E-MAIL vs POP-UP ADVERTISING – WHICH IS MORE EFFECTIVE?

Dr. E. Krishna Karthik

Professor, Department of Business AdministrationRayalaseema Institute of Information and Management Studies

Tirupati – 517 502. Chittoor District, Andhra Pradesh.e-mail: prof.kkarthik@gmail.com

Abstract

The Internet has a profound impact on the ways humans communicate and conduct business. With the advent of Internet as an important communication medium, Internet advertising has evolved into powerful marketing tool. Internet advertising, an effective advertising form having high revenue – generation potential, has technological superiority over other advertising media. It is seldom argued that Internet advertising is not effective due to the deterioration of clicking-through rates (CTRs). Studies on this subject in Indian context are a few and far between. This research work is an analytical, empirical study based on survey of software professionals in India. The sample was drawn from the various IT hubs in India to make it more representative of the Internet users’ population.

1. INTRODUCTION

The Internet is a gateway to world knowledge as well as a massive platform for national media and documentation. Today, Internet is viewed as a best tool for sharing information. More and more people are connecting to the Internet at a rapid pace. Never before in human history has such a valuable resource been available to so many people at such little cost.

Today, majority of the people spend their work and leisure time in front of their computers on the Internet. As social networking sites enable meeting up with friends and searching the Internet for information rather than going through books, advertisers see a huge potential for marketing and advertising various products and services on the Internet. 

India has witnessed continuous growth in Internet adoption in certain sections of society – predominant patterns exist mostly in urban areas. These Internet users have started utilizing this technology as an interactive medium. Such users utilize Internet not merely for information search or communication but also for leisure activities.

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Different online applications like entertainment – gaming, movies and music – as well as user-generated content on the web have made Internet a virtual world. Over the web, users are interacting, learning and building relationships. Rural part of the country, however, has just started recognizing the importance of this technology. Various technological developments in the form of Broadband, WiMAX and 3G are promising to provide Internet thereby creating new access points.

Today, the connectivity of Internet is 24x7 and large volumes of data can be instantly transmitted. This has changed the users’ experiences from a slow and user-unfriendly text formats to graphical and multimedia formats. A recent report by Boston Consulting Group (2010) concluded that India will reach 237 million Internet users by 2015, considering increased mobile connections, and emerging 3G services.

Internet has revolutionized the way business is conducted. E-commerce has emerged as a new platform for conducting business with ease in global markets.\

Several terms have been coined and used to describe advertising on the Internet. They include interactive advertising, Internet advertising, online advertising, e-advertising and Web advertising. This diversity of the term that denotes advertising on the Internet seems to reflect the dynamically evolving nature of the Internet as a nascent marketing communication medium. Whatever be the name, in essence it is all advertising. In a very simple sense Internet advertising can be defined as the use of electronic communication resources (especially Internet and its enabling technologies) to engage in the activities of advertising. Hence, in this study, Internet advertising, online advertising or web advertising are all treated as synonymous.

The term ‘Internet advertising’ comprises of a lot of things. E-mail advertising, web banners, advertisements on social networking sites, manufacturer's own Web site, pop-up advertisements, advertisements through Internet affiliates - which are all parts of Internet advertising.

The Objectives of Internet Advertising

People advertise because it is effective in promoting sales of products or services, and building brands. In the world’s competitive economic system, where consumer is king and mass communications media are ubiquitous, advertising has become essential for the survival of organizations. Without advertising consumers will not know about a product, whether that is a charity, political party or can of dog food. Companies typically advertise to achieve one or more of several possible goals: to inform, persuade, remind, build brand awareness or brand loyalty. Successful advertising can lead to increased sales and/or a reduction in the price elasticity of consumers’ demands for the advertised product.

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Pop-up advertisements are described as ads that “appear in a separate window on top of content that is already on the users’ screen (Rodgers & Thorson, 2000). Generally their purpose is to increase web traffic, directing users to a website where a product can be purchased or a commercial website viewed. These advertisements work when a website opens a new web browser window (without user input) to display an advertisement; they are small windows that appear on top of the website being viewed. Pop-ups can be timed to occur or can be initiated when a user clicks on a link to another page. Usually a pop-up can be removed by clicking the [x] in the top right hand corner. Pop-up advertisements often use moving images, can be entertaining, and are primarily used as a brand building tool (Rewick, 2011), which lead to a higher degree of visual stimulation when compared to other forms of online advertising (Sinead Cochrane, 2006). Viewing some websites will cause numerous pop-up advertisements to appear.

E-mail can be used for various marketing purposes and is the most frequent activity users are engaged in. Marketing today use various e-mail techniques, such as newsletters, free email accounts, reward programs and community building (Ghazali et al., 2006).On the other hand, Spam is becoming a very serious problem, costing the Internet community more in the form of time, effort to differentiate and delete spam, storage space and consumption of network bandwidth. The problem of spam extends beyond household Internet users to the realm of companies as several precious employee hours are being wasted. Since e-mail has emerged as a major means of personal and corporate communication, there has been increasing academic focus on the usage and impact of e-mail.

