Familiarity, Beliefs, Attitudes, and Consumer Responses Toward Online Advertising in China and the United States

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the relationships among consumers' familiarity with online advertising, beliefs about online advertising effectiveness, attitudes toward online advertising (ATOA), and consumer responses across the United States and China. Results indicated, for U.S. consumers, familiarity was a positive predictor of online shopping but not a significant predictor of persuasion. For Chinese consumers, familiarity was a positive predictor of persuasion but not a significant predictor of online shopping. Familiarity did not influence any belief factors in the U.S. sample but emerged as a significant predictor of all five belief factors in the Chinese sample. For both samples, ATOA positively predicted persuasion, which by default positively predicted online shopping. Multiple group comparison further showed that the influence of ATOA on persuasion for U.S. consumers was stronger than that for Chinese consumers.

KEYWORDS:

• Online advertising
• beliefs about advertising
• attitude toward advertising
• persuasion
• consumer response
• culture

This study was supported by research grants (EYH 3353048 and KBH 3353557) awarded to the first author. The first author also would like to extend his thanks to Professor Tong Bing, director of the State Innovative Institute for Media Society at Fudan University.

Notes

∗p < .05;

∗∗∗p < .001.

∗p < .05;

∗p < .01;

∗∗∗p < .001.

∗p < .05; N.S. = not statistically significant.