IMPACT OF AD-SKEPTICISM ON CONSUMER CYNICISM · 83 IMPACT OF AD-SKEPTICISM ON CONSUMER CYNICISM Indirah Indibara Assistant Professor (Marketing), KIIT School of Management, Bhubaneswar

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IMPACT OF AD-SKEPTICISM ONCONSUMER CYNICISM

Indirah IndibaraAssistant Professor (Marketing), KIIT School of Management, Bhubaneswar

Executive FPM (Continuing), XLRI [email protected]

DOI: 10.23862/kiit-parikalpana/2017/v13/i1/151277Article available at: http://ksom.ac.in/faculty-and-research/research/parikalpana-the-research-journal/

ABSTRACT

With the focus of the companies shifting more towards an advertisingdominated promotion strategy, the importance of the research efforts inthis field cannot be overstated. Whether this hyper-advertising is reallyneeded by the companies today or not needs to be studied. Similarly, howdo we define the negative feeling toward advertising based on itsantecedents like dimensions of personality and an individual’s consumptionexperience; and its effect on the trust or distrust towards the marketplaceshould be analyzed in detail. Drawing on the concepts from relevant areas,a model of the impact of consumer’s personality and consumptionexperience on his skepticism toward advertising, and subsequently its effecton his cynical behaviour has been theoretically developed.

INTRODUCTION

Advertising has become the backbone oftoday’s marketplace communication. Noproduct promotion is considered to becomplete in today’s world without itsadvertising component. But is too muchadvertising not creating a clutter in theconsumer’s mind and life? Can advertisingtruly always be beneficial to the companyor the brand that it’s trying to cater to, ormight it actually result in having adeteriorating effect on the sales of theproduct because of the negativeconnotation that is attached to it. Not everyindividual is bound to like theadvertisements being bombarded at him

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all through the day, and not every consumeris going to believe the claims that are beingmade by the products in theseadvertisements. As all individuals have theirown personality traits, they are bound toreact differently to any situation they facein life, including their reactions towardadvertising in general. Similarly, eachconsumer has a different consumptionexperience over a series of transactionsthat he has made in his entire lifetime. Andthese consumption experiences, whetherpositive or negative, whether in tandemwith the advertisement claims, or inreverse, will also have an effect on howhe perceives the advertising world. Onsimilar lines, every person is expected to

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have a varying opinion about themarketplace in general, as to whether thecompanies are honest or do they believeonly in making profits, even at the cost oftheir consumers. In the present study weare trying to analyze the impact of anindividual’s personality and consumptionexperience on the way he perceivesadvertising, and whether this perceptionabout advertising in general is influencinghis thoughts and feelings about the wholemarketplace.

Literature Review

AMA defines advertising as “anyannouncement or persuasive messageplaced in the mass media in paid ordonated time or space by an identifiedindividual, company, or organization”.According to Kotler and Keller (2011),advertising is “any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion ofideas, goods, or services by an identifiedsponsor”. Advertising is the most visibleand the most frequently used tool ofpromotion adopted by any company orfirm (Coulter, Zaltman and Coulter, 2001).Barksdale and Darden (1972) concludedfrom their study that many respondentsfound advertising to be unbelievable andunreliable source of information, and feltthat it projected an unreal picture ofproducts advertised. As the consumers arebombarded with a continuous flux ofadvertisements, they are bound to formsome attitude toward them, and asexpected these attitudes can be bothpositive or negative. Swanson (1975)found that there had been an increase in

