Segmentation Based on Affinity for Advertising.

In this article the usefulness of the Affinity for Advertising concept is investigated by means of three questions: "What is Affinity for Advertising?"; "To what extent do people differ in their Affinity for Advertising in different media?"; and "Do people who differ in Affinity for Advertising also differ in their behavioral reactions toward advertising?" A positive answer to the latter question is of course essential, because only then could Affinity for Advertising be a useful concept for media planners. Based on a nationwide survey in the Netherlands (n = 1,065), it is concluded that Affinity for Advertising is a promising concept for segmenting the audience within the context of media planning.

THE FIRST QUESTION a media planner asks is: "To whom should we advertise?" To answer this question she or he will define one or more target audiences or segments. Historically, various concepts or variables have been used in market segmentation. In this respect, there has been a shift from general concepts such as demographics to more specific concepts such as lifestyles, or more recently, domain-specific market segmentation (Bronner, 2000). For the media planner, it is not only important to choose the right segments but also to determine whether these groups can effectively be reached through advertising. The media planner would like to know if the selected audience is receptive to the planned advertising campaign and through what media. It is within this context that the concept Affinity for Advertising is introduced. This concept refers to people's feelings toward advertising in different types of media. The idea is that once a consumer's Affinity for Advertising is established, the media planner will have an extra tool at his or her disposal. It is then possible to select the medium for which the consumer's affinity is the highest.

In this article the usefulness of the Affinity for Advertising concept is investigated by means of three questions: (1) What is Affinity for Advertising? (2) To what extent do people differ in their Affinity for Advertising in different media? and (3) Do people who differ in Affinity for Advertising also differ in their behavioral reactions toward advertising? A positive answer to the latter question is of course essential, because only then could Affinity for Advertising be a useful concept for media planners.

AFFINITY FOR ADVERTISING

To conceptualize the idea of affinity, several studies on attitudes toward advertising were consulted. In the classic study of Bauer and Greyser (1968) the American public was asked how it basically felt about advertising. It was found that advertising in general was approved of by more than 40 percent of the sample. Bauer and Greyser also used eight statements to measure why people are favorable or unfavorable to advertising. An important reason for liking advertising was, according to the respondents, the economic role of advertising. The reason for disliking advertising, on the other hand, was found in disagreement with the statement "Advertising presents a true picture" and in agreement with "Advertising persuades people to buy things they shouldn't buy." In this tradition, several other researchers also measured the underlying beliefs or reasons for the attitude toward advertising (e.g., Alwitt and Prabhaker, 1992; Anderson, Engledow, and Becker, 1978; Bartos, 1983; Hoek and Gendall, 1994; James and Kove r, 1992; Mittal, 1990, 1994; Pollay and Mittal, 1993 [1]). These reasons can be divided into two categories: beliefs about the role of advertising in society and beliefs about functions of advertising for the individual. The first category, societal beliefs, includes the economic role of advertising, its persuasiveness, and its (negative) effects on children and values in society. In the second category three functions are distinguished: advertising provides product information; advertising provides information about other people (social information); and advertising entertains.

To summarize, the studies mentioned in this section primarily measured attitudes toward advertising and reasons for the attitude toward advertising. A few of them also measured the consequences of attitudes and their underlying reasons with exposure or attention to specific advertisements. The results of these studies show that people with negative or positive attitudes to advertising see more advertisements than people with a neutral attitude (Bauer and Greyser, 1968), or spent more time reading print advertisements (James and Kover, 1992). These studies also show that people with positive attitudes toward advertising react more favorably to specific advertisements, compared to people with a negative attitude.

The proposed idea of distinguishing different groups by segmenting the audience according to their Affinity for Advertising is based on the work of Bonds and Griggs. [2] On the basis of a cluster analysis of different attitudinal statements, Bond and Griggs labeled different groups that vary in their degree of liking television advertising. They identified, for instance, the "Rejector" cluster (32 percent of the sample). These rejectors were significantly more hostile to TV commercials than other groups and were less likely to recall any TV advertisement accurately. These rejectors were also identified by Silman and Samuels (1995), who used the same attitudinal statements in two other studies. In the Netherlands, a market research company also measured the number of people who have a negative attitude toward television advertising in general. These "TV-AD-rejectors" constitute, as in the Bond and Griggs study, approximately one-third of the …