Origin, Distinctiness And Skepticim Toward Advertising

Marketing Letters 11:4 (2000): 311±322 # 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Manufactured in The Netherlands

On the Origin and Distinctness of Skepticism toward Advertising CARL OBERMILLER Albers School of Business, Seattle University, Seattle, WA 98122-4340 E-mail: [email protected] ERIC R. SPANGENBERG Department of Marketing, College of Business and Economics, Washington State University, Pullman WA 99164

Abstract Two studies were conducted to investigate the origin and distinctness of consumer skepticism toward advertising, de®ned as a tendency to disbelieve advertising claims by Obermiller and Spangenberg (1998). The ®rst study examined the role of socialization in the family by comparing levels of ad skepticism across generations. Signi®cant associations were strongest for female children with their fathers; less strong but apparent for male children with their mothers. Further, the associations diminished with age, which was considered a surrogate for time away from home. The second study explored the relationship between skepticism toward advertising and skepticism toward other sources of product information. The results indicated some overlap between skeptical beliefs about advertising and salespeople, but, otherwise, ad skepticism appeared to be a separate construct from skepticism toward other sources of product information. Moreover, advertising was viewed as the least believable of the ®ve sources of product information that were considered. Key words: skepticism, advertising, intergenerational

Introduction A free and healthy marketplace relies on easy consumer access to information. To the extent that advertising provides information, consumers must not only have access to it, but they must believe it to be informative. No doubt information from marketers has always been regarded warily (caveat emptor), but recent research has focused on the issue of consumer skepticism toward advertising. Calfee and Ford (1988) proposed that the effects of advertising can best be understood if we assume that consumers do not trust ad claims unless they have speci®c reasons to trust them. Calfee and Ringold (1994) found persistent evidence over time that a wide majority of consumers tend to disbelieve advertising claims. And, Obermiller and Spangenberg (1998) developed and tested a multi-item scale (SKEP) to assess skepticism toward advertising. The extent and nature of consumers' skepticism toward advertising is relevant to marketers who invest heavily in efforts to communicate to consumers and in¯uence demand through advertising and to

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policy makers who assume some level of reliance on advertising as the basis of their efforts to regulate it. Both marketers and policy makers might bene®t from insights into which consumers are most skeptical and why. 1. Background Obermiller and Spangenberg (1998) de®ned ad skepticism as the tendency toward disbelief in advertising claims. They argued that ad skepticism is a stable characteristic of consumers that plays a role in responses to advertising. Virtually all advertising includes claims that are subject to some degree of disbelief. Certain kinds of claims are presumed to be widely accepted (for example, price information and retail location), but, consistent with information economics theory, we should expect consumers to have some skepticism about experience or credence type claims (such as quality, durability, or performance) (Darby and Karni 1973; Nelson 1974). Ford, Smith, and Swasy (1988) reported that 65% of ad clams were either experience or credence type. Skepticism toward advertising is an important component of consumer persuasion knowledge (Friestad and Wright 1994) and a generalizable belief about the way the marketplace operates (Duncan 1990). In two studies we further examined the construct by addressing questions of intergenerational in¯uence on ad skepticism and the overlap between skepticism toward advertising and other sources of product information. 2. Study 1 In the ®rst study we examined one possible source of skepticism toward advertising. Obermiller and Spangenberg (1998) proposed personality traits, marketplace experience, education, and consumer socialization as antecedents to ad skepticism and found evidence of association with the ®rst three. In this study we examined the role of socialization in the family by comparing levels of ad skepticism across generations. There is compelling evidence and argument that consumer socialization occurs in the family (Moschis 1987). Parents in¯uence children through modeling, explicit instructions, and controlled experiences (Ward, Wackman, and Wartella 1977), and numerous studies show intergenerational associations, including beliefs about advertising (Moschis 1987). Moore-Shay and Lutz (1988), in particular, found evidence for intergenerational in¯uence on marketplace beliefs, including the usefulness and value of advertising. Several studies have shown intergenerational in¯uence on brand and store choice (Childers and Rao 1992, Moore-Shay and Lutz 1988, Woodson, Childers, and Winn 1976). The evidence therefore suggests that skepticism toward advertising is likely modeled by parents and may be a salient manifestation of consumer socialization in the family. Skeptical parents should produce skeptical children. The intergenerational transfer of ad skepticism may differ by gender. Buss and Schaninger (1987) identi®ed `gender de®ned behaviors' in family consumptionÐbehaviors that are not sex-linked but are a function of socialization experiences related to