the cynicism towards advertising, and areduced credibility ascribed to it. Pollayand Mittal (1993), in their research, haveidentified seven factors, three personalutility factors and four socio-economicfactors, that can shape a consumer’sattitude. Based on these seven factors, theyhave classified the consumers into variouscategories based on the attitudes that theconsumers can display toward advertising,such as contended consumers,compromised concerned, conflictedCalvinists, deceptiveness wary,degeneracy wary and critical cynics (Pollayand Mittal, 1993). According to them,critical cynics are those who disagree thatadvertisements fulfil any of the threepersonal uses, and who have nocompensating perceptions about theireconomic benefits too (Pollay and Mittal,1993). Coulter, Zaltman and Coulter(2001) used Zaltman Metaphor ElicitationTechnique to again study the consumerattitudes toward advertising. According tothem, these “attitudes are a function of theconsumer’s perceptions about the variousaspects of advertising” (Coulter, Zaltmanand Coulter, 2001). Deriving from Pollayand Mittal (1993), they studied theseattitudes related to economic effects,personal uses and societal effects ofadvertising. In their study, they alsoclassified the consumers into three groupson the basis of these attitudes shown -ambivalents, skeptics and hostiles. Thehostiles had very negative impressionsabout advertising, and did not see anypositive value attached to it, neither inpersonal uses, nor in economic or societal

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values fulfilled (Coulter, Zaltman andCoulter, 2001). This third group of hostileswas found to be quite similar as the criticalcynics group discovered by Pollay andMittal (1993). This negative attitudetowards advertising, once developed, isbound to impact a consumer’s futureassessments too. Darke and Ritchie(2007) have found that deception throughadvertisements make consumers distrustfulof other future advertisements also, notnecessarily only for that same brand. Thus,it becomes quite imperative to study theimpact of advertising on consumercynicism. Obermiller and Spangenberg(1998) define ad-skepticism as disbelieftoward advertising claims; however, theiruse of the word ‘skepticism’ was limitedonly to the sense of disbelief, and theydidn’t take the motives of advertisers, valueof information provided by advertising,appropriateness and intrusiveness ofadvertising into account while constructingtheir scale (Obermiller and Spangenberg,1998). According to them, ad-skepticismis a belief about advertising, and it is boundto affect a consumer’s attitude toward thegeneral marketing and business practices(Obermiller and Spangenberg, 1998).

H1: A consumer’s skepticism towardsadvertising will have an effect on hiscynicism towards the marketplace.

Dean, Brandes and Dharwadkar (1998)have defined cynicism as an attitudecomposed of beliefs, affect andbehavioural tendencies. The organizationalcynics believe that their workplace lacks

rectitude, and they show contempt, anger,distress etc. toward the organization, andfinally their behaviour takes a negative anddisparaging route (Dean, Brandes andDharwadkar, 1998). Andersson andBateman (1997) have assumed implicitlyin their hypothesis that employees who arecynical at their workplace, generally showcynicism toward life experiences. Applyingsimilar considerations in the consumercynicism research field, Chylinski and Chu(2010) have summarized cynicism as aprocess which relates the threecomponents - cognitive, affective andbehavioural reactions. Odou andPechpeyrou (2011) have considered fourdifferent types of consumer cynicism -defensive, offensive, subversive andethical, and have tried to integrate thesefour types and relate them to resistanceand anti-consumption behaviour. For thepresent study, the defensive cynicism isbeing taken into consideration which isproposed to be a coping psychologicalstrategy against the firm’s persuasionattempts, where the consumers interpretadvertising as being deceiving anddistrustful (Odou and Pechpeyrou, 2011).This defensive cynicism is evident in theindividual purchase actions of a consumerwhen he starts distancing himself from thebrand or the product. According toChylinski and Chu (2010), consumersdevelop cynicism towards a particular firmwhen they interpret the firm’s actions tobe incongruent with their own goals andvalues, and this cynicism rises withrepeated goal or value incongruence.