In the context of the Internet, consumers face the situation in which they usually cannot avoid contact with ads in some formats i.e., forced exposure. At the same time they can have control on some other formats. For example, in pop-up ads, every time they appear when the web page is loaded until consumer purposely closes the windows. For floating ads, consumers have even less control over the appearance of these ads because they “float” at a fixed location within the browser window. Pop-up blocker can be used to avoid pop-up ads and spam filters to avoid junk e-mail ads, but no such programs exist till date to avoid floating or banner or interstitial ads. In this section earlier studies, which analyzed consumer attitudes toward multiple formats of Internet advertising, are critically analyzed.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

‘Attitude’ is a key term having roots in social psychology. The stream of literature on advertising from psychological perspective indicates that attitude is a key significant predictor of consumer behaviour and their responses to advertising.

Allport (1935) provided a broader definition of the concept: “Attitude is a mental and neural state of readiness to respond, organized through experience, and exerting a directive and/or dynamic influence on behaviour”. To Allport, attitudes are a person’s mental state based on past exertion and experiences, and attitudes would affect behaviour. The first definition suggests that

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attitudes are affective responses to various objects, whereas the later definition stresses the importance of the cognitive system. Attitude formation is assumed to comprise cognition, affect and conation by some researchers (Lavidge and Steiner, 1961).

Fishbein (1967) defined an attitude as “a learned predisposition of human beings”, based on which, “an individual would respond to an object (or an idea) or a number of things (or opinions)”.

Internet advertising has been defined in diverse ways by advertising researchers as follows: “any form of commercial content available on the Internet that is designed by businesses to inform consumers about a product or service” (Schlosser et al., 1999) or “all paid-for space on the Web site or in an e-mail”. Saxena (2009) defines Internet advertising as: “. . . a form of advertising in which the message is carried over the Internet rather than through traditional mass media”.

For long time researchers investigated consumer attitudes toward advertising (Zanot, 1984; Pollay & Mittal, 1993). As reviewed by Zanot (1984), the first large-scale survey assessing public opinion toward advertising was conducted by Gallup Organization Inc. (1959). This survey gathered data through personal interviews with a national, geographically stratified sample of over 1,600 adults to study the public attitudes toward advertising for ‘Redbook’. Gallup found that a majority of the respondents generally liked advertising and that most of those respondents liked it because they felt it being informative. Majority of them preferred advertised products over unadvertised though they felt advertising increasing the cost of things they bought.

Although there is no consensus yet on how to measure Internet advertising effectiveness, it can be reasonably argued that attitudes toward Internet advertising will serve as a useful indicator. As such, it is important to examine what factors might influence the attitudes toward Internet advertising. A review of current literature is presented to identify the predictors of attitudes toward Internet advertising as follows.

Ducoffe (1996) [32] conducted a study to examine the impact of factors like informativeness, entertainment, and irritation, on the value of Internet advertising, and to find out the relationship between advertising value and attitudes toward Internet advertising. Adopting the definition of advertising value as “a subjective evaluation of the relative worth or utility of advertising to consumer” from his earlier study (Ducoffe, 1995), he administered a questionnaire with 25 statements using 7-item semantic differential scale to a non-random sample of Internet users. Respondents were also given a list of different media and asked to rank them in order of the advertising value they contained.

The results of the study confirmed that the factors of informativeness, entertainment, and irritation tested on traditional media advertising were important predictors of the value of

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Internet advertising, and the model used to assess advertising value in traditional media gave a good fit with the Internet advertising.

The study found a positive and highly significant relationship between advertising value and attitudes toward Internet advertising, that is, people who rated Internet advertising high in value also had favourable attitudes toward it.

Belief is precursor to the individuals’ attitudes toward advertising. A few studies came out with a list of seven belief factors about web advertising engendering individuals’ positive attitudes toward it. They are: product information, social role and image, hedonic/please, value corruption, falsity/no sense, good for the economy and materialism (Previte et al., 1998; Tan and Chia, 2007) derived from Pollay and Mittal’s (1993) study. A few other studies (Ducoffe, 1995; Brackett and Carr, 2001; Liya Wang, 2007; and Zhang, 2011) found factors like informativeness, entertainment, irritation, and deceptiveness (credibility) are influencing attitudes toward the advertising.

Mehta and Sivadas (1995) found newsgroup users held negative attitudes towards advertising. In contrast, business executives researched by Ducoffe (1995) found advertising neither irritating nor annoying. This signifies that the attitudes differ across sample population. Mehta (1995) also reported that attitude towards advertising, in general, is channel dependent.