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gender. Considerable research has identi®ed gender differences within the family, and, although sex roles are changing, evidence suggests that females continue to do the vast majority of household chores, including shopping, even when they are employed (Robinson 1988; Solomon 1996, p. 402). In their analysis of Christmas shopping gender differences, Fischer and Arnold (1990) argued that women are still much more involved in shopping and that girl children, by observing their mothers, will learn that such behavior is appropriate for women. Thus, research on family roles suggests a stronger relationship between child and parent ad skepticism for female (relative to male) children. Other research also suggests different gender intergenerational in¯uence for ad skepticism. Meyers-Levy and Sternthal (1991) speculated about the source of gender differences, concluding that genders differ in elaboration thresholds. They suggested that gender differences in processing and subsequent judgment re¯ect unique motivations that evolve during socialization. That is, females' lower threshold for elaboration may be a manifestation of females' general mode of processing informationÐa result of their assignment to relatively subordinate societal roles and their corresponding adoption of a communal orientation (Bakan 1966; Hall 1986). Indeed, Moschis and Churchill (1979) found that girls showed a stronger early orientation toward advertising. Additionally, Moschis and Churchill (1978) and Moschis and Moore (1979) found that girls were more likely to seek information from parents before making purchases, and Moschis (1987) concluded that females rely more on parents and on advertising for product information. More directly to the point, Cateora (1963) found that girls not only interacted more with family regarding shopping, but, speci®cally, they were more likely to model themselves after parents than were boys. Finally, gender differences in speci®c consumer socialization are consistent with more general theory in adolescent socialization, which proposes that our society puts greater pressures toward autonomy and identity on boys (Elder 1968). Bakan (1966) and Meyers-Levy (1988) characterized gender differences in consumer socialization along an agency-communion dimension. An agency orientation is associated with males and suggests a self-focused perspective marked by self-assertive concerns. By contrast, females' adherence to a communal role emphasizes a broader concern with both self and others. Hall (1984) suggested that such gender differences develop because of traditional submissive and subordinate female roles in our culture in relation to dominant male roles. Eagly (1986) elaborated, arguing that females have stronger needs to understand interpersonal cues and foster harmony within self and among others. Meyers-Levy and Sternthal (1991) observed that women give greater consideration to advertising cues than do men. We believe that difference may result from different socialization with respect to skepticism toward advertising. This sex role theorizing led us to predict gender differences in the intergenerational transfer of ad skepticism. 2.1. Procedure The data were responses to the 9-item skepticism toward advertising scale (SKEP) designed to assess a general tendency toward disbelief in advertising claims (Obermiller and Spangenberg 1998). Subjects were a convenience sample of 99 undergraduate students

