COMPARISON OF BELIEFS ABOUT ADVERTISING, ATTITUDE TOWARD ADVERTISING, AND MATERIALISM HELD BY AFRICAN AMERICANS AND CAUCASIANS

Psychological Reports, 1995, 77, 455-466. O Psychological Reports 1995

COMPARISON OF BELIEFS ABOUT ADVERTISING, ATTITUDE TOWARD ADVERTISING, AND MATERIALISM HELD

BY AFRICAN AMERICANS AND CAUCASIANS '

KAK YOON

Edward R. Murrow School of Communica/ion Washington Slate University

Summay.-This research investigated the relationship between advertising and materiahsm across African-American and Caucasian groups (87 students and 79 community adults) as well as general attitude toward advertising and beliefs about advertising. The association between attitude toward advertising and materialism was positive. The African-American respondents held more materialistic values than their Cau- casian peers; they exhibited a more favorable general attitude toward advertising and held more favorable beliefs about advertising. These findings are consistent with the criticism that advertising is at least connected with materialistic values in our society.

In the last decade consumer research has expanded beyond the usual focus on brand attitudes and brand purchasing to include the meaning of those possessions (Fournier & Guiry, 1992). One specific area has been the construct of materialism, which has received more attention from researchers in recent years for two reasons. It seems to affect consumers' behavior and may be associated with several negative consequences such as self-hatred, self-destructive urges, greed, miserliness, and envy (see Belk, 1985).

Some critics accuse advertisers of spreading materialistic values in Arner- ican society and of encouraging over-consumption (e.g., Durning, 1991; Pol- lay, 1992). Advertising as a facilitator of materialism seems plausible from the perspective of social-comparison theory. Accordmg to Richins (19921, the "idealized images" portrayed in advertising encourage people to com- pare their lives with the idealized images. However, there has been no empirical research on the relation of advertising and materialism. The goal of this paper was to examine that relation.

Marketers should constantly monitor consumers' attitudes toward materialism and advertising because they are expected to influence purchasing behavior. Marketers should also pay more attention to any differences asso- .ciated with ethnicity because populations of minority groups are predicted to grow dramatically (Abernethy, 1994; Edrnondson, 1994). Although not the fastest growing minority group in the USA, the African-American group is the largest.

'Address enquiries to K. Yoon, Ph.D., Department of Advertising, Edward R. Murrow School of Communication, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-2520.

The essence of the construct "materialism" is the idea that people gain personal satisfaction from owning objects or experiences more than from spiritual sources such as religion or personal relationships with other people (Bek, 1984). Another important aspect of materialism is that materialistic people use possessions to signal their success to others so material objects represent success and status (McKeage, 1992). Materialists not only gain satisfaction from owning materials but also from showing them to others.

Belk (1984, 1985) found that materialism is a personal trait characterized by possessiveness, nongenerosity, and envy. Rchins and Dawson (1992) similarly characterized materialism by three personality traits of acquisition centrality, acquisition as the pursuit of happiness, and possession-defined success. Acquisition centrality is similar to Belk's concept of possessiveness and refers to the extent to which people put material acquisition at the center of their lives. Acquisition as the pursuit of happiness refers to the extent to

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which people view possessions as a primary way to gain satisfaction in Me. Finally, possession-defined success represents the extent to which ~ e o p l e judge themselves and others by the number and quality of material things they own.

Beliefs About Advertising and General Attitude Toward Advertising A general attitude toward advertising is defined as "a learned predispo-

sition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner to advertising in general" (Lutz, 1985, p. 53). This construct represents an over- all attitude toward advertising rather than an attitude toward a specific adver- tisement or specific forms of advertising.

In addition to a general attitude toward advertising, this study measured various beliefs about advertising held by the respondents. Following the Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) attitude model, many researchers (e.g., Dur- vasula, Andrews, Lysonski, & Netemeyer, 1993; Muehhg, 1987; Pollay & Mittal, 1993) now hold a view that attitude toward advertising is based on general beliefs about advertising. Presented below is a brief review of the studies on beliefs about advertising.

Bauer and Greyser's (1968) seminal study of consumers' beliefs about advertising showed that such beliefs are represented by two factors. The first factor was beliefs about advertising's "economic effects" and the second one was beliefs about advertising's "social effects." Several subsequent studies (Greyser & Reece, 1971; L a r h , 1977; Reid & Soley, 1982) which employed Bauer and Greyser's two-factor scale consistently indicated that consumers were critical of advertising's social effects but they were appreciative of its economic effects.