Though earlier literatures reported positive attitudes of the public toward advertising (Ducoffe, 1995; Shavitt et al., 1998), in majority of the recent studies consumers’ negative attitudes toward advertising were reported.

Beginning with Ducoffe (1996), studies on attitudes toward Internet advertising confirmed that the factors of informativeness, entertainment, and irritation are important predictors of Internet advertising value. Further, a strong relationship between advertising value and attitudes toward Internet advertising was found.

Previte and Forrester (1998) revealed mixed overall attitudes toward Internet advertising. Although most respondents found Internet advertising as informative, it was not enjoyable. Schlosser, et al., (1999) found entertainment the most prominent predictor of attitude similar to the results found by Ducoffe (1996). Their study concluded that entertainment and informative factors were not sufficient in understanding and explaining the complexity of Internet users’ attitudes toward Internet advertising.

Most of the studies designed to measure attitudes toward Internet advertising (Ducoffe, 1996; Schlosser et al., 1999; Brackett & Carr, 2001; Wang et al. 2002) derived their theoretical frameworks from previous studies on attitudes toward advertising in general. But Schlosser et al. (1999) posited that the underlying factors of consumers’ attitudes toward Internet advertising were different from those towards the traditional advertising medium.

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Later, perceived interactivity and relevance were reported as influencing factor in attitudes (Wu, 1999; Wang et al., 2002; Campbell et al., 2008). But, in present context, almost all forms of Internet advertising and websites are interactive in nature.

Attitudes as categories of beliefs differ with respect to abstract (general) and specific (form/media) level of advertising (Tan and Chia, 2007). In general, people have expectations from different media and hold different opinions or attitudes on different forms of advertising. But, as demonstrated in the preceding literature review, research on attitude toward Internet advertising has made no distinction between formats (Previte & Forrester, 1998; Schlosser, et al., 1999; Brackett & Carr, 2001).

Finally, in the literature two models are dominant: one by Pollay & Mittal (1993) and other by Ducoffe (1996). Subsequently, many researchers in this field adopted Ducoffe model (1996) and extended it to suit their research context. Though, this model was originally intended to examine the attitudes toward general advertising, later it got extended to cover studies related to Internet advertising and further to mobile advertising.

The effectiveness of advertising depends on attitude to the medium in which it appears. In addition, the demographic variables could also influence the attitude (Brackett and Carr, 2001; Wang et al., 2002; and Lim et al. 2010). For instance, in a study by Shavitt et al. (1998) Americans, younger non-white male consumers who were less educated and had less income were found to have more inclined towards TV advertising.

Attitudes toward general advertising deteriorated with increasing volume and consumer exposure (Rettie et al. 2003). It is postulated that attitudes to Internet advertising also depend on the attitudes toward Internet usage, and they also deteriorate as Internet users become more used to the medium. The factors like length, frequency, quantity and location of use that affect Internet usage are likely to affect attitudes toward Internet advertising also.

Some researcher have used the Pollay and Mittal (1993) study and some others Ducoffe(1996) or Brackett and Carr (2001) studies to examine the attitudes toward Internet advertising. Apart from this, researchers have focused on number of factors that affect Internet usage to study the users’ attitude. Apparent differences between new and experienced users on like or dislike of Internet advertising were reported (Previte and Forrest, 1998). Culture as a variable affecting attitude was further reported (Wang and Sun, 2010).

The major factors that showed significantly influence attitudes toward Internet advertising are length of use, frequency of use, quantity of use and location of use (Rettie et al. 2003; Banerjee, 2011) and different consumer motives (Rodgers and Thorson, 2000). The individuals having positive attitude towards Internet, browse the Internet more often (Luo, 2002); and effectiveness of advertising depends on attitudes toward the medium in which it appears. Attitudes toward Internet have influence on attitudes toward Internet advertising

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Internet advertising is of many different types ranging from electronic advertisements similar to traditional TV and print advertising, such as billboards, banner advertisements, buttons, and pop-ups, to non-traditional advertisements, such as spam, corporate websites, and sponsorships. Peoples have varying attitudes toward Internet advertising, which are not only the result of the activities performed, but also of personalities, lifestyles, social classes and other factors (Krige Philip, 2008). Internet advertising encompassing a number of advertising formats, including pop-up ads, pop-under ads, email, banner ads, floating ads and interstitials etc. has brought to marketers and researchers a new horizon to examine the attitudes towards specific form of Internet advertising. This section attempts at reviewing the pertinent literature that studied attitudes toward specific forms of Internet advertising.

Advertising is a multidimensional phenomenon studied in several disciplines. Its effectiveness depends on both the quality of the product being advertised, the quality of the ad itself and media context in which it appears. Consumers’ personal and psychological factors affect the choice of advertising medium. Consequently consumers’ interests change due to these factors (Idris et al. 2009).