Impact of Ad-skepticism on Consumer Cynicism


Helm, Moulard and Richins (2015) whiledeveloping their scale to measure aconsumer’s cynicism toward the wholemarketplace, defined consumer cynicismas an attitude, which perceives firms to beopportunists, and believes that thisopportunism leads to the creation of aharmful marketplace. While the scaledeveloped by Chylinski and Chu (2010)measured consumer cynicism behavioursdirected at a particular firm, Helm, Moulardand Richins (2015) developed a scalewhich measured the cynicism attitudetowards the marketplace (Helm, Moulardand Richins, 2015). The three facets ofconsumer cynicism that were identified bythem during scale development weregeneral opportunism displayed by firms,opportunism displayed by the firms thatwere specifically directed at theconsumers, and the deceptive marketingpractices adopted by the firms (Helm,Moulard and Richins, 2015). While tryingto prove the convergent validity of theirscale, they found a positive correlationbetween consumer cynicism and the SKEPscale developed by Obermiller andSpangenberg (1998).

As numerous studies predict consumercynicism arising as a result of a company’sadvertising strategies, one importantobservation that ensues is - all consumersare not equally likely to become cynicstowards advertising. There must be somefactors that must be impacting aconsumers’ beliefs about advertising andare consequential in shaping their attitude.Obermiller and Spangenberg (1998),

while developing their scale for measuringad-skepticism, considered twoantecedents that affect ad-skepticism -personality traits and consumptionexperiences. While age and education(intelligence) were proposed as the factorsthat determine consumption experiences,cynicism and self-esteem were consideredas the personality traits that would affectskepticism toward advertising. Accordingto their findings, there was an increase inad-skepticism with the age of therespondents, as age was used as asurrogate to measure the quality ofaccumulated customer experiences. Whilethe impact of cynicism trait was notvalidated, the self-esteem trait showed apositive correlation with ad-skepticism,proving that people with higher self-esteemshow more skepticism (Obermiller andSpangenberg, 1998). As personality playsan important role in determining a person’sattitude toward a target, and sinceconsumer cynicism is considered as anattitude, it is logical to hypothesize that anindividual’s personality traits will be amajor factor that will impact his cynicismtowards advertising.

H2: A consumer’s personality traits willimpact his skepticism towardadvertising.

H3: A consumer’s consumptionexperience will have an impact on hisad-skepticism.

In the earlier times, there was no concreteconvergence on the particular definitionand dimensions of personality as a

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construct, but over the years a clearerpicture has emerged with most of thepersonality psychologists conforming tofive broad dimensions that can be includedin structure and concepts of personality.Researchers have agreed upon these fiverobust factors, even though there is somevariability in the taxonomy that has beenused in representing these factors.McDougall (1932), in his pioneering workon the categorization of personality traits,has identified five discernible yetinextricable factors comprising thepersonality construct - intellect, character,temperament, disposition and temper.According to him, all individualpersonalities are disparate and compound,yet the basic elemental factors consistingof all these personalities are same(McDougall, 1932). The most noteworthyand doctrinal contribution to this taxonomyis credited to Norman (1963), whoselabels of the five factors - “Extraversion”,“Emotional Stability”, “Agreeableness”,“Conscientiousness” and “Culture” havebeen cited as, in due course, as the “BigFive” (Barrick and Mount, 1991). Thereason for selecting this taxonomy for ourpresent study is that it is a universallyaccepted framework (Judge and Zapata,2015). There are many well establishedscales for measuring the Big-fivepersonality dimensions; however, all ofthese are time-consuming and not practicalfor the present study’s scope. Accordingto prior research, when situation is not idealfor surveying using long instruments,shorter scales have their own advantages

even though they are not as accurate astheir longer versions (Gosling, Rentfrowand Swann Jr., 2003). They help ineliminating the redundancy and itsassociated distress and weariness whileanswering the questionnaire as stated byRobins et al. (2001) (Gosling, Rentfrowand Swann Jr., 2003). Based on theirresearch, Gosling, Rentfrow and SwannJr. (2003) came up with a ten-pointpersonality scale which was tested forconvergent and discriminant validity andtest-retest reliability, in which they adopteda similar terminology as used by Norman(1963), where the five personalitydimensions considered were coined as“Extraversion”, “Emotional stability”,“Agreeableness”, “Conscientiousness”and “Openness to experience” (Gosling,Rentfrow and Swann Jr., 2003).

