INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS Personality influences Advertisement Likeness VOL 3, NO 2 DR KAMRAN SIDDIQUI MBA(IBA, Karachi) MA Marketing (University of Bradford, UK) PhD Marketing (Manchester Business School, Manchester, UK) Assistant Professor Institute of Business Administration University Road, 75270 Karachi, PAKISTAN Abstract The aim of this paper is to explore the influence of consumer personality on likeness of humorous advertising themes. Research data were collected through a survey from undergraduate and postgraduate students of different universities. The research instrument includes the Goldberg s Big-Five personality construct. Two more constructs were used to measure the respondent s attitude towards advertising likeness and it s by showing them five different humorous advertisements. Factor analyses were used to validate the constructs while regression analyses were conducted to describe the respondent s attitude towards likeness of humorous advertising themes. The final outcome shows that the extraversion dimension of consumer personality explains a significant variance in advertising likeness for humorous advertising themes. Two standard practices of psychological studies i.e. involving students as subjects and self reporting questionnaire using paper and pen are subject to criticisms from different quarters. Study adds a significant and valuable information in this research area as this was not done before. Keywords: Personality, Five-Factor Model, Advertising, Advertisement Likeness I. INTRODUCTION With the growth of in world s markets and adoption of sophisticated marketing techniques, the customers have more choices for where they get their products and services. This implies more challenges to marketers who now need more information about their customers their behaviors. This paper discusses the influence of consumer s personality factors in predicting the advertisement likeness of humorous advertising themes. II. LITERATURE REVIEW Much has been written on personality factors/facets and their predictability for social and behavioural intercourse (Larsen & Buss, 2005; Cheng & Furnham, 2003; Steel & Ones, 2003; Yik & Russell, 2001; Silverthome, 2001; Judge & Bono, 2000; Bono & Judge, 2004; Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2003; Watson, 2001; Trobst, Herbst, Masters, & Costa, 2002; Paunonen, 2003; Egan & Stelmack, 2003; Clower & Bothwell, 2001). There are numerous reasons for its predictive capability. First, the personality factors/facets remain COPY RIGHT 2011 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 631
stable in adulthood (Costa & McCrae, 1992a); second, these are dimensions, not types, so people vary continuously on them (Costa & McCrae, 1992a); third, the factors and their specific facets are heritable (Loehlin, McCrae, Costa, & John, 1998); fourth, the factors probably had adaptive value in a prehistoric environment (Buss, 1996); fifth, the factors are considered universal, having been recovered throughout the world (McCrae & Costa, 1997); finally, and most importantly knowing one's placement on the factors/facets is useful for insight and diagnosis (Costa & McCrae, 1992b). The contemporary advertising uses various themes to communicate the advertising message to its respective target audience and one of these themes is humor. across the On the other hand modern society cannot live without humor, as a realistic approach humor is a significant source of receiving attention, increasing its, aiding in learning names and situations and method will be required for human-machine contact in upcoming years to handle it (Stock & Strapparava, 2005). Apparently humor may enhance the likeness of advertisements, but the effectiveness of this relationship is determined by likeness of advertisement by target audiences in which the humor is perceived (Gelb & Pickett, 1983). Presence of humor in an advertisement doesn t guarantee a successful advertisement but the effectiveness can be enhanced by carefully choosing the target audience, situation and type of humor to be used (Weinberger & Gulas, 1992). When humor is linked to the message and it s also strong, the ads are unforgettable and this contact is interceded by attention and mood. Strong humor appeals also influence higher recall among persons with a high "need for humor" (Cline & Kellaris, 2007). Humor in advertising was considered risky, partially due to its possibility for failure of advertisements in getting proper likeness from target audience or causing offense (Beard, 2008). Research on humorous advertising themes has different approaches and different authors have given different point of views regarding humorous advertising themes. But research failed to explain variance within same target audiences for likeness of similar humorous advertisements. Most research in advertising has ignored the extent to which the psychographic variables like a consumer s personality, or demographic variables such as age or education, contribute as predicting advertisement likeness. A careful examination of the previous literature suggests that systematic research on the predicting role of consumer personality on likeness of humorous advertising themes is largely absent. III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY For this research the students of graduate and post graduate were selected