A recent article by Pollay and Mittal (1993) suggested that the two-fac-

ADVERTISING: BELIEFS, ATTITUDES, RACE 457

tor model of advertising beliefs proposed by Bauer and Greyser may not be comprehensive enough. In adcbtion to the two, they proposed to include both information- and entertainment-related beliefs as factors affecting a general attitude toward advertising. Their conceptual model proposed that the likely antecedents of attitude toward advertising are behefs about "personal util~ty" and "societal effects" of advertising. Personal uthty of advertising, in turn, was determined by (a) advertising's perceived value as product information, (b) advertising's perceived value as social image information, and (c) perceptions of advertising as a source of amusement. Their model also posits that the "societal effects" are determined by perceptions of advertising's influence on (a) the economy, (b) materiahsm, (c) value corruption, and (d) falsity/no sense, e.g., "advertising insults intelligence" and "advertising is misleading."

There is some work suggesting that African Americans may be more materialistic than their Caucasian peers (Crispell, 1993). In addition, some researchers have suggested that African-American consumers tend to be more receptive to advertising in general (Bauer & Greyser, 1968; Durand, Teel, & Bearden, 1979; Tolley & Goett, 1971). For example, African Americans were more satisfied with the informational value of advertising than Cauca- sians (Soley & Reid, 1983). A recent study, however, showed that race did not predict either the perceived informativeness of advertising or irritation by advertising (Pasadeos, 1994), contradicting previous findings and suggesting further study.

The suggestion that African Americans may be more materiahstic and have more favorable attitudes toward advertising suggests a possible relationship between a positive attitude toward advertising and materidsm. The current study compared the behefs about advertising held by the two groups in addition to comparing the groups' general attitude toward advertising. Specifically, this study was conducted to test the hypotheses that (a) African Americans are more materialistic than Caucasians; (b) there is a relationship between materialism and a positive attitude toward advertising; and (c) Afri- can Americans have more positive beliefs and attitudes toward advertising than Caucasians.

Sample This study used a combination of a convenience sample of students and

a purposive sample of community adults to collect the data from a more general population. Although it is not a probabhty sample, the combination of the two nonprobabllity samples might increase the external vaLdity of the results. Nonetheless, the reader should consider the nature of the sample in interpreting the results.

A self-administered survey was conducted at a large southeastern university using a convenience sample of 87 college students enrolled in two general classes (biology and psychology). Thirty (34.5%) were African Amer- icans. Thirty-one were men (35.6%) and 56 were women (64.4%). The students ranged in age from 17 to 26 years, with a mean of 19.7 yr. (SD= 2.0).

The data for nonstudent adults were collected through mall intercepts on a Saturday in a large southeastern metropolitan city. Ten students in an advertising course at a large southeastern university were trained to interview as a class project and collected the data from adults over 30 years of age at local shopping malls. Of the 79 respondents in the sample, 23 (29.1%) were African Americans, 46 (58.2%) were men, and 33 (41.8%) were women. The range of ages was 30 to 50 with a mean of 36.5 yr. (SD =5.3).

The total sample included 166 people. Of these, 53 (31.9%) were Afri- can American and 77 (46.4%) were men. The average age for the aggregated sample was 27.3 yr. (SD=9.5). There was no difference between the two samples in terms of race ( x , ~ = .12, p > .05) and gender (x,' =2.11, p > .05).

Questionnaire

The attitude toward materialism scale is a mohfication of &chins and Dawson's (1992) 18-item scale for materialism. Because the goal was to de- velop an over-all index of materialism instead of investigating the dimen- sionahty of the construct, we eluninated the items which had factor loadings smaller than .60 in Rchins and Dawson's study to increase internal consistency of the index. The resulting ten items shown in Table 1 were anchored on a 7-point scale by "strongly disagree" and "strongly agree." All items were coded so that "1" represents a less materialistic attitude and "7" a more materialistic attitude. The ten items had a Cronbach alpha of .76.

Since a general attitude toward advertising represents consumers' perceived acceptability of advertising (Muehhg, 1987), three very general se- mantic differential items which have been widely used by many researchers (Muehling, 1987; Durvasula, et al., 1993) were selected, "goodhad," "positive/negative," and "favorable/unfavorable," and these were rated on a 7- point scale where 1 represented a negative attitude and 7 a positive attitude. These three items showed a Cronbach alpha of .93.

Beliefs about advertising were measured using the 21 advertising belief statements developed by Pollay and Mittal (1993) and shown in Table 2. Again, a 7-point scale was employed on which 1 represented "strongly disagree" and 7 represented "strongly agree." The scores for the negatively worded items in Table 3 were reversed so that higher scores consistently represented more positive beliefs about advertising.