Most of the studies until 2006 focused on examining consumer attitudes towards Internet advertising. But, later studies shifted their attention to attitudes toward specific Internet advertising formats.

Pop-ups is the most popular format, though negative attitudes are associated when examined with Internet usage patterns (Aunchalee, 2003), and demographics. Pop-up is considered to be more intrusive than other forms of Internet advertising (McCoy et al., 2004), which creates the user inattentiveness toward Internet advertising (Maschmeyer, 2003). Consumers accept a limited number of pop-ups (approximately 3 per hour) to access preferred or free online content (Safron, 2001).

E-mail advertising has a positive influence on building brand image and purchase intention (Liya Wang, 2007). Solicited e-mails have positive attitudes (Sharma and Goyal, 2009), whereas unsolicited email are treated as ‘Spam’ and elicit negative attitudes (Mehta et al., 1995; Morimoto and Chang, 2006).

RESEARCH GAPS

From the review of literature on Internet usage and Internet advertising, the following gaps are identified:

1. Over the years researchers have been obsessed with measuring attitudes toward advertising using student samples. The literature amply states that attitudes differ according to sample population. Using students as subject for the study (homogeneous undergraduate college students) also threaten external validity. This choice of student

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sample is often criticized by researchers on the ground that the sample is not representative of the greater market of general consumers (Waldt et al., 2009). Hence, there is a need to study the attitudes of various segments of consumer population rather than confining to the student samples.

2. The Internet has the ability to support a variety of advertising formats (Rodgers & Thorson, 2000). But attitudes toward specific forms of Internet advertising remain unexplored. Hence, a study on attitudes toward specific forms of Internet advertising is of utmost research need.

3. In most of the surveys consumers’ attitudes toward advertising, their overall attitudes toward Internet advertising were studied (Ducoffe, 1996; Previte, 1998; Shavitt et al., 1998; Schlosser et al., 1999). In Shavitt et al.’s (1998) survey, respondents were asked to think of all formats of advertising when answering questions related to their thoughts and feelings about advertising. This approach led to ambivalence in consumers’ attitudes toward advertising, when they were asked to answer questions relating to advertising beliefs (Tan and Chia, 2007). It is not known whether their frame of reference is based on attitudes toward pop-up or banner or other form of Internet advertising. Since there are different formats of Internet advertising, (e.g. banner ads, pop-up ads, floating ads, interstitial ads and e-mails etc.) each with distinctive features, this could complicate the consumers’ perception of what constitutes Internet advertising and consequently their reported attitudes toward Internet advertising widely differ (Burns and Lutz, 2006). This prompted the researcher to examine users’ attitudes toward Internet advertising in general and towards Internet advertising with particular reference to five specific forms: Pop-ups, banners, floating ads, interstitials, and e-mail ads.

3. METHODOLOGY

The paradigms of Teo (2001), Brackett and Carr (2001), Wang, et al. (2002), Burns et al. (2006) and Haghirian et al. (2005) provide basic framework for the research design of the present study. Teo’s model (2001) incorporated demographic variables (gender, age and educational level) and motivational variables (perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment and perceived usefulness) as the predictors of Internet usage activities. To Brackett and Carr (2001), informativeness, entertainment, irritation, credibility are the important predictors of the ‘Ad value’ of Internet advertising and ‘attitude’ towards Internet advertising. Burns and Lutz (2006) pioneered research on multiple formats of Internet advertising.

Continuing the legacy of earlier research works, the research design of the present study considered perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment as predictors of Internet having significant influence on its usage. Further, perceived informativeness, perceived entertainment, perceived irritation, perceived credibility are hypothesized as the predictors of advertising value and attitudes toward Internet advertising.

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OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

There are different forms and contents of Internet advertisements, such as attractive icons, action-oriented phases, flash forms, special offers and famous brands provided by merchants, and so on, fascinating individuals according to their interests. Diversity in individuals’ attitudes toward Internet advertising can be attributed to their demographic, psychological, cultural or need for information (Krige Philip, 2008).

To examine the attitudes toward Internet advertising;

The collection of primary data approach was used as opposed to secondary data because it is considered that secondary data is unable to serve the objectives of this study. The target population for the study were considered as software professionals working in India, because of their nature of work, income levels, and high Internet browsing skill levels. The initial format of the questionnaire prepared was pretested in the pilot study on 50 business management students in the first stage. Modifications were made based on the subjects’ feedback to improve the clarity and presentation of questionnaire items, and the filled-in questionnaires were later examined for scale reliability and validity. The reliability values of informativeness (α = 0.897), entertainment (α = 0.879), irritation (α = 0.818), credibility (α = 0.793) signify high reliability as shown in table 1.