Even though the word ‘cynicism’ has beenfrequently associated with a consumer’sattitude towards advertising, not muchwork has gone into the study of this termin the advertising and consumer behaviourspace, especially not much empirical studyhas been done to quantify the impact ofadvertising on consumer cynicism. As allconsumers are not expected to showuniform cynicism, the effect of variousmoderating factors on the impact of beliefsabout advertising on consumer cynicismhave to be taken into account. AsObermiller and Spangenberg (1998) haveproposed, these factors can either besituational or dependent on the particularconsumer. The individual factors that arebeing taken into consideration are



knowledge or perception of the consumerof what the advertiser is trying to achievethrough its advertisements (consumerperception knowledge), and themotivation or involvement level of aconsumer while experiencing theadvertisement (Obermiller andSpangenberg, 1998). If a person has abetter knowledge about an advertiser’sintention, he is expected to be more cynicalabout a particular advertisement. Similarly,higher involvement with an advertisementis going to increase the cynicism of aconsumer if his consumption experienceis negative. In addition to these individualmoderators, the situational moderators thatwill determine the impact of advertising onconsumer cynicism are the product orclaim type and the medium of theadvertisement. While studying themoderating effect of product/claim type,it is suggested that the three types ofproduct - search, experience andcredence, will trigger different levels ofcynicism in a consumer (Obermiller andSpangenberg, 1998). Consumers wouldbe most cynical about credence goodsclaims, moderately cynical of experiencegoods, and the least cynical about thesearch goods claims (Obermiller andSpangenberg, 1998). Similarly, thedifferent mediums of advertising willimpact consumer cynicism to differentextents. While a less intrusive medium likeprint media might generate a lesser degreeof consumer cynicism, a more intrusivemedium like television advertisement willaffect a consumer to a higher extent.

H4: Knowledge/expertise of a consumerwill act as a moderator on the effect ofadvertising on his cynicism.

H5: Motivation/involvement of aconsumer will have a moderating effecton his cynicism.

H6: Product/claim type will moderatethe impact of advertising on consumercynicism.

H7: Medium of advertisement will actas a moderator on consumer cynicism.

Method

The current study aims at verifying theimpact of advertising skepticism on aconsumer’s cynicism, and the moderatorsas proposed in the hypothesized modelhave not being pursued in the presentresearch.

Sample:The questionnaire was distributed to 528employees of a particular organization, outof which 302 were returned, signalling aresponse rate of 57%, and 255 responseswere finally considered for our study aftereliminating incomplete and erroneousentries. The sampling method used wasconvenience sampling as the organizationunder consideration was easily accessiblefor data collection.

Measure:

The questionnaire for the study wasdesigned based on literature review done.The questionnaire had 2 sections. The firstsection dealt with capturing demographicdetails of the respondents like gender, age

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and education level, which will capture thevariable - consumption experience. Thesubsequent section had 27 items meant foroperationalizing the 3 constructs which arepart of the research model. All statementswere presented on a 7-point extendedLikert scale with 1 being “StronglyDisagree” to 7 being “Strongly Agree”.This section consisted of questionsgenerated from 3 different scales - Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) scale(Gosling, Rentfrow, Swann Jr., 2003) formeasuring the personality traits of anemployee; SKEP scale (Obermiller andSpangenberg, 1998) for measuring thecustomer’s skepticism toward advertising;and the items included in the ConsumerCynicism scale as developed by Helm,Moulard and Richins (2015) to measurea consumer’s general cynicism toward themarketplace.