TABLE 1 MEAN ~ T I N G S AND STANDAFUJ DEVIATIONS FOR THE ~'~ATERLALISM ITEMS

Item* M SD

I admire people who own exoensive homes, cars, and clothes. 3.7 1.2 . L . .

Some of the most important achievements in my life include acquiring material possessions.

1 don't place much emphasis on the amount of material objects people own as a sign of success.t

I usually buy only the things I need.t I try to keep my Ue simple, as far as my possessions are c0ncerned.t The things I own aren't a l l that important to me.t I have all the rhings I really need to enjoy 1iFe.t My life would be better if I owned certain things I don't have. I wouldn't be any happier if I owned nicer things.t I'd be happier if I could afford to buy more things.

*Seven-point scale (l=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree) scored so that a high score indi- cates a more materialistic attitude. [Adapted from Richins and Dawson (1992).1 tThe scale was reversed before the data were analyzed. The reversal of scale made the direc- tion of all the items consistent so that a score close to 7 would represent a higher materiahsm tendency.

To examine the viabdity of the four factors proposed by Polay and Mittal (1993), the 21 items shown in Table 2 were subjected to a principal components factor analysis with varirnax rotation (Kim & Mueller, 1978) using the data from the aggregated sample. This analysis, using the SPSS/PC+ (SPSS, Inc., 1988), produced four factors with eigenvalues greater than 1.0, accounting for 56.3% of the total variance. The largest amount (25.9%) of the total variance was explained by Factor 1 with nine items, folIowed by Factor 2 (15.2%) with four items, Factor 3 (8.5%) with five items, and Fac- tor 4 (6.8%) with three items.

TABLE 2 DESCRIP~VE STATISTICS FOR ADVERTISING BELIEF STATEMENTS

Item* M SD

1. Advertising is a valuable source of information about local sales. 5.4 1.6 2. Advertising tells me which brands have the features I am looking

for. 4.9 1.6 3. Advertising helps me keep up to date about products/services avail-

able in the marketplace. 5.4 1.5 4. From advertising I learn about hshions and about what to buy to

impress others. 3.8 1.9 5. Advertising tells me what people with life styles similar to mine are

buying and using. 4.0 1.8 6. Advertising helps me know which products will or will not reflect

the son of person I am. 3.3 1.9

(continued on next oaae)

*Adapted from Pollay and Mittal (19931, 1 =strongly disagree, 7 =strongly agree. ?The scale was reversed so that a score close to 7 would mean a more positive attitude toward advertising.

TABLE 2 (CONT'D) DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR ADVERTISING BELIEF STATEMENTS

Item* M SD

7. Quite often advertising is amusing and entertaining. 8. Sometimes I take pleasure in chinking about what I saw or heard or

read in advertisements. 9. Sometimes advertisements are even more enjoyable than other me-

dia contents. 10. In general, advertising helps out the nation's economy. 11. Mostlv, adverusine is wasteful of our economic res0urces.t , . " 12. In general, advertising promotes competition, which benefits the

consumer. 13. Advertising is making us a materialistic society, overly interested in

buying and owning things.? 14. Advertising makes people buy unaffordable products just to show

0Ef.t 15. Advertising makes people live in a world of fantasy.? 16. Because of advertising, people buy a lot of things they do nor really

need.? 17. Advertising promotes undesirable values in our s0ciety.t 3.9 1.8 18. Most advetusing distorts the values of our y0uth.t 3.7 1.9 19. In general, advertising is rnis1eading.t 3.6 1.7 20. Most advertising insults the intelligence of the average c0nsumer.t 3.8 1.7 - - - 21. In general, advertisements present a true picture of che product ad-

vertised. 3.2 1.6

*Adapted from Pollay and Mittal (1993), 1 =strongly disagree, 7 =strongly agree. ?The scale was reversed so that a score close to 7 would mean a more positive attitude toward advertising.

A summary of the factor analysis shown in Table 3 is remarkably similar to Pollay and mttal's (1993) findings. Consistent with their results, each of the three personal utility categories produced separate factors of social image uthty (Factor 2), utility as product information (Factor 3 ) , and utihty as a source of hedonic amusement (Factor 4). Factor 1 represented the beliefs about advertising's societal effects. Respondents' beliefs about advertising's role of "fostering materiahsm," "value corruption," and "falsity/no sense" d loaded on this factor instead of forming their own separate factors, con- firming Pollay and Mittal's findings. Also, as in their study, the two "good for the economy" items (Advertising promotes competition which benefits the consumer; Advertising helps our nation's economy) loaded on the "product information" factor. Only three items deviated from the Pollay and Mittal results. First, one "good for the economy" item (Advertising is wasteful of our economic resources) loaded on the "societal impact" factor. Sec- ond, the "falsity/no sense7' item, "Advertising insults the intelligence of the average consumer," also loaded on the "societal impact" factor. Findy, one "falsity/no sense" item (In general, advertisements present a true picture of the product being advertised) loaded on the "social image" factor.