Table 1: Cronbach’s alpha values for the constructs

Construct No. of statements Cronbach’s alphaInformativeness 7 0.897Entertainment 5 0.879Irritation 5 0.818Credibility 3 0.793

Since, Internet using software professionals are dispersed over wide geographical area; the sample is taken from the prominent IT hubs in India such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Mumbai cities where a large number of IT companies are located and software professionals are employed. A total of 920 questionnaires were distributed physically, through web links and emails to professionals employed in software companies operating in different city locations in India. A total of 596 filled-in questionnaires were collected, out of which 52 questionnaires were half-filled and 32 other questionnaires were found having inconsistency in the responses. Both half-filled and inconsistent questionnaires were removed from the sample, leaving finally 512 valid, usable questionnaires.

H1: The perceived informativeness, entertainment, irritation and credibility of Internet ads affect the attitudes toward Internet advertising.

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H2: The attitudes toward Internet advertising differ with respect to the form of Internet advertising.

4. ANALYSIS

Software professionals, who are direct employees of various software or IT companies, constitute the sample of the study. The survey questionnaire was distributed to 920 software professionals through web, e-mail as well as in person. 596 participants completed the survey questionnaires, giving a response rate of 64.78%, with a total of 512 valid and usable questionnaires, yielding an overall response rate 55.65% (85.9 %).

The city locations from which sample respondents were drawn are shown in table 4.1. Focusing on the last column of the table, it can be observed that 32% of them are from Bangalore, the IT capital and Silicon Valley of India, followed by 24% from Hyderabad, technology base of India; 14% from Mumbai, financial capital of India; 11% from Chennai, gateway of South India; 10% from Pune, 3% from Ahmedabad, and the rest of the 6% from other locations like Cochin, Vizag, and Noida, etc.

Table 4.1: Geographical Location-wise Distribution of Sample Respondents (N=512)

S. No. City Number Percentage

1 Bangalore 165 32.23

2 Hyderabad 124 24.22

3 Mumbai 73 14.26

4 Chennai 55 10.74

5 Pune 49 9.57

6 Ahmedabad 14 2.73

7 Others 32 6.25

Total 512 100.0

Table 4.2: Demographics of the Respondents (N = 512)

Demographics Characteristics Number Percentage

Gender

Male 377 73.6

Female 135 26.4

Total 512 100.0

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Age Group(in years)

< 25 129 25.2

25 – 30 228 44.5

30 – 35 102 19.9

> 35 53 10.4

Total 512 100.0

Work Experience(in years)

< 1 183 35.7

1 - 3 108 21.1

3 - 6 123 24.0

6 - 10 77 15.0

> 10 21 4.1

Total 512 100.0

Marital StatusSingle 303 59.2

Married without children 101 19.7

Married with children 108 21.1

Total 512 100.0

Table 4.3: Internet Usage Characteristics (N = 512)Internet usage characteristics Number Percentage

Length of Internet usage (in years)< 1 21 4.11 - 3 69 13.53 - 5 120 23.4> 5 302 59.0Total 512 100.0

Frequency of using InternetDaily 344 67.2Weekly thrice 114 22.3Weekly twice 27 5.3Weekly once 21 4.1

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Monthly twice 6 1.2Total 512 100.0

Weekly Internet Usage (in hours)< 5 141 27.55 - 10 135 26.410 - 15 102 19.9> 20 134 26.2Total 512 100.0

Daily Internet Usage (in hours)Not daily 36 7.0< 1 108 21.11 - 2 135 26.42 - 3 99 19.33 - 5 134 26.2Total 512 100.0

H6: Perceived informativeness, entertainment, irritation and credibility of internet ads affect the attitude toward Internet advertising

The regression analysis is conducted to examine the effects of four factors such as entertainment, informativeness, irritation, and credibility on attitudes toward Internet advertising. As majority of the studies reviewed earlier considered ‘advertising value’ also as another factor having significant relation with attitudes toward Internet advertising (Ducoffe, 1996), the analysis is extended to include ad value too to test the model in a comprehensive manner. Thus, a hierarchical multiple regression (or step-wise regression) is run to test the significant relationship between perceived informativeness, perceived entertainment, perceived irritation and perceived credibility and attitudes toward Internet advertising in step 1, and the significant relationship between perceived advertising value and attitudes in step 2.

Table 5.13: Regression Analysis of Internet Advertising: Model Summary

Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate

1 .924a .853 .852 .3412 .945b .893 .892 .291

Notes:

a. Predictors: (Constant), Credibility, Irritation, Entertainment, Informativeness.

b. Predictors: (Constant), Credibility, Irritation, Entertainment, Informativeness, Ad Value.

Table 5.13 presents the summaries of models 1 and 2. The model 1 explains 85.3 percent of the variance (R2=0.853) as caused by four specific perceptions. With the addition of advertising

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value in model 2, 89.3 percent of the variance (R2=0.892) in overall attitudes toward Internet advertising is explained.

