Passive-Active Advertising Avoidance in China (Abstract)

Attitude towards advertising has received considerable research attention as a variable explaining advertising avoidance (Speck and Elliot 1997). However, several other potentially important psychological variables have not been used to explain advertising avoidance. Two such useful factors are the presence of others and perceived time pressure. The presence of others and time pressure might be described as passive factors because to a certain extent these psychological variables are beyond the ad viewer’s control. If such passive factors are influential, consumers may avoid advertising not necessarily because they want to, but because their environment forces them to. In contrast to presence of others and perceived time pressure, attitudes towards advertising is an active variable relating to advertising avoidance.

Looking first at the presence of others, an important psychological influence on advertising avoidance might be how important consumers consider those around them to be, relative to the advertising. Certain situational influences, including the social surroundings, have long been known to effect consumer behavior (Belk 1974; 1975). More than 200 studies apply elements of Belk’s taxonomy of situational influences, but those which focus on social surroundings are primarily in relation to purchasing behavior. By analogy with purchasing behavior, social surroundings might also impact whether or not consumers pay attention to advertising. This influence is termed the “presence of others”. The presence of others could serve as a general measure of people’s intention to interact with family or friends around them rather than attending to commercials. The impact of presence of others might be expected to depend on how filial or friendly people are with the others present. In theory, paying attention to friends and family should normally have a higher priority than paying attention to advertising and peoples’ preference for respecting those around them rather than the advertising may be an underlying explanation for why advertising is avoided in such circumstances. Consistent with this notion, Moriarty and Everett (1994) report that during TV commercial breaks, talking by viewers increases 40%.

If this mechanism is correct, the presence of others is more likely to influence consumers to avoid ads in broadcast media than in print media, because print media require focus (most people do not read and talk with others simultaneously). Conceptually, therefore, the presence of others is logically excluded as a predictor of advertising avoidance in the context of newspapers and magazines. Consistent with this logic, Speck and Elliott (1997) argue that with broadcast media, during advertisements people focus on things outside the medium (such as conversation) and then return their attention to the medium when the ad break is over. But with print media, people attend to other material in the media as a way to avoid ads, rather than engage in conversation with others.

Since increased time pressure results in consumers trying to improve their market place efficiency (Mittal 1994), consumers under time pressure will be more likely to avoid advertising (which may be seen as discretionary rather than compulsory listening, reading or viewing). In short, filtration occurs and consumers become more selective in the face of time constraints. However the effect of time pressure on advertising avoidance may not be so clear cut. If one assumes that consumers have a positive view of advertising, then such consumers may view advertising as a means of saving time by informing them about products and services and reducing search (Heyder, Musiol, and Peters 1992). Despite these opposing forces, since absorbing advertising requires time, those who are under time pressure are more likely to be advertising avoiders. Specifically, time pressure constrains the consumer’s ability and willingness to process information, resulting in a more heuristic processing style and the avoidance of advertising.

The issues addressed are (1) Does the presence of others relate positively with the avoidance of advertising in broadcast media? (2) Does perceived time pressure relate positively with the avoidance of advertising in all media? (3) Will people who hold more negative attitudes towards advertising have a higher rate of avoidance of advertising in all media?

Turning to method, within China, Shanghai was chosen as the location for the study primarily because Shanghai is often referred to as a leading indicator for the rest of China. After conducting two focus groups, a quota sample of 420 was constructed due to the constraints on random sampling in China. The quotas were based on sex and age. Equal numbers of male and female respondents, and of different age groups, were interviewed. Mall intercepts were used to find the target interviewees. Only interviewees who had been exposed to TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines in the past 3 months were interviewed. (Though virtually everyone approached met this criterion.) The interviews were conducted in Chinese following questionnaire development in English and then translation into Chinese through a translation and back-translation procedure.

The questionnaire was designed to identify each consumer’s level of advertising avoidance with respect to the two broadcast media and the two print media, and the role of the presence of others, attitudes towards advertising in general, and feelings of time pressure in influencing their advertising avoidance behavior. Six-point scales were used to avoid central tendency and for higher discriminatory power. The data were analyzed using hierarchical regression. This technique was used to estimate the incremental variance associated with the blocks of variables.

The results show that the presence of others is significant in explaining avoidance of television and radio ads. Time pressure was found to be significant for broadcast media, but not print media. Finally, attitude towards adverting was found to be a significant predictor of advertising avoidance across all media.

The primary discussion elements suggest that the presence of others partly explains the avoidance of advertising in broadcast media. In effect, friends and family create noise in the marketing communication process. Advertising communications need to be engaging and personal to challenge the tendency to talk to people in the room. A simple solution to this problem would be desirable, but this influence of the presence of others is an age-old problem, as only in the early days of television did people huddle around the TV set and avidly watch commercials for their novelty. Consumers are generally smart and savvy, and this study has shown that even in rapidly emerging markets, where advertising has a relatively short history, people prefer to use breaks to talk and interact. Magic solutions to this problem do not exist, and advertisers and agencies are hardly going to find these findings a revelation, as no one expects commercials to be watched with complete attention.

The second main finding from this study is that consumers who perceive themselves to be under greater time pressure will engage in greater avoidance of advertising in the broadcast media. Broadcasts are externally paced in the sense that the medium controls the transmission rate. As such, advertisers need to be aware of the limitations on the length and complexity of the broadcast messages that can attract attention. Advertisements that absorb less versus more time are less likely to be avoided. Perhaps broadcast advertising’s role changing from a primary to a support role is unsurprising. Broadcast ads increasingly direct consumers to a print ad or Web site for more detailed information as the market place shifts in general from push to pull communications.

There are a number of limitations within the study and of course the focus has been on China. However, the study shows that the primary difficulty with passive factors is the relative inability of marketers to influence them. Nevertheless by simply looking at the active factors and attitudes held towards advertising relative to the passive factors, there is a greater opportunity for marketers to reduce advertising avoidance. The study shows that attitudes towards advertising have a powerful role in explaining advertising avoidance in all media. The attitude towards advertising constructs in this study measures attitudes towards all advertising rather than being media-specific, so the findings suggest that the advertising industry needs collectively to consider ways for generating a more positive attitude towards advertising—which may be a tall order to address. Yet if advertising were to strive to become ever more engaging and personal, there might be an improvement in attitudes towards advertising and in turn a reduction in advertising avoidance. This is unfortunately a topic where the issues underlying the problem look to be a lot easier to identify than the solution.