ADVERTISING: BELIEFS, ATTITUDES, RACE 46 1

TABLE 3 FACTOR ANALYSIS OF BELIEFS ABOUT ADVERTISING

Items* Factor 1 2 3 4

Advertising makes people buy unaffordable products just to show 0ff.t

Advertising makes people live in a world of fantasy.t Advertising is making us a materialistic society, overly in-

terested in buying and owning things.t Adverrising promotes undesirable values in our society.? Because of advertising, people buy a lot of things they do

not really need.t Most advertising distorts the values of our y0uth.t In !general, advertising is misleading.7 Mostly, advertising is wasteful of our economic resources.1 Most advertising insults the intelligence of [he average

c0nsumer.t - -~

Advertising helps me know which products will or will not reflect the son of person I am.

From advertising I learn about fashions and about what to buy to impress others.

Advertising tells me what people with life styles similar to mine are buying and using.

In general, advertisements present a true picture of the product advertised.

Advertising helps me keep up to date about products/services available in the marketplace,

Advertising is a valuable source of information about local sales.

Advercisin tells me which brands have the features I am lookine for. "

In general, advertising promotes competition, which benefits the consumer.

In general, advertising helps out h e nation's economy. Sometimes I take pleasure in thinking about what I saw or

heard or read in advertisements. Sometimes advertisements are even more enjoyable than

other media contents. Quite often advertising is amusing and entertaining. .67

"1 =strongly disagree, 7 =strongly agree. tThe scale was reversed so that a score close to 7 would mean a more positive attitude toward advertising. $Items eliminated from further analysis.

To simplky the scales and increase their internal consistency, items with factor loadings smaller than .50 were eh ina ted in subsequent analysis. This procedure eluninated the items which loaded differently from the Pollay and Mittal study.

Finally, a summative index was developed for each of the four factors by averaging the scores of the items in each factor. The reliabhty tests yielded Cronbach alpha of .88 for Factor 1 (Societal Impact), .76 for Factor

2 (Personal Uthty of Advertising as an Information of Social Role and Im- age), .72 for Factor 3 (Advertising's Utility as Product Information), and .74 for Factor 4 (Advertising's Utllity as Amusement).

RESULTS The first hypothesis was that African Americans were more materiahstic

than Caucasians. The mean scores on the materiahsm index were 4.2 for the African Americans and 3.8 for the Caucasians (t,,, = 2.48, p < .01), supporting the previous research findings that African Americans may be slightly more materiahstic than Caucasians.

The second hypothesis was that there would be a positive correlation between materiahsm and attitude toward advertising. As shown in Table 4, the correlation between the two constructs (Materiahsm and Attitude To- ward Advertising) was positive, and significant (r = .35, p < .01). In addxion to the relationship between materiahsm and general attitude toward advertising, the correlations between materialism and each of the four advertising belief factors were examined. Table 4 shows that the correlation between materialism and perceived utllity of advertising as social image information was also low and positive (r = .24, p < .01). Similarly, materialism was posi- tively correlated with the perceived societal effects of advertising ( r = .19, p < -05) and its utility as product information (r = .17, p < .05). There was, however, no significant correlation between materiahsm and advertising's perceived utility as a source of amusement or entertainment (r = . lo, p > .05).

TABLE 4 CORRE~ATION f i r m AMONG THE STUDY VARIABLES (N= 166)

Variables Attitude Image Societal Product Hedonic Toward Uulitv Imoact Information Amusement

Advertising

Image Uthty .36$ Societal Impact .44$ .06 Product Information .64$ .34$ .3Ot Hedonic Amusement .54$ . lo ' .17* .34t Materialism ,.35$ .24t .19t .17* .10

The third hypothesis was that African Americaps have more positive beliefs about advertising and general attitude toward advertising than do Caucasians. A series of t tests were employed to test the hypothesis. The results are shown in Table 5. As expected from the Soley and Reid study (1983), these African Americans showed more positive general attitudes toward advertising than Caucasians (t,,, =2.08, p<.05), held significantly more positive beliefs than Caucasians about advertising's utility as information of


social role and image (t,,, = 3.15, p < .01), and showed more positive beliefs than Caucasians about advertising as entertainment (t,,,=3.45, p<.Ol). However, African Americans (M=5.4) and Caucasians ( M =5.1) did not differ on their beliefs about advertising's uthty as product information (t,,, = 1.41, p > .05). Both groups held slightly negative beliefs about advertising's societal effects (African Americans =3.6, Caucasians =3.7; t,,, = .42, p > .05).