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from consumer behavior courses at two universities, who completed the SKEP scale during class. Student subjects had an average age of 23.5 with a range from 20 to 32 and were 45 females and 44 males. One week after ®lling out the scales, students requested participation from their parents by mailing or delivering a cover letter from their professor and a copy of the SKEP scale (among adapted versions of SKEP-see Study 2) with a stamped, return envelope. The letter indicated that students received course credit for parent's participation (ninety-eight percent of students secured participation from at least one parent)1. Eighty-three mothers and seventy-one fathers provided completed forms and combined with the student group for a total sample of 253. 2.2. Results Skepticism toward advertising was computed by summing the nine items, yielding scores that could range from 9 to 45, with higher numbers indicating greater skepticism. Validated in several studies by Obermiller and Spangenberg (1998), the SKEP scale's psychometric properties were con®rmed in the current study. Principal components factor analysis yielded a single dominant factor accounting for 47% of variance (eigenvalue ˆ 4.2; next closest was less than one; factor scores > .57 for all nine items). Corrected item-to-total correlations between an individual item and the sum of the remaining 8 items averaged r ˆ 58 and Cronbach's coef®cient a ˆ :86. Mean SKEP scores of students, mothers, and fathers were 27.5, 29.9, 28.6 respectively. As a group, children were slightly less skeptical of advertising than their parents. Paired ttests indicated that children were statistically signi®cantly less skeptical than their mothers (t ˆ 3.24, p < .01) but the difference from their fathers was not signi®cant (t ˆ 1.44, p < .10). The observed correlations between students' levels of skepticism and those of their parents were r ˆ .11 for students and mothers and r ˆ .08 for students and fathers, neither of which was statistically signi®cant. Further investigation was carried out by examining correlations between children and parents separately by gender. The results revealed some degree of association masked by the aggregate analysis. Male children had stronger, albeit non-signi®cant, positive correlations with both parents; r ˆ .15 (n ˆ 41) for males and mothers, and r ˆ .18 (n ˆ 35) for males and fathers. Female students had near-zero correlation with mothers, r ˆ 7 .01 (n ˆ 40), but strong positive correlations with fathers, r ˆ .40 (n ˆ 34). These results provided mixed support for the expectation of a stronger relationship for females and suggest the need to examine a full array of male=female child-male=female parent dyads. The strongest intergenerational relationship was, in fact, found for female children, but, surprisingly, it was the association between females and their fathers, not their mothers. We also examined the strength of relationship as a function of time away from home. Since their independent experiences are much more likely to diverge from rather than conform to those of their parents, children's ad skepticism should become increasingly different from their parents over time as students move away from home. Using age as a surrogate for time away from home, we split the samples into older and younger sub-

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samples at the median age of 21.2. Dividing subjects by age as well as gender resulted in small sample problems, but the results, nonetheless, indicated support for a weakening association over time. Younger female children had a correlation with their fathers of r ˆ .61 ( p < .01); whereas, older females had a correlation with their fathers of r ˆ .17 (ns). Younger male children, on the other hand, had correlations with their mothers of r ˆ .55 ( p ˆ .03) versus r ˆ 7 .23 (ns) for older males. The other comparisonsÐfemales with mothers and males with fathers yielded non-signi®cant correlations for both age groups. The split-sample comparison was consistent with the hypothesis that ad skepticism is learned at home. As time away from home increased, children's skepticism came to be less associated with the parents. (A regression analysis employing an interaction between parent's skepticism and child's age con®rmed the split-sample correlation results.) 3. Study 2 In a second study, we turned from the question of how consumers become skeptical of advertising to the question of what the construct represents. Are consumers truly being socialized to a market belief, or do people merely develop a general tendency to be more or less skeptical of everything? To determine if the SKEP scale measures skepticism toward advertising rather than some global skepticism trait, we undertook measures of skepticism toward various sources of information about new products and compared both the levels of skepticism and relationships among the measures. Given the ample evidence that consumers are skeptical of advertising and marketing (e.g., Barksdale and Darden 1972; Calfee and Ringold 1994; Gaski and Etzel 1976), we expected marketing sources of information to be viewed with relatively high levels of skepticism. Further, we expected that skepticism toward advertising would be distinct from skepticism toward other sources, particularly non-marketing sources. There is evidence that consumers hold beliefs and attitudes speci®c to advertising (e.g., Andrews 1989; Meuhling 1987). Further, the argument for a `schemer schema' or a persuasion model designed to deal speci®cally with marketing information (Friestad and Wright 1994) suggests that consumers do consider advertising as a special type of information, one that merits skepticism. Thus, we expected to con®rm the independence of advertising skepticism from skepticism toward other targets. 3.1. Procedure The data were responses to the 9-item SKEP scale used in Study 1 and four 9-item scales modi®ed to assess skepticism toward other sources of product information. The modi®cations were effected by substituting for the word `advertising' four other targetsÐConsumer Reports, a friend, a salesperson, and a government agency. Each scale was labeled with the heading, `(Target) as a Source of Product Information.' Subjects were a convenience sample of 154 non-student adults, 83 women and 71 men, the parents of the student subjects from Study 1. (Data were not collected from the students because we did not

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expect them to have suf®cient experience to have well-formed opinions about the additional targets.)

