apmmc 2013 paper presentation

ATTITUDE TOWARDS ADVERTISING: A COMPARISON BETWEEN MARKETING AND

NON-MARKETING STUDENTS AT A PRIVATE UNIVERSITY

APMMC 2013

Ernest Cyril de RunHiram Ting

Jee Teck WengSally Lau Yii Choo

Introduction

Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS)

• As technology continues to grow rapidly, seen especially in the burgeoning use of internet, young consumers are becoming increasingly aware of various advertisements, thus making the whole matter more intricate than ever before (Purosothuman, 2008; Tai, 2007).

• While much research has been conducted to investigate public’s attitude towards advertising, studies that seek to understand students’ attitude towards advertising are also on the rise (Dubinsky & Hensel, 1984; Larkin, 1977; Munusamy & Wong, 2007).

• University students represent a meaningful and substantial segment of the general public, and hence it requires continual attention (Beard, 2003).

Introduction (cont.)


• This study aims to investigate the present view of university students towards advertising. In particular attitude of marketing and non-marketing students from a private university towards advertising is focused on.

Brief Review of Literature


Attitude towards Advertising• Interest in assessing attitude towards advertising is generated and perpetuated

by empirical results that underline its effect on advertising effectiveness (Greyser & Reece, 1971; Kotler, 1988; Mehta, 2000; Mehta & Purvis, 1995), attitude towards specific advertisement (Lutz, 1985), purchasing behavior (Bush, et al., 1999; Ha, et al., 2011), and social policies (Pollay & Mittal, 1993; Rotzoll, et al., 1986; Wills & Ryans, 1982) .

• Such attitude is predicted by beliefs about advertising, which is described as specific statements about the attributes of objects (Brackett & Carr, 2001; Ducoffe, 1996; Pollay & Mittal, 1993; Wang, et al., 2009).

• The seven-factor belief model by Pollay and Mittal (1993) is regarded as one of the most comprehensive works in explaining attitude towards advertising (Korgaonkar, et al., 2001; Munusamy & Wong, 2007; Ramaprasad & Thurwanger, 1998).

Brief Review of Literature (cont.)


• The model includes two dimensions, namely personal utility factors and socioeconomic factors, and these measures have been validated empirically (Korgaonkar, et al., 2000; Korgaonkar, et al., 2001). Personal utility factors are made up of product information, social image information and hedonic amusement whereas socioeconomic factors are composed of good for economy, materialism, falsity and value corruption.

Theoretical Consideration • Theory of Reasoned Action by Fishbein and Azjen (1980) is adopted as the

basis to investigate students’ beliefs and attitude towards advertising.

Research Framework


Product Information

Attitude towards Advertising

Intention towards Advertising

Social Image/Role

Pleasure/Hedonism

Good for Economy

Materialism

Falsity/No Sense

Corrupting Value

Research Problems


• It is evident that recent development in economic and technology has changed the landscape of academia and business to a large extent in a short period of time (Eze & Lee, 2012). University students can see and learn so much in front of their computers, smartphones and paid TV (Waller & Fam, 2000). There is still a huge gap in the knowledge of measurement of students’ beliefs and attitude towards advertising when compared to the West (Munusamy & Wong, 2007; Ramaprasad, 1994).

• Furthermore there is an extreme lack of literature on how marketing and non-marketing students perceive advertising. Despite being one of the major components in marketing, it remains unclear as to what differentiate marketing students’ belief and attitude towards advertising from others.

Hypotheses


H1: Beliefs about advertising (seven belief factors) between marketing and non-marketing students will be significantly different.

H2: Attitude towards advertising between marketing and non-marketing students will be significantly different.

H3: Intention towards advertising between marketing and non-marketing students will be significantly different.

Methodology


• Private university can be quite different from public university (Lee, 2004a, 2004b; Wan, 2007), and this is apparent in the university’s clientele (Ahmad & Noran, 1999; Altbach, 2002; Sato, 2007; Wan, 2007).

• Students studying at Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak (SUTS) in the year of 2013 constitute the population of the study. The reason for such selection is because SUTS is one of the two largest private universities with its own campus in Sarawak.

• Purposive sampling approach was used to ensure proportionate marketing and non-marketing students were sampled. A self-administered questionnaire based survey was used to collect data.

• 300 copies were distributed and 217 usable copies were later collected.

Findings


Respondents profile:Variable Frequency Percent

Gender Male 100 46.1Female 117 53.9

Race Malay 12 5.5ChineseIndianOthers

1483

54

68.21.4

24.8University Year First year

Second yearThird yearFourth yearPostgraduate level

68885371

31.340.624.43.20.5

Type of Student MarketingNon-marketing

101116

46.553.5

Findings (cont.)


Mean and T-test Values by Marketing and Non-marketing Students

Variable Item Overall Marketing Non-Marketing CronbachAlphaMean STD Mean STD Mean STD

Intention 3 4.40 1.11 4.43 1.03 4.37 1.18 0.88Attitude 2 4.96 0.93 5.01 0.91 4.92 0.94 0.64Information 3 5.42 0.98 5.39 1.03 5.45 0.92 0.77Image Role 3 4.35 1.11 4.36 1.00 4.35 1.20 0.74Hedonism* 3 4.75 1.06 4.62 1.12 4.87 0.99 0.70Economy 3 4.47 0.79 4.34 0.80 4.58 0.78 0.25MaterialismR 3 3.48 1.20 3.46 1.18 3.50 1.23 0.68FalsityR 2 3.75 1.06 3.75 1.09 3.75 1.04 0.49CorruptedValueR 2 3.85 1.01 3.86 0.98 3.85 1.03 0.69

* t-test significant at 0.05; R indicates reverse-coded

Discussion


• The findings show that product information, hedonic amusement and good for economy are three most dominant beliefs shared by both marketing and non-marketing students at the private university. This corresponds to the early study done on marketing and non-marketing students in the public university (de Run & Ting, 2013).

• Only hedonic amusement of advertising is significantly different between marketing and non-marketing students. as advertising is a social phenomenon which people see everywhere and every day, it also explains why both groups of students share the same beliefs about advertising. Given such conclusion, it is clear that the first hypothesis is not supported.

Discussion (cont.)


• The findings also show that attitudes and intentions towards advertising between marketing and non-marketing students are not significantly different. This contradicts the findings of de Run & Ting (2013) at a public university in Sarawak. As such the second and third hypotheses are also not supported.

• It suggests that there is no distinctive characteristic about marketing and non-marketing students in terms of their view about advertising.

• It may due to the fact that private universities usually provide more lenient pathway to entry, and more flexible selection of courses. As a result, marketing students may end up graduating as management students because they can take management as major subject and marketing as minor subject. Moreover non-marketing students can also take marketing as their elective course.

Conclusion


• Despite receiving different types of education, marketing students seem to share similar beliefs, attitude and intention towards advertising with non-marketing students.

• From the academic point of view, this may be something to look into so as to redefine the value of marketing studies. Otherwise, marketing would simply become an optional subject for students to complete the required unit of studies.

• From the business perspective, it may well insinuate the reasons why marketing is being commonized in many organizations in Sarawak. Many are still treating marketing as almost a synonym to sales or a mere subset to business in general, thus deprecating it as a discipline and profession in its own right. Such mentality and condition may have prevented organizations in the state to grow and develop further.

THANK YOU

Ernest Cyril de Run

Faculty of Economics and BusinessUniversiti Malaysia Sarawak

94300 Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, Malaysia E-mail: [email protected]

apmmc 2013 paper presentation

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