Analytical Techniques:Descriptive research design was employedto study the impact of customer’spersonality dimensions and hisconsumption experience on his skepticismtoward advertising, and subsequently onhis cynicism toward the marketplace. Afactor analysis was done for SKEP andConsumer Cynicism constructs, but not forPersonality construct as it consists of twoitems per sub-component. Internalconsistency reliability of the items wastested using Cronbach alpha value. Boxplots were generated to analyze thedescriptive statistics of the data collected.Normality of the data was tested by usingShapiro-Wilk’s test, and plotting the

probability density function. Therelationship between personality traits andadvertising skepticism was analyzed usingPearson’s correlation coefficient to ensurethat the constructs do not show multi-collinearity with a correlation of more than0.9 magnitude. Linear regression analysiswas done between various constructs tofind out the strength and significance of therelationships between them. The modelvalidity was tested, and its goodness of fitanalyzed.

Data Analysis

The general characteristics of the 255respondents are given in Table 1. Factoranalysis using principal component analysisand varimax rotation was done for ad-skepticism and consumer cynicismconstructs after data was gathered. The 9item SKEP data was submitted to PCA.A single factor was extracted with EigenValue of 5.862, and consisted of all the 9items (SKEP 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9).The factor explained 65.136% of variancewhich is above the minimum acceptablevalue of 50%. The factor analysis (PCA)of the 8 item Consumer Cynicism dataresulted in the extraction of two factorsconsisting of 4 items from the scale. Aftertwo iterations, deleting the items for cross-loading, two factors were extracted withEigen Values of 2.350 and 1.047. The firstfactor with items (CYN 7 and 8)comprises of the components which showthat companies are willing to do anythingto improve their profit margins; and thesecond factor consisting 2 items (CYN 1and 3) reflects the capability of the



company deceiving the consumers andgoing against law. The 2 factors explained84.919% of variance which is again abovethe minimum acceptable value of 50%.

A reliability test was done on the reducedscales of the constructs. The CronbachAlpha score for the personality, ad-skepticism and consumer cynicismconstructs was found to be 0.772, 0.931and 0.762 respectively. The Cronbachalpha scores of the factors comprising thethree constructs which are given in Table2 were found to have a value > 0.7 for allthe factors, thus, guarantying that the scalesused for the research are reliable andinternally consistent. However, theCronbach Alpha score for age andeducation factors was found to be belowthe desired level. This might be becauseof the reason that these two parametersare not an appropriate indicators of aconsumer’s experience. Henceforth, thesetwo parameters are dropped from the dataanalysis and some other variables capturingthe consumption experience will beconsidered in any future research.

The descriptives of the various variabledata are mentioned below in Table 3. Theanalysis of the box plots of these constructsas shown in Figures 2, 3 and 4 establishthat there are no outliers present in thedata. The density functions of theconstructs were also plotted in Figures 5,6 and 7 to gather an idea about how theirprobabilities are distributed.

To ensure that the model doesn’t getimpacted from multi-collinearity, the

Kendall rank correlation coefficient wascalculated between gender, age andeducation of the respondents, as these aredummy variables, and the scores werefound to be less than 0.9 in all the cases.Similarly, the correlation coefficientsbetween personality, ad-skepticism andconsumer cynicism were also found to belower than 0.9 in every case as given inTable 4, thus, no further handling ofvariables was needed.

Shapiro-Wilk’s test was conducted forvarious data sets, and it was found thatnone of the variables satisfied therequirements to be classified as normaldistribution. The personality Shapiro testresulted in a p-value of 0.0043; for ad-skepticism, it was 5.434e-07; and forconsumer cynicism, the p-value came outto be 0.00015. As all the three p-valuesare below the desired level, thus parametrictests cannot be applied for them, andinstead, non-parametric tests wereconducted for the same.

The Wilcoxon rank sum test with continuitycorrection for consumer cynicism basedon the gender of the respondent resultedin W = 4570 with a p-value of 0.7299.As this p-value > 0.5, we do not rejectthe null hypothesis, and thus, no significantdifference was found in the consumercynicism level between the two genders.Similarly, as we have dropped age andeducation as variables which canaccurately measure a consumer’sexperience due to poor reliability scores,they were used only to compare theconsumer cynicism based on the groups

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according to them. To compare the groupmedians, we used Kruskal-Wallis test, asthe group samples are independent of eachother. The p-value for the Kruskal-Wallistest of consumer cynicism based on thegroups created according to the age andeducation of the respondents was 0.5227and 0.2476. Fligner-Killeen test ofhomogeneity of variances for consumercynicism based on age, resulted in p-valueof 0.4538 and based on education, gavea p-value of 0.664. As both the p-valuesare more than 0.05, we can validate theresults of the Kruskal-Wallis test, and thus,the medians of the various groupsaccording to age and education areassumed to be equal.