Table 5.14 indicates that this regression model is statistically significant (p=0.000). Therefore, H6 is accepted. Advertising informativeness, entertainment, irritation and credibility have a significant influence on attitudes toward Internet advertising. In addition, these predictors also have significant relation with advertising value (refer appendix C.8) and value, in turn, has significant relation with the attitudes.

Table 5.14: Regression Analysis of Internet Advertising: ANOVAc

Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

1 Regression 343.311 4 85.828 737.544 .000a

Residual 58.999 507 .116

Total 402.311 511

2 Regression 359.430 5 71.886 848.265 .000b

Residual 42.881 506 .085

Total 402.311 511

Notes:

a. Predictors: (Constant), Credibility, Irritation, Entertainment, Informativeness.b. Predictors:(Constant), Credibility, Irritation, Entertainment, Informativeness, Ad Value.c. Dependent Variable: Overall Attitude.

Finally, table 5.15 shows the model coefficients. The model explains that perceived informativeness, perceived entertainment, perceived credibility and perceived ad value have a positive effect on attitudes toward Internet advertising (with positive β value), but irritation has a negative effect on attitudes toward Internet advertising (with negative β value). Moreover, credibility has the strongest relationship with attitudes toward Internet advertising, followed by a negative relationship of irritation with these attitudes.

The results are in line with those of the previous studies by Ducoffe, (1996); Schlosser et al. (1999); Brackett and Carr, (2001); Haghirian et al. (2005); Waldt et al. (2009) etc. Shavitt et al., (1998) who found people’s feelings of enjoyment associated with advertisements played the major role in accounting for their overall attitudes. Similarly, Tsang et al., (2004) reported that entertainment was a crucial factor for mobile advertising since it was the most significant of the factors affecting respondent’s attitude toward mobile advertising. The present analysis also shows that advertising entertainment has a significant effect on attitudes toward Internet advertising (β=0.336). In summary, the results are in line with the previous studies reviewed, indicating that all four attributes are significantly related to the overall attitudes toward advertising. Informativeness, entertainment and credibility are positively correlated to the overall

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attitudes, whereas irritation is negatively correlated to it. In addition, Credibility and irritation are found to be the most significant factors in shaping the attitudes toward Internet advertising.

Table 5.15: Regression Analysis of Internet Advertising: Model Coefficientsa

ModelUnstandardized Coefficients

Standardized Coefficients t - values Sig.

Beta Std. Error Beta

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(Constant) 1.990 .098 20.390 .000

Informative .200 .016 .258 12.329 .000

Entertain .236 .014 .336 17.079 .000

Irritation -.279 .013 -.371 -21.168 .000

Credible .317 .015 .439 21.353 .000

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(Constant) 1.707 .086 19.912 .000

Informative .162 .014 .209 11.481 .000

Entertain .200 .012 .286 16.609 .000

Irritation -.232 .012 -.310 -19.832 .000

Credible .225 .014 .312 15.771 .000

Ad Value .180 .013 .281 13.791 .000Note: a. Dependent variable: overall attitude

5.2.7 Hypothesis 7

H7: The attitudes towards Internet advertising differ with respect to the type of Internet advertising (Pop-up, Banner, E-mail, Floating and Interstitial).

To examine this hypothesis, a paired samples t-test is used. Paired samples t – test, also referred to as repeated measure, is used when data are collected from only one group on two different occasions, or under two different conditions. Paired samples t – test can also be used when responses are collected to two different questions or beliefs, if both dimensions are rated on the same scale. The survey used the same scaling technique while collecting the data from the sample regarding the attitudes toward different forms of Internet advertising. To examine the positive and negative significance between these groups, correlation test is also employed simultaneously.

If the significance value is less than 0.05, it can be concluded that there is a significant difference between two scores. Table 5.16 shows that there is a significant difference between attitudes toward Internet advertising in general and its specific forms.

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There are significant differences between irritation factor and all the forms of Internet advertising. Similarly, significant differences are noted between informativeness factor and the forms of Internet advertising. This indicates that the informativeness and irritation factors differ significantly along with the form of internet advertising. Differences also exist between other factors and specific forms of Internet advertising as portrayed in the table 5.16.

Table 5.16: Summary Results of Paired sample ‘t’ testSpecific Forms of Internet

AdvertisingAttitudes toward Internet Advertising in General

Info Ent Irr Crd Value Att

Pop-up adt - value 2.533 2.061 -7.728 -1.627 1.446 -.200Sig (2-tailed) .012* .040* .000* .104 .149 .842

Banner adt - value 3.732 .431 11.310 -3.316 -1.693 -14.767Sig (2-tailed) .000* .667 .000* .001* .091 .000*

E-mail adt - value 2.496 6.809 2.657 5.178 4.819 .432Sig (2-tailed) .013* .000* .008* .000* .000* .666

Floating adt - value 5.091 -9.112 -7.184 .080 1.985 -9.482Sig (2-tailed) .000* .000* .000* .936 .048* .000*

Interstitial ad

t - value 11.447 2.532 -10.300 2.524 6.363 2.875Sig (2-tailed) .000* .000* .000* .936 .048* .000*

Note: * Significant at 95% confidence level (p<0.05).

