one way that consumers cope with the persuasive attempts of advertising. Friestad and Wright (1994) describe how a person's knowledge of persuasion strategies influences his or her responses to persuasion attempts. Both consumers and marketing agents have access to three categories of knowledge: The consumer has knowledge of the topic (or product), knowledge of persuasion (beliefs about how persuasion occurs and what tactics are used or are effective), and knowledge of the agent (advertiser or manufacturer). The marketing agent, in turn, has knowledge of the topic, knowledge of persuasion, and knowledge of the target (the consumer segment). The marketing agent relies on knowledge bases to develop a persuasion attempt. The consumer, relying on a set of knowledge, counters with a persuasion-coping response. Although the relationship between marketer and consumer is not always adversarial, we suspect that the most frequent coping response may be to discount messages recognized as ads.

Empirical evidence suggests that advertising claims (in ads that are processed) are frequently not accepted. Calfee and Ringold (1994) reported the consistent observation in public opinion polls that roughly two-thirds of consumers claim they doubt the truthfulness of ads. Previous research (Obermiller and Spangenberg 1998, 2000) supports the proposition that consumers are socialized to be skeptical toward advertising, and the extent of their skepticism is a determinant of their responses to advertising.

Obermiller and Spangenberg (1998) defined skepticism toward advertising (ad skepticism) as the tendency to disbelieve the informational claims of advertising. They developed and validated a scale to measure the construct (SKEP), and demonstrated empirical support for a hypothesized nomological network. Their work proposed that ad skepticism is a marketplace belief; demonstrated its relation to attitude toward advertising and attitude toward marketing; and identified its consequence to certain personality characteristics, marketplace experiences, consumer socialization, and education (Obermiller and Spangenberg 2000). Ad skepticism was also shown to relate to global measures of evaluative responses to advertising. (1) We extend that work in the present study, focusing on the consequences of ad skepticism on advertising.

AD SKEPTICISM AND RESPONSES TO ADVERTISING

We propose that ad skepticism influences a set of responses to advertising, one of which is to bypass advertising and gather product information from other sources. Other moderated responses include processing of the ads, formation of brand beliefs, attitude toward the ad, responsiveness to certain advertising tactics, and purchase intention. We expect that consumers who are high in ad skepticism would show weaker brand beliefs consistent with advertising claims, more negative attitudes toward ads, different responses to emotional versus informational appeals, and lower intentions to purchase the advertised products. Furthermore, higher skepticism should be related to less attention to advertising and greater attention to nonadvertising sources of information. We justify these hypothesized consequences as follows: Because ad skepticism reflects a tendency not to believe advertising, the disbelief in specific ad claims follows directly. Because virtually all ad claims are positive, less belief in those claims should lead to less positive attitudes and purchase intentions. Because high ad skepticism is reflective of a general distrust in the validity of advertising, consumers with high skepticism should be inclined to ignore ads and seek product information from other sources. Finally, because ad skepticism reflects a disbelief in the information content of ads, consumers with high skepticism should be less responsive to information-based appeals (as compared to consumers with low skepticism).

Our investigation of the influences of ad skepticism is in accord with other research on individual differences as moderators of responses to advertising. Many studies have examined immediate or temporary antecedent variables, some of which may be influenced by the ad itself, such as mood or ad-induced feelings (see Meuhling and McCann 1993). Other studies have also examined effects of more stable consumer dispositions, similar to ad skepticism, including attitude toward the ad/advertiser/advertising (Homer 1990; Miniard, Bhatla, and Rose 1990), beliefs about specific ad elements (Moore, Harris, and Chen 1995), prior brand attitudes (Chattopadhyay and Basu 1990), brand-related beliefs (Mittal 1990), demographics and lifestyles (Green 1999; Grief and Brumbaugh 1999), product involvement (Rose, Miniard, and Bhatla 1990), and various personality traits (e.g., Schoenbachler and Whittler 1996; Zhang 1996). Generally, these studies have found predictable relations: In relative senses, responses to ads are less positive when ad or advertiser attitudes or beliefs are negative, when prior brand attitudes or beliefs are negative, when consumers are older or better educated (possibly a consequence of increased ad skepticism), and when product involvement is lower (though the latter effect has been shown to be moderated by a number of ad factors).

Consistent with these findings, we expect that consumers with relatively higher skepticism toward advertising should exhibit less positive responses to ads.

Skepticism about advertising has both social and individual antecedents. Earlier researchers (among others, Darby and Karni 1973; Ford, Smith, and Swasy 1988; Nelson 1970) developed the notion of information economics in advertising, arguing that consumers tend to value information that is perceived to be useful and valid. Because advertising is associated with selling and tends toward exaggerating, especially as claims are more difficult to substantiate, consumers are socialized to be skeptical. That social antecedent is entirely consistent with our consideration of skepticism as an individual difference. While acknowledging the general, social effects on skepticism, we focus on differences in individuals' willingness to believe advertising claims. Finally, our hypotheses are based largely on the discussion in Obermiller and Spangenberg (1998) of the nomological relation between ad skepticism and these other factors. In the current research, moreover, we examine a greater range of consequences than in previous studies.

STUDY 1: SKEPTICISM AND IMMEDIATE RESPONSES TO ADS

Ad skepticism should influence specific, immediate responses to ads. In particular, we expect more skeptical consumers to like ads less and find their claims less believable, less influential, and less informative. To test these hypotheses, we assessed the ad skepticism of 140 students (65 M.B.A.s, 75 undergraduates), and four weeks later, presented them with a series of 13 print ads. Ad skepticism was measured with the SKEP scale, a nine-item scale that rates advertising on the following dimensions: getting the truth, aim is to inform, is informative, is generally truthful, is a reliable source of information, is truth well told, presents a true picture, provides essential information, and leaves one feeling accurately informed (see Obermiller and Spangenberg 1998 for exact wording). After each ad, the …