Internet advertising of offensive products: The effects of cartoons on adult consumer attitudes

Abstract

Copyright © 2020 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. During recent decades, internet advertising has been increasingly used for promoting various types of products. As offensive products generally yield more negative responses to the audience, this study was conducted to identify the effects of different advertising designs on adult consumer responses to offensive product advertisements on the internet. A 4 × 4 factorial design was used in the experiment where internet users reported their responses to different banner advertising designs (with and without cartoons) of offensive and non-offensive products. The findings indicate that for the main effects of online banner advertising designs, cartoon ads (ad with drawing) have a less favourable effect on attitude toward the brand when it is non-cartoon (real images), regardless of product type (offensive or non-offensive). Moreover, there is a no interaction effect between ad design and product types on consumer response, even though cartoon ads used in offensive product advertising yield less favourable attitude toward the product than non-cartoon ads.