Simply Captivating: Understanding Consumers' Attitudes Toward the Cinema as an Advertising Medium

Abstract

Due to high costs, fragmented audiences, and cluttered environments, advertisers are finding it increasingly difficult to reach key target markets. Thus, many are looking to nontraditional media, such as cinema advertising, to maximize the effectiveness of advertising expenditures. Given the captive nature of this type of advertising, the authors explore factors influencing consumers' attitudes toward the cinema as an advertising medium, citing reactance, equity, and expectancy-disconfirmation theory as guiding theoretical frameworks. Using insights derived from 32 in-depth interviews, the authors develop a conceptual model around three main themes that shape attitudes toward the medium of cinema advertising and find that reactance, equity, and expectancy-disconfirmation theory may prove to be promising foundations for understanding attitudes toward cinema advertising.