A significant difference is found in the entertainment factor between forms, except banner form of advertising. On the credibility factor, no significant differences were found between pop-up, floating ad, interstitial ad and Internet advertising in general. On value factor significant differences can be noticed between e-mail, floating, interstitial and Internet advertising in general. Finally, the attitudes toward banner ad, floating ad, and interstitial ad significantly differ from attitudes toward Internet advertising in general, whereas attitudes toward e-mail and pop-up show no significant differences.

To examine the differences between these forms of Internet advertising, paired-samples t - test and Pearson correlation were conducted on each and every form against the other forms, the results of which are shown in the Appendix C.9.

Table 5.17 shows the mean attitudinal scores of the forms of Internet advertising, which reveal that the e-mail ads are perceived to be more informative as compared to other forms. Floating ads are perceived to be more entertaining and interstitial ads are perceived to be more irritating when compared to other forms.

Table 5.17 Mean and Standard Deviation of Internet Advertising Forms

VariablesI A

(general)Pop-up Banner E-mail Floating Interstitial

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InformMean 4.81 4.62 4.54 4.64 4.46 4.01

S.D. 1.145 1.182 1.153 1.009 1.122 1.051

EntertainMean 4.28 4.12 4.25 3.77 4.99 4.09

S.D. 1.265 1.348 1.167 1.100 1.134 1.127

IrritationMean 4.40 5.02 3.55 4.20 4.93 5.11

S.D. 1.183 0.061 1.220 1.109 1.402 1.074

CredibleMean 4.28 4.40 4.52 3.88 4.27 4.09

S.D. 1.228 1.200 1.246 1.283 1.105 0.959

ValueMean 4.48 4.35 4.61 4.10 4.32 3.99

S.D. 1.385 1.364 1.199 1.199 1.195 1.047

AttitudeMean 4.10 4.11 4.91 4.07 4.61 3.93

S.D. 0.887 0.992 0.901 1.059 0.922 0.926

Finally, banner advertising has high credibility and value, and has the highest attitudinal score when compared to other forms of Internet advertising. Thus, the hypothesis H7 is accepted, as significant differences are found between attitudes toward different forms of Internet advertising.

The results of the study are in consistent with the Burns & Lutz (2008) study which reported the perceptual antecedents of attitudes towards six online advertising formats with a nationwide survey of 1075 adults. Burns & Lutz (2008) study found that the perception of entertainment; informativeness and irritation had a significant impact on attitudes toward specific formats of Internet advertising. Thus, it can be inferred from the analysis that Internet users have significantly different attitudes across formats. In fact, Internet users hold a varied combination of perceptions about each format of Internet advertising.

5. FINDINGS

The attitudes of software professionals toward Internet advertising were examined at two levels in the present research: attitudes toward Internet advertising in general i.e., at abstract level and attitudes toward forms of Internet advertising i.e., at specific level. The general attitudes are reported in the previous discussion. Using the same factors i.e., informativeness, entertainment, irritation, credibility and value, the study addresses the attitudes of software professionals toward five popular forms of Internet advertising in India: pop-up, banner, e-mail, float and interstitial advertising.

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Attitudes of software professionals vary with specific types or forms of Internet advertisements. In fact, the results of the study show these professionals have more or less neutral attitudes towards specific forms of Internet advertising – more favourable attitudes toward banner advertising and less favourable attitudes toward interstitial advertising. But, professionals were found to have different perceptions toward specific forms of Internet advertising along with five-item scale of informativeness, entertainment, irritation, credibility and value. Informativeness was found highest in e-mail and pop-up advertising and the lowest in interstitial advertising. On aspect of entertainment, more favourable perceptions are associated with floating and unfavourable perceptions with e-mail ads. The professionals are more irritated with interstitial, floating and pop-up advertising formats, because of their forced exposure and intrusive nature, whereas their most preferred type of advertising is banner advertising. The perception of credibility is higher with banner advertising, and lower in e-mail advertising because of unsolicited and fake emails. The value perception is higher on banners and lower in interstitial advertising. Finally, the professionals were found to have positive attitudes toward banner and floating ads; negative attitudes toward interstitial and pop-ups and neutral attitudes toward e-mails.

6. CONCLUSION

It is widely held opinion among Indian marketers that Internet advertising is going to be more and more popular and evolve into significant mode in Indian market. The present findings of the study have implications both for marketing function and academic researchers. It would be interesting to know about the factors that contribute to positive or negative attitudes toward Internet advertising and its various formats.