While plotting the regression line betweenconsumer cynicism and ad-skepticismthrough the origin represented in Figure 8,the estimate value of β , i.e., ad-skepticismcoefficient estimate was found to be0.407490, and the other findings aresummarized as adjusted R-squared =0.971, F-statistic is 8543 on 1 and 254DF with a p-value < 2.2e-16. The p-valueof the Shapiro-Wilk’s test on the residualswas found to be 0.99087, which is > 0.05.To predict the stability and usability of theregression equation, regression diagnosticswere run on the model. There was no fixedpattern found in the residual values plot,thus, confirming that the model does notsuffer from any heteroscedastic variance.The points in the Normal Q-Q plot werefound to be more or less lying on thepredicted line, and thus, we can safelyclaim that the residuals form a normal

distribution in this case. The same was alsoconfirmed by the Shapiro-Wilk’s test onthe residuals, as already mentioned in theprevious paragraph. No fixed pattern wasfound in the scale location plot too, thus,further strengthening the viability of themodel. Finally, no overtly detectableoutliers were found to be there in theleverage plot. All these findings are shownin Figures 9, 10, 11 and 12. A cross-validation test was run on the linear modelbetween consumer cynicism and ad-skepticism using both 3-fold and 10-foldcross-validation techniques as shown inFigure 13. The model was found to besignificant with F value of 8543 and p-value < 2e-16. The overall mean squarewas 8.93 (for 3-fold validation) and 8.94(for 10-fold validation).

As an appropriate linear regression modelcould not be fitted to explain therelationship between personality and ad-skepticism, a non-linear regression wascarried out to find the desired relationship.An exponential non-linear least squaresmodel (ad-skepticism ~ a * personality ̂b) was fitted to the data, and the resultsare summarized as - estimate of ‘a’ =0.99525, estimate of ‘b’ = 0.76464, bothwith significant p-value of 5.37e-08 andless than 2e-16 respectively. The residualstandard error was found to be 2.869 on253 degrees of freedom, and the achievedconvergence tolerance was 8.883e-06.The regression is shown in Figure 14.When the regression diagnostics were runand the residuals were plotted as given inFigure 15, they were found to be



approximately normally plotted (Q-Qplot), without any evidence ofautocorrelation or heteroscedasticvariance. Both the Shapiro-Wilk test andRuns test resulted in p-value greater than0.05, further proving the normality and no-autocorrelation of the residuals. Thepredicted non-linear least squares modelwas cross-validated using leave-one-outcross validation technique and the plot wasfitted to the data points. The leave-one-out mean square error was found to be8.29957, whereas the mean square errorvalue was 8.16644. The cross-validationplot is given in Figure 16.

Findings and Discussions

The objective of the current study was toanalyze the impact of a consumer’spersonality traits and his consumptionexperience on the skepticism that he showstoward advertising in total, and in turn itsimpact on his general cynicism toward themarketplace. A model was developed byusing the big-five personality dimensions,the SKEP scale for measuring ad-skepticism, and the consumer cynicismscale. Results from the empirical researchprovide support for the followinghypotheses that were being tested.

Employee’s personality was found to havea correlational impact on his skepticismtoward advertising, but instead of findinga linear regression between personality andad-skepticism, a non-linear effect waspredicted between the two. Therelationship followed a non-linear curve,in which ad-skepticism was found to be

dependent on an exponential function ofpersonality.