TABLE 5 MEAN SCORES ON T H E FIVE FACTORS OF BELIEFS ABOUT ADVERTISING

Variables African Americans Caucasians I (1-tailed) M SD M SD

Attitude Toward Advertising 5.0 1.3 4.5 1.5 2.08* Societal Effects 3.6 1.4 3.7 1.6 -.42 Image Uthty 4.2 1.6 3.4 1.4 3.15t Product Mormation 5.4 1.1 5.1 1.1 1.41 Amusement 5.4 1.2 4.7 1.4 3.45t

*p<.05. tp<.01.

For the aggregated sample, the mean score (4.6, SD= 1.4) on the general advertising attitude scale was above the scale midpoint of 4, showing that both groups have a slightly positive general attitude toward advertising. The notion that consumers are more critical of advertising's societal effects than its economic effects (Bauer & Greyser, 1968; Reid & Soley, 1982) was further explored by comparing the aggregated sample's scores on the four factors underlying dttitudes toward advertising. Table 6 shows the mean scores of the four advertising behef factors and general attitude toward advertising. Consistent with previous research, "societal effects" showed the most negative score among the four factors. Of the three personal utility categories of advertising, "product information" received the most positive score, followed by "amusement" and "image ut,&ty." Given that the "good for the economy" items belonged to the "product information" factor, it seems that the respondents had favorable beliefs about the economic effects of advertising. These results confirm earlier findings that consumers appreci- ate personally the uthty of advertising but are generally critical of advertising's negative effects on society.

TABLE 6 AGGREGATED SAMPLE'S SCORES ON ATTITUDE TOWARD ~ V E R T I S ~ N G ( N = 166)

Factors M SD Attitude Toward Advertising 4.6 1.4 Societal Impact 3.6 1.5 Image Utility 3.7 1.5 Product Information 5.2 1.1 Hedonic Amusement 4.9 1.4

DISCUSSION There have been some reports that African Americans have dfferent at-

titudes than Caucasians on several rnarketing/advertising-related issues. This paper explored how the two groups differ in their attitudes toward materialism and advertising. It also investigated the two groups' differences on various advertising beliefs which have been suggested by Pollay and Mittal (1993).

First, the results confirm that African Americans are somewhat more materialistic than their Caucasian peers. One speculation is that African Americans are exposed to more television which encourages them to be more rnateriabstic. For example, a study conducted by the Bozell Group indicated that African Americans in 1993 spent 73.6 hours per week watching television while non-African Americans spent 50.2 hours (Brunelli, 1993). Such exposure to television and possibly television advertising may be related to African Americans' responses to the "idealized images" portrayed in advertising, as posited by Richins (1992). Researchers may further explore this relationship by asking respondents' television use.

Consistent with previous research, African Americans showed a more positive general attitude toward advertising than Caucasians. In addition, the African-American respondents in our study showed more favorable beliefs about advertising than the Caucasian respondents. Specifically, they had stronger beliefs that advertising is useful as an information source on products. They also showed more favorable beliefs about advertising's ut&ty as a source of learning proper social images. African Americans also seem to find advertising entertaining and enjoy it more than Caucasians.

There may be a positive association between materialism and attitudes toward advertising, which is connected with the notion that advertising may be a source of support for materialistic values. The causality cannot be in- ferred from these data. In any event, the results indicate that materialists have a somewhat more positive attitude toward advertising in general, and they appear to value advertising more than less materiabstic people because it tells them what to look for and what to buy to impress others. Materiabsts also tend to believe that advertising has a positive effect on the economy. Further, they seem to disagree more with the accusation that advertising in- creases materialistic values in society and causes value corruption.

Pollay and Mittal (1993) pointed out that public acceptance of advertising may continue to d e c h e in the face of advertising's increasing prolder- ation and intrusiveness. This trend should be a concern for marketers and advertising agencies because public distrust can decrease the effectiveness of advertising and raise marketing costs. Although consumers' general percep- tion of advertising's social and cultural effects is not highly negative, the trend might well be monitored.


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Documents

COMPARISON OF BELIEFS ABOUT ADVERTISING, ATTITUDE TOWARD ADVERTISING, AND MATERIALISM HELD BY AFRICAN AMERICANS AND CAUCASIANS