Ad skepticism: the consequences of disbelief.

Advertising is an industry that involves billions of dollars per year (nearly $250 billion for 2003 [McCann-Erickson 2003]), employing bright minds with access to state-of-the-art theory in human behavior. Despite its sophistication, subtlety, vast resources, and ubiquity, advertising faces

Sorting through ad claims, many of which are difficult to substantiate, requires effort, and consumers are generally not highly motivated to process advertising information (MacInnis, Moorman, and Jaworski 1991). It is, therefore, reasonable that simple disbelief may be one way that consumers cope with the persuasive attempts of advertising. Friestad and Wright (1994) describe how a person's knowledge of persuasion strategies influences his or her responses to persuasion attempts. Both consumers and marketing agents have access to three categories of knowledge: The consumer has knowledge of the topic (or product), knowledge of persuasion (beliefs about how persuasion occurs and what tactics are used or are effective), and knowledge of the agent (advertiser or manufacturer). The marketing agent, in turn, has knowledge of the topic, knowledge of persuasion, and knowledge of the target (the consumer segment). The marketing agent relies on knowledge bases to develop a persuasion attempt. The consumer, relying on a set of knowledge, counters with a persuasion-coping response. Although the relationship between marketer and consumer is not always adversarial, we suspect that the most frequent coping response may be to discount messages recognized as ads.

Empirical evidence suggests that advertising claims (in ads that are processed) are frequently not accepted. Calfee and Ringold (1994) reported the consistent observation in public opinion polls that roughly two-thirds of consumers claim they doubt the truthfulness of ads. Previous research (Obermiller and Spangenberg 1998, 2000) supports the proposition that consumers are socialized to be skeptical toward advertising, and the extent of their skepticism is a determinant of their responses to advertising.