Though, personality was found to have aneffect on ad-skepticism, same could notbe concluded with respect to hisconsumption experience, which was beingmeasured with the help of his age andeducation levels. This might be becauseof the variables - age and education level,may not be appropriate for capturing aconsumer’s experience. A person ofconsiderable lesser age and still in hisearlier stages of education might havegained significantly more consumerexperience than his older and moreeducated counterpart due to changes inthe buying scenario.

Till date research has proposed the factthat a consumer’s skepticism toward hasan effect on his cynicism level.Substantiating this concept, it was foundthat a person’s ad-skepticism has acorrelational effect on his consumercynicism. There exists a linear regressionbetween the ad-skepticism and consumercynicism constructs according to thefindings of present research.

Even though age and education were notfound to have any correlational impact ona consumer’s ad-skepticism, still whilestudying the effect of the demographicvariables of a consumer on his cynicismlevels, it was concluded that an employee’sgender, age and education level didn’t havea significant differentiating impact on hisconsumer cynicism among the variousgroups.

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Conclusion

The study investigated the impact of aconsumer’s personality and hisconsumption experience on his skepticismtoward advertising, and in turn, its impacton his cynicism toward the marketplace.It was found that the personality of aperson affects his ad-skepticism in asignificant way, though not in a linearrelationship, but rather in a non-linearmanner. The consumption experience ofthe individual as measured by his age andeducation, was however found to have noimpact on his skepticism towardadvertising in general. Similarly, theskepticism of a consumer towardadvertising was also found to impact hiscynicism levels toward the generalmarketplace linearly. If these relationshipscan be understood perfectly by acompany, then it can definitely improve itsmarket position by coming up withappropriate advertising strategies, and alsomaking sure that it doesn’t over-burdenthe audience with its marketing campaignand communications.

References

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Barksdale, H. C., and Darden, W. R.,1972. Consumer Attitudes TowardMarketing and Consumerism. Journal ofMarketing. Vol. 36, 28-35.

Barrick, M. R., and Mount, M. K., 1991.The Big Five Personality Dimensions andJob Performance: a Meta-Analysis.Personnel Psychology, 44, 1-26.

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Coulter, R. A., Zaltman, G., and Coulter,K. S., 2001. Interpreting ConsumerPerceptions of Advertising: An applicationof the Zaltman Metaphor ElicitationTechnique. Journal of Advertising, 30, 4,1-21.

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Helm, A. E., Moulard, J. G., and Richins,M., 2015. Consumer Cynicism:Developing a Scale to Measure UnderlyingAttitudes Influencing Marketplace Shapingand Withdrawal Behaviours. InternationalJournal Of Consumer Studies, 39, 515–524.

Judge, T. A., and Zapata, C. P., 2015. ThePerson-Situation Debate Revisited: Effect



of Situation Strength and Trait Activationon the Validity of the Big Five PersonalityTraits in Predicting Job Performance.Academy of Management Journal, Vol.58, No. 4, 1149–1179.

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Appendix

I. Questionnaire:A. Demographic data

1. What is your gender?

(a) Male (b) Female

2. Which of the following categoriesdescribe your age?

(a) 21-30 (b) 31-40 (c) 41-50 (d) 51-60

3. What is your education level?

(a) Below 10th (b) 10th pass (c) 12th pass(d) Graduate (e) Post graduate (f)Doctorate

B. Personality dimensions (TIPI Scaleby Gosling, Rentfrow and Swann Jr.,2003)

(Rate on a scale from 1 to 7 where “1 -disagree strongly, 2 - disagree, 3 - disagreesomewhat, 4 - undecided, 5 - agreesomewhat, 6 - agree, 7 - agree strongly”)

I see myself as:

4. Extraverted or enthusiastic.

5. Critical or quarrelsome.

6. Dependable or self-disciplined.

7. Anxious or easily upset.

8. Open to new experiences orcomplex.

9. Reserved or quiet.

10. Sympathetic or warm.

11. Disorganized or careless.

12. Calm or emotionally stable.

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13. Conventional or uncreative.