3.2. Results The reliability of the modi®cations to the SKEP scale was investigated by computing coef®cient alpha, which ranged from .87 to .95 for the four new scales. The integrity of the ®ve scales (SKEP and 4 different targets) was further con®rmed by separate principal components factor analyses, including the nine items relevant to their respective target scales. In each case, a clear single factor solution was evident; average variance explained ˆ 56% with all items loading greater than .56 on their respective scales. A further factor analysis of all 45 items from the ®ve scales supported the construct validity of ad skepticism. A model constrained to ®ve factors showed that nearly all items loaded most heavily on factors associated with similar target items that they were intended to measure (i.e., skepticism toward friends items loaded most heavily with other skepticism toward friends items, and so on). There were, however, signi®cant cross-loadings between items from SKEP and the salesperson factor and vice versa. The levels of skepticism toward different targets were compared by computing skepticism scores for the four additional targets (presented in Table 1). Subjects held different levels of skepticism for different sources of product information, as indicated by a repeated measures analysis of variance (F(4,600) ˆ 137.95, p < 01). Skepticism toward advertising and salespersons was high, skepticism toward Consumer Reports and a friend was low, and skepticism toward a government agency was moderate. Paired contrasts showed all target pairs had statistically signi®cant different levels of skepticism (all t 's > 4.00; all p's < .01). The ®nding that subjects held different levels of skepticism toward different sources of product information is not suf®cient to conclude that advertising skepticism is a separate Table 1. Skepticism toward Five Sources of Product Information: Means and Inter-Correlations Inter-Correlations a

advertising Consumer Reports a friend a salesperson a government agency a

SKEP scale mean (s.d.)a

advertising

29.3 18.8 21.5 27.5 25.7

1.0 0.17 0.13 0.48b 0.14

(5.37) (3.35) (4.40) (5.16) (6.43)

Consumer Reports 1.0 0.26b 0.15 0.32b

a friend

a salesperson

1.0 0.26b 0.19

1.0 0.07

a government agency

1.0

Items measured on 5-point scales (1 ˆ `strongly disagree' to 5 ˆ `strongly disagree'); items were reverse-scored for SKEP with higher numbers therefore indicating greater skepticism toward respective sources of product information. b Indicates correlations associated with p < .05.

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construct. It is possible that consumers have general levels of skepticism, which are then moderated by target. If such were the case, consumers might be less skeptical of a friend than advertising, but the generally highly skeptical consumers would still be more skeptical of a friend than the generally less skeptical consumers. To test this possibility, the correlations among target skepticism were examined (see Table 1). High inter-target correlations would support the argument for a general level of skepticism. The pattern of correlations in Table 1 shows no support for the notion of a general trait of skepticism. Of the ten inter-item correlations, only four are signi®cant at p < .05. Although no single construct of skepticism is evident, the shared associations suggest some similarity among targets. Advertising and salespeople, which were regarded with similarly high levels of skepticism, were also signi®cantly correlated. Likewise, a friend and Consumer Reports, regarded as the most trustworthy sources, were signi®cantly correlated. A government agency was signi®cantly correlated with Consumer Reports and nearly so with a friend. The pattern of associations is consistent with a model of consumer skepticism that separates sources of information into marketer-controlled and nonmarketer controlled. Thus, information from advertising and information from salespeople are regarded with high skepticism. Friends, Consumer Reports, and, to some extent, government agencies are regarded as more believable. The remaining signi®cant relationship, between friends and salespeople, may suggest another dimension that consumers considerÐpersonal versus non-personal sources of information. Depending on their attraction for interpersonal interactions and their faith in handling face-to-face interactions, consumers may be disposed to believe information from salespeople and friends in similar ways. We further investigated skepticism interrelationships by classifying subjects as high or low on ad skepticism (median split at 25.0) and re-examining the pattern of correlations with other types of skepticism. Subjects classi®ed as low in ad skepticism mirrored the whole sample, with the exception of a non-signi®cant friend-Consumer Reports correlation. The highly skeptical group, however, showed statistically signi®cant correlations in seven of the ten off-diagonal cells, including a strong association between SKEP and skepticism toward salespeople (r ˆ .54) as well as signi®cant correlations between SKEP and friends and a government agency. The analysis of the split sample suggests that people who are high on SKEP may indeed be more generally skeptical of everything than those low on SKEP. In fact, there may be a segment of skeptical consumers who distrust product information from a variety of sources. The results of Study 2 generally supported our expectations. Consumers in our sample were more skeptical of advertising than any of the other sources of product information. Skepticism toward different targets cannot generally be explained by a single skepticism trait. Yet, skepticism toward different targets showed an understandable pattern. Consumers were highly skeptical of information from marketing sources, and the high correlation between advertising and salespeople, as well as the shared item factor loadings, suggest that distrust of advertising information may stem from a broader distrust of information perceived to be controlled by marketing agents. This result is consistent with the ®ndings that skepticism toward advertising overlaps to some extent with more general attitudes toward business and marketing (Obermiller and Spangenberg 1998). On the other