through a simple random sampling method from different institutions out of which 251 were males and 105 were females aged between 20 and 24 years (N=356). The criteria of choosing the respondents from institutions was, randomly selecting two classes from each institution as every students studying there had an equal chance to be the part of this research. It was ensured that classes chosen for this study at least have 10 students and they have completed their one year of study in respective discipline. The questionnaire was divided into three parts. Part I uses Goldberg s 120 item IPIP scale to measure the respondent s personality The second part of the questionnaire was the most interesting part of the research exercise. Five different humorous advertisements were shown to respondents four question were used for measuring the likeness of each humorous advertisement themes. Humorous ads tend to be more productive for the electronic media as compared to print media (Madden & Weinberger, 1982) therefore electronic advertisements were shown of this research. Five hundred questionnaire were distributed out of which one forty four questionnaire were rejected during screening process, because of having high percentage of missing values and having less or no variation in them as it was affecting the reliability of the results. The rejected questionnaires were discarded before entering the data. SPSS software was used for entering the data and analyzing the results. COPY RIGHT 2011 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 632
IV. ANALYSES The data was analysed in three steps. First, exploratory factor analysis, using the Principal Component Analysis Extraction Method and Varimax Rotation Method with Kaiser Normalization, was used to determine the factor structure of 25 items related to advertisement likeness for humorous advertising themes. Second confirmatory factor analysis using 120 items of Goldberg s IPIP-NEO using the Principal Component Analysis Extraction Method and Varimax Rotation Method, was used to confirm that the items loaded on the respective factors as prescribed by previous studies (Goldberg, 1993). Finally, using the resulting factors from Goldberg s personality inventory and advertisement likeness factors, multiple regression was used to investigate the effects of consumer s personality on the likeness of advertisement for humorous advertising themes. At first step the analyses resulted in a five factor solution, consists of a total of 25 items. All items related to one advertisement were loaded on one factor (Table 1). These items were analysed using double qualifying criteria. First, a priori knowledge was used which is critical for any factor analysis (Byrne, 1998) and based on theoretical underpinning and empirical research, relations between the observed variables and the underlying factors were postulated a priori. This a priori knowledge was also supported by the use of the Kaiser criterion (eigenvalues 1) and scree test to determine the number of factors. Secondly, the factor loading criteria were applied which required that (a) a factor must have at least 2 salient item loadings greater than 0.3, (b) individual items must have at least one factor loading greater than 0.3 and (c) any item loading on more than one factor when the final solution is obtained will be placed only in the factor on which it loads most highly. Items were factor analysed using the principal component analysis method of extraction and varimax rotation. Overall scores were created by summing item scores creating onedimensional factors scores, one for each factor. The resulting value was then divided by the number of items in that factor, making overall scores relative and comparable. Participant s potential overall scores on each factor ranged from 1 to 5.The second order factor analysis was performed and all five factors were loaded on a single factor which shows that underlying structure of all five factors was measuring a single concept i.e., likeness of humor. Using a priori knowledge about Goldberg s IP-IP inventory, five high order factors i.e., Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were factor analysed separately. These factor analyses were performed using 24 items related to each factor and hence making the five separate analyses for all 120 items in the IP-IP inventory (Table-2). The second order confirmatory factor analyses were performed and all 30 facets were loaded on Big Five factors as expected (Table 2). The multiple regression analyses were performed to explore the relationships between personality factors (as predictor variables) and advertisement likeness for humorous advertisements variables (as criterion variables). The likeness of humorous advertising themes as criterion variables were regressed on the Big Five personality dimensions as predictor variables in stepwise regression analyses. Stepwise multiple regressions was undertaken in order to obtain the best possible prediction of criterion variable (Table 3). It shows that personality factor Extraversion predicted likeness for humorous advertising themes with a β of 0.13 and an adjusted R 2 of 0.56. Thus the proportion of variance in likeness for humorous advertising themes predicted by the personality factor Extraversion was 0.56 (56%). Positive Beta values reflect that these two variables are directly correlated with each other. Multi-colinearity diagnostics were examined and it was revealed that condition indices in all three analyses were less than 30 and none of the factors have a variance proportion of.50 or higher on a factor with a high condition index. COPY RIGHT 2011 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 633
INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS VOL 3, NO 2 Table 1 Factor Analysis: Likeness for humorous advertisements (N=356) First-Order Factors Second-Order Factor Advertisement Ad1 Ad2 Ad3 Ad4 Ad5 likeness Eigenvalue 6.22 2.95 2.15 1.88 1.64 2.10 Variance explained 31.17 14.76 10.78 9.41 8.23 42.14 M 15.83 14.91 13.96 12.71 15.33 86.33 SD 3.33 3.72 3.99 4.00 3.94 15.31 KMO.86.71 Cronbach Alpha.88.65 Items Factor loading I laugh a lot on this ad. (Ad1).89 This ad. is really funny. (Ad1).87 I will never forget this ad. (Ad1).84.59 I like the ad. (Ad1).80 I laugh a lot on this ad. (Ad2).87 This ad. is really funny. (Ad2).86.69 I like the ad. (Ad2).83 I will never forget this ad. (Ad2).79 This ad. is really funny. (Ad3).87 I laugh a lot on this ad. (Ad3).87.66 I will never forget this ad. (Ad3).79 I like the ad. (Ad3).79 This ad. is really funny. (Ad4).86.53 I laugh a lot on this ad. (Ad4).85 I like the ad. (Ad4).80 I will never forget this ad. (Ad4).78 I laugh a lot on this ad. (Ad5).83 This ad. is really funny. (Ad5).82.73 I like the ad. (Ad5).79 I will never forget this ad. (Ad5).69 Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. COPY RIGHT 2011 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 634
Table 2 Confirmatory Factor Analyses Five Factor Model First Order Second Order Facets # α EV VE M SD Factors M SD Depression 2 0.91 5.23 21.8 2.66 0.55 Neuroticism 0.79 2.56 0.81 Anxiety 3 0.86 3.09 12.9 2.79 0.87 Anger 3 0.82 2.39 9.98 2.54 0.67 Self-Consciousness 3 0.79 2.28 9.53 2.13 1.14 Immoderation 2 0.72 1.87 7.81 1.85 0.79 Vulnerability 3 0.64 1.8 7.5 3.41 0.81 Excitement Seeking 2 0.92 5.29 26.5 2.69 0.69 Extraversion 0.84 2.92 0.93 Activity Level 2 0.91 2.74 13.7 2.58 0.99 Friendliness 2 0.88 1.97 9.87 3.42 0.86 Gregariousness 3 0.87 1.74 8.7 2.74 1.21 Assertiveness 2 0.72 1.49 7.47 2.68 0.96 Cheerfulness 3 0.71 1.27 6.38 3.43 0.86 Cooperation 2 0.93 5.29 26.5 2.96 0.99 Agreeableness 0.83 2.62 0.86 Altruism 2 0.88 2.74 13.7 2.58 1.07 Trust 3 0.84 1.97 9.87 2.68 0.52 Modesty 2 0.8 1.74 8.7 2.81 0.84 Morality 2 0.79 1.49 7.47 2.56 0.64 Sympathy 2 0.73 1.27 6.38 2.15 1.11 Cautiousness 3 0.84 4.32 20.6 1.87 0.76 Conscientiousness 0.74 2.80 0.86 Self-Efficacy 2 0.81 3.29 15.7 3.43 0.78 Self-Discipline 2 0.79 2.56 12.2 2.71 0.66 Orderliness 2 0.74 2.11 10.1 2.6 0.96 Dutifulness 3 0.67 1.46 6.95 3.44 0.83 Achievement 2 0.61 1.22 5.84 2.76 1.18 Liberalism 2 0.82 3.69 15.4 2.7 0.93 Openness 0.77 2.88 0.84 Adventurousness 2 0.81 3.17 13.2 3.45 0.83 Emotionality 2 0.8 2.49 10.4 2.98 0.96 Imagination 3 0.78 2.34 9.76 2.6 1.04 Intellect 2 0.72 2.03 8.46 2.7 0.49 Artistic Interests 3 0.68 1.56 6.5 2.83 0.81 # - No. of items loaded; α - Alpha; EV Eigenvalue; VE - % variance explained COPY RIGHT 2011 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 635
Table 3 Regression Analysis showing predictor of Advertisement likeness (N=356) Criterion Predictor Adj.R 2. β F Sig. Advertisement likeness Extraversion.56.13 228.56.000 V. FINDINGS This research finding explains variance within same target audiences for likeness of similar humorous advertisements. As personality factor Extraversion explained a significant variance in likeness for humorous advertisement theme, illustrates that persons watching same advertisement or similar advertisement theme may behave differently based on their personality factors. It also support that Extraverts have relatively higher tendency to experience positive emotions such as joy, happiness, love and excitement (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and tend to be happier, and are most at ease in the company of other extraverts (Fleeson, Malanos, & Achille, 2002). VI. LIMITATIONS The results obtained from this empirical work must be interpreted in the light of the study s limitations. A few strengths of personality research; the universal use of self-reporting questionnaires, and use of students in the research process, which make the process robust and economically feasible, are actually highly criticised in different non-academic quarters. VII. IMPLICATIONS The availability of more and better information will enable a more productive analysis of customer profiles which, in turn, will affect behavioural and evaluation outcomes. The implication is obvious for segmentation strategies. Demographic variables such as age, sex, marital status, only identify who is in the segment. Behavioural consequences and attitudinal information indicate why the customer is in a particular segment and why that customer demonstrates a particular behaviour towards a particular advertisement. The why information constitutes a more powerful marketing tool, since it provides insight into the reasons behind customer decisions and evaluations. Therefore, by having access to both types of information, managers would be able to use their existing resources in a more efficient manner to access their target customers and deliver appropriate messages. COPY RIGHT 2011 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 636
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