C. Advertising skepticism (SKEP Scaleby Obermiller and Spangenberg,1998)


14. We can depend on getting the truthin most advertising.

15. Advertising’s aim is to inform theconsumer.

16. I believe advertising is informative.

17. Advertising is generally truthful.

18. Advertising is a reliable source ofinformation about the quality andperformance of products.

19. Advertising is truth well told.

20. In general, advertising presents a truepicture of the product beingadvertised.

21. I feel I have been accurately informedafter viewing most advertisements.

22. Most advertising provides consumerswith essential information.

D. Consumer Cynicism (Consumercynicism scale by Helm, Moulard andRichins, 2015)


23. Most companies do not mindbreaking the law; they just see finesand lawsuits as a cost of doingbusiness.

24. Most businesses are more interestedin making profits than in servingconsumers.

25. Companies see consumers aspuppets to manipulate.

26. Manufacturers do not care whathappens once I have bought theproduct.

27. If I want to get my money’s worth, Icannot believe what a company tellsme.

28. Most companies will sacrificeanything to make a profit.

29. To make a profit, companies arewilling to do whatever they can getaway with.

30. Most businesses will cut any cornerthey can to improve profit margins.

II. Tables:1. Descriptive of the Respondents



VARIABLES CATEGORIES NUMBER OF RESPONDENTS

Gender Male Female

45 210

Age

21-30 31-40 41-50 51-60

52 82 59 62

Education

Below 10th 10th pass 12th pass Graduate Post Graduate Doctorate

17 158 36 38 5 1

2. Reliability Analysis

CONSTRUCT FACTORS CRONBACH ALPHA

Personality Extraversion 0.883 Emotional Stability 0.913 Agreeableness 0.797 Conscientiousness 0.805 Openness to experience 0.728 Ad-skepticism SKEP 0.931 Consumer Cynicism CYN Factor 1 0.902 CYN Factor 2 0.726

3. Descriptive StatisticsCONSTRUCT MINIMUM MEDIAN MEAN MAXIMUM SD VARIANCE IQR Personality 24 44 45.28 67 9.597 92.109 14 Ad-skepticism 16 42 41.17 59 10.107 102.143 15 Consumer Cynicism 7 17 17 26 4.296 18.453 6

4. Correlation Matrix

PERSONALITY AD-SKEPTICISM CONSUMER CYNICISM

PERSONALITY 1 0.669 0.569 AD-SKEPTICISM 0.669 1 0.751 CONSUMER CYNICISM 0.569 0.751 1

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III. Figures:1. Hypothesized Model

Situational Factors

Product/ Claim type Medium of advertising

Individual Factors

Knowledge/ Expertise

Motivation/ Involvement

Consumer Cynicism

Ad-skepticism

Consumption Experience

Personality Traits

2. Personality Box Plot

3. Ad-skepticism Box Plot

4. Consumer Cynicism Box Plot

5. Personality Density Function

6. Ad-Skepticism Density Function



7. Consumer Cynicism Density Function

8. Consumer Cynicism - Ad-skepticismRegression Line

9. Consumer Cynicism - Ad-skepticismResidual vs. Fitted Plot

10. Consumer Cynicism - Ad-skepticismResidual Normal Q-Q Plot

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11. Consumer Cynicism - Ad-skepticismResidual Scale Location Plot

12. Consumer Cynicism - Ad-skepticismResidual vs. Leverage Plot

13. Cross-validation of ConsumerCynicism - Ad-skepticism LinearModel



14. Ad-skepticism - Personality Non-Linear Regression

15. Ad-skepticism - Personality Residual Analysis

16. Cross-validation of Ad-skepticism -Personality Model

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IMPACT OF AD-SKEPTICISM ON CONSUMER CYNICISM · 83 IMPACT OF AD-SKEPTICISM ON CONSUMER CYNICISM Indirah Indibara Assistant Professor (Marketing), KIIT School of Management, Bhubaneswar