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hand, the signi®cant interrelationships for those who were high in advertising skepticism was unexpected and may indicate that ad skepticism does become more generalized for some consumers. 4. Conclusions Our objectives were to examine family socialization as a source of ad skepticism and to discriminate ad skepticism from skepticism toward other sources of product information. With respect to the former, we found some evidence of intergenerational transfer of skepticism toward advertising, but the relationship was not generally strong and was masked by differences in parent-child gender dyads. It is dif®cult to assess the validity of the results of Study 1 by referring to other research because no studies have examined ad skepticism per se. A few empirical studies have assessed intergenerational transfer of consumer behaviors or beliefs. Most of these have measured parent-child congruence of brand choice (Moore-Shay and Lutz 1988; Childers and Rao 1992; Woodson, Childers, and Winn 1976; Heckler, Childers, and Arunachalam 1989). Combined, these studies examined 24 groups, de®ned by combinations of several variables, including age, occupation, product type, product visibility, and family type. With the exception of one low value, these groups ranged from about 20% to 60% congruence in parent and child brand preferences (in contrast to the highest congruence in Study 1, of about 16%). Further, the studies examined the in¯uencing effects of several variables and found decreasing congruence with age and time away from parents, higher congruence for low visibility or necessity products, and no effect of education or gender. Only one study examined marketplace beliefs. Among many beliefs of daughters and mothers, Moore-Shay and Lutz (1988) found mothers were less trustful of advertising and less inclined to assume a positive price-quality relationship. Unfortunately, no direct comparison can be made regarding the size of the relationship in that study and the current one. Moore-Shay and Lutz did not measure skepticism directly; they used scores from factors comprised of six or seven items and interpreted for meaning. Moreover, they did not report within-subjects analyses. Rather than correlate belief scores for daughter and mother, they compared aggregate scores across the groups. The apparently small intergenerational transfer effect for ad skepticism relative to brand preferences results from several causes. First, the comparison is statistically apples and oranges. Congruence of brands is measured by percentage matching; whereas, agreement of beliefs is measured with a correlation between continuous variables. The two are not statistically comparable. Second, artifacts may in¯ate the brand congruence ®gures. For example, a product category that is dominated by one or two brands will naturally show high average agreement. Also, direct measures (`Do you use the same brand as your parents?') are likely to in¯ate agreement relative to a comparison of preferred brands simply because the former reduces the question to a dichotomous variable. Finally, as the brand congruence studies suggest, there is higher agreement when motivation to search among alternatives is low and habit replaces decision making. To the extent that forming a marketplace belief is more involving than choosing a brand of facial tissue, one should