Study of Internet user consumer behaviour is a broad and interesting area that can benefit business organisations in their efforts to marketing their products and services online. Since consumers’ perceptions and attitudes toward Internet advertising are determining factors of buying behaviour, this research has shed light on Internet user attitudes toward Internet advertising.

Findings of this research have high social value. If advertisers would take into account the results of the present study, they can create more effective advertisements to the concerned target markets. This would enable them to cut their costs substantially, enhancing advertising effectiveness. Furthermore, Internet users would enjoy a more user – friendly online advertisement which, in turn, reduces advertiser – consumer perception gaps. The implication of the findings from this study is that practitioners need to exercise caution in deploying certain Internet advertising techniques. Companies selling products or services online should reconsider using Pop-up ads and continuous animation as delivery mechanisms to communicate information

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to customers (McCoy et al., 2004; Edwards et al., 2002). It is important for companies to consider the nuances of Internet marketing; while appreciating the strengths of this media in educating and interacting with customers. Removing or reducing negative aspects of Internet advertising would increase the accessibility and amiableness of the Internet for, everyone. The marketers’ Internet advertising campaign, its content and format should be according to the target users’ profile and their expectations. The advertisers can gain from Internet advertising only when they can identify these differences (Haque et al., 2007).

The results of this study can help advertisers to introduce new, innovative advertising over the Internet media. By understanding the consumers’ attitudes towards Internet advertising, designers and marketers can better craft their advertising strategies.

Internet users’ are no longer ‘passive’ receivers of the advertiser's message; they are actively involved either in selecting the advertising message or completely disregarding it. It is obvious from the results of this study that consumers’ hold neutral attitudes toward Internet advertising. This may be because of sample population covered in this study or level of consumers’ acceptance of Internet advertising. Though consumers’ acceptance of Internet advertising is taken for granted, excess of it annoys the consumer and consequently leads to their negative attitudes towards it. As literature in this area provided conclusive evidence on the relationship between attitude, brand image and purchase intention, marketers should be cautious in designing their advertisement, focusing on the relevant consumer segments.

Advertisers should cater to the targeted audience and customize their advertisements as well. In traditional media advertising like print or TV, there is prior knowledge as to who would see the ad. In contrast, in Internet advertising targeting the right audience when millions are browsing becomes a tough task for the advertisers. To get favourable results it is essential to make a blueprint of ad, considering the form of ad, site in which the ad is to be placed, type of audience to be targeted, size of ad, colours to be used in ad, graphic elements, level of forced exposure, etc.

The Internet market in India is poised to grow enormously, considering the fact that the traditional big advertisers like FMCG, and consumer durables, etc., still form only a small portion of the overall online display advertising market in India (IAMAI, 2010). To make rapid strides, the online display industry in India has to develop and meet globally accepted performance measures and norms; and they need to continue developing better user experiences so that Internet ads are not perceived as a nuisance. All in all, India has a promising future of becoming a leading Internet market in the world.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

Any study based on consumer survey through a pre-designed schedule suffers from the basic limitation of the possibility of difference between what is recorded and what is the truth, no

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matter how carefully the schedule has been designed and field investigation conducted. This limitation is due to the respondents’ values, emotions, profiles, expectations, and filters of communication process. Every effort is made to minimize these limitations by pre-testing the questionnaire in the pilot study. Still, the present study suffers from some obvious limitations which are as follows:

Firstly, this study examined the impact of demographics and Internet usage patterns on the attitudes toward Internet advertising. It is important to note that other factors may also affect the Internet usage patterns and Internet advertising attitudes e.g. Organisational support, social pressure, personal relevance, interactivity, privacy, forced ad exposure, etc., (Thompson, 2001; Campbell and Wright, 2008; Wang et al., 2008) which are not considered in this study.

Secondly, the instrument used for measuring attitudes toward Internet advertising was adopted from previous research. Despite pre-testing and proper evaluation to ensure reliability, semantic and linguistic biases might have crept in inadvertently. In addition, consumers’ responses to the questions posed to elicit their inclinations toward different forms of Internet advertising might fraught with biases arising from forced comparisons. As this study considered usual Internet users i.e. software professionals, it is assumed that respondents understood the terminologies used in the questionnaire like Internet advertising, pop-up, banner, e-mail, floating and interstitial etc. However, sufficient care was exercised by distributing an exhibit to the respondents showing different forms of Internet advertising pictorially. Similarly, the item scales to measure the attitudes have been simplified while asking for responses to specific forms of Internet advertising.

Finally, the data was collected using convenience sampling method and the software professionals were taken as a sample population, which have resulted in sampling biases. These limitations hamper the generalization of the results of the study, since the respondents may not be a representative sample of Internet users. Although the present research is based on the real world data, it has some limitations which open new vistas for future research in this area.

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