Eighth Americas Conference on Information Systems, 1143–1148

Chingning Wang, Ping Zhang, Risook Choi, and Michael D'Eredita (2002).

Wang et al. go beyond the familiar assertion that consumers ignore and devalue advertising, regardless of the medium, by considering the active nature of consumers according to the Uses and Gratifications model.  They particularly emphasize the interactivity of some advertisements.  These ads allow consumers to actively process, evaluate, and utilize the information provided, and are hypothesized to be the object of more positive attitudes from consumers.  Wang et al. note that the internet is an especially good medium for these interactive ads.  They also consider the motives consumers have when using a particular kind of media as a factor in determining attitude.  Advertising which is particularly interactive, allowing consumers' high levels of control and which meets the informational needs that are consumers' motives for utilizing internet sources elicits an increased perception of value from consumers.  The authors conducted a survey with students and staff from a northeastern college in which twelve different types of advertising types were presented and attitudinal responses were elicited.

This article is particularly useful to a study of consumer attitudes toward internet advertising because it provides an account of situations in which internet advertising can be especially effective.  It serves in part to balance other sources which find consumer attitudes to be more negative.  However, it is quite limited in its explanation of its methods and results.  It is also limited in its results themselves, in that the description of internet advertising which can be safely considered effective is fairly narrow--limited to directional marketing--though it does outline some attributes which, if incorporated, could be helpful to other types of advertising as well.  The article also includes a list of both advertisement and consumer characteristics which influence attitude, including entertainment, informativeness, credibility, demographic considerations, level of irritation evoked by advertisements, and interactivity.  Entertainment, interactivity, and irritation are three factors which repeatedly appear in advertising literature.  While Wang et al. theorize that the informational content of ads may be particularly effective, other studies find that entertainment value is of more importance.