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expect less agreement for a concept like ad skepticism than for many brand preferences. Given these differences, one should not be surprised to ®nd correlations ranging from .1 to .4 as reasonable evidence of intergenerational transfer of ad skepticism. Stronger evidence of intergenerational transfer would be provided by a longitudinal analysis that documented a strong fall-off association once children left their families. A limitation of our study was that the sample was not broad enough to provide such information. Since the children were university undergraduates, even the youngest of them were near the end of their time at home, and, as a group, they already showed differences from their parents' marketplace beliefs. Perhaps future research could examine ad skepticism changes over a greater range of ages. In addition, any future research should include measures of some of the variables that have been identi®ed as in¯uential in intergenerational transferÐfamily orientation, family structure, education of children, and time away from home (Heckler, Childers, and Arunachalam 1989), as opposed to mere age of children. The ®nding of an effect of gender dyad on the intergenerational association is notable for several reasons. First, the relationships were hidden by the aggregate data, suggesting that analysis of the speci®c gender dyads may be important in pursuing questions regarding intergenerational consumer socialization. We found no studies that examined effects at the level of gender-speci®c parent-child dyads, and Moschis (1987) observed that researchers have ignored that level of examination. Second, the nature of the dyads was surprising. Why should children re¯ect the ad skepticism of their opposite-sex parents? Past research offers little insight. Heckler, Childers, and Arunachalam (1989) hypothesized but found no support for less intergenerational effect for female children, but they did not consider gender of parent. Woodson, Childers and Winn (1976) showed similarity of brand choice between fathers and sons, but they did not consider other gender dyads. Moore-Shay and Lutz (1988) showed some consistency in brand choice and shopping strategy, but, as noted above, the comparison was at the aggregate, not the individual level, and, again, the research did not consider other gender dyads. A Freudian interpretation of our results suggests itself but is purely speculativeÐOedipal and Electra motivations might account for children's modeling opposite gender parents. The question requires further study and may involve approaches from developmental psychology and sociology. Finally, these results are generally supportive of the notion discussed above that there are de®nite gender differences in judgments that evolve during socialization (see Meyers-Levy and Sternthal 1991). With respect to our second objective, we interpreted our results as further evidence of the construct validity of the SKEP scale. (For a more complete test of the scale's construct, convergent, and discriminant validities, see Obermiller and Spangenberg 1998.) Finding that different sources of information produced different levels of skepticism and that the patterns of results were not strongly correlated argues in favor of the existence of advertising skepticism as a construct separate from general skepticism. However, the observation of a strong correlation between ad skepticism and salesperson skepticism suggests a limit to the extent to which consumers make ®ne distinctions. Although there may be other situational or individual difference factors to consider, our results suggest

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that consumers may generalize skepticism across marketer-controlled sources of information. Further, we noted that more skeptical subjects did not demonstrate such ®ne distinctions. Although Study 2 revealed interesting differences in relative levels of skepticism toward different information sources, we cannot comment on the absolute level of skepticism toward advertising.2 As Calfee and Ringold (1994) note, consumers have, over a long period of time, consistently reported a disbelief in advertising, while simultaneously reporting an equally consistent perception of advertising as a valuable source of information. In fact, the best control on a free advertising market may be a `healthy' skepticism on the part of consumers. Deviations in either directionÐtoo much or too little skepticismÐ however, are surely harmful. The totally disbelieving consumer ignores information in the marketplace, and the totally gullible consumer falls prey to exaggeration and deception. Since Calfee and Ringold (1994) observed that changes in regulation have not had signi®cant effects on consumer skepticism levels, we suggest focusing on improving our understanding of how ad skepticism is formed. With such an understanding we may gain some insight into how to improve and cultivate it. As consumers become more discerning and savvy, marketers may respond with the higher quality of information that consumers seem to want. Of course, we recognize that marketers may also become still more sophisticated in their in¯uence techniques and less direct in their provision of information; ads do not have to be informative to be effective (and even if they are informative, they do not have to be believed to be effective). But, we believe that advertising responds to consumer demand. If we can understand what consumers are skeptical of and why, we may develop mechanisms that encourage advertisers to change in ways that increase marketing ef®ciency.

Notes 1. We addressed the ethics of requiring parental participation in several ways. First, the contribution to grade was minimal. Second, we did not regard our request as unreasonable. Third, the cover letter clearly stated that the work was integral to the course. The study and its results were, in fact, discussed later in the term, and students were encouraged to share the information with their parents. Fourth, students who did not have access to their parents were permitted to collect data from two other adults; those data were not included in the study. 2. The absolute SKEP scores were likely affected by the within-subjects design, which may have encouraged subjects to `spread' their scores. In this case, however, since we were most interested in the relationships between pairs of SKEP targets, the absolute levels of skepticism were not at issue. The same comment refers to possible order effects. Depending on which target came ®rst, subjects may have `anchored' their scores at different points. Neither item sensitivity nor order effects, however, should have in¯uenced the correlations between target SKEP scores.

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