Effectiveness of Controversial Advertising in Enhancing Customer Purchase Intension : The Mediating Role of Brand Attitude and Perceived Deception

Abstract

Globally, the business environment has become very competitive in terms of the value options available for customers’ attention, interest and further action. Accordingly, marketers aggressively attempt to indoctrinate a distinctive and desirable perception about their brands in the minds of customers. Since marketers are always in search of new ways which can attract customers towards their value offer, sometimes marketers are tempted to use techniques which cannot be deemed ethical. In order to place the brands on the targeted audiences’ mind and heart, marketers utilize multiple ways of advertisement and, thus, one of the modern advertisement techniques is controversial advertisement. The available literature also recognize such type of advertising as subliminal or deceptive. This study has accordingly conducted to empirically investigate the effectiveness of controversial advertisement in enhancing customer purchase intention. The focus remained on examining the mediating variables based on consumer’s attitude towards a brand and perceived deception in the controversial advertising. The study is based on the effectiveness and impact of controversial advertisement towards the purchase intention of a customer. The most important thing is to find that whether this kind of advertisement is ethical or not and if it is unethical then why still advertisers are adopting this advertising technique. In other words, the focus of the present study is to find that how deceptive advertising could influence the subconscious part of brain of a customer and how customer can be influenced by the deceptive ways of advertisings. Moreover, the other objective is to find or explore the relationship between brand attitude, perceived deception and controversial advertising. The study has also explored as well as empirically verified the mediating influences of perceived deception and brand attitude. The study is tested with the help of SPSS. Data was collected from 100 university students in view of the restrictive constraints. The findings of the study suggest evidence regarding the mediating influence of brand attitude and perceived deception. In view of the results and limitations of the present study, recommendations are given and possible future avenues for further research are highlighted.