Do we look 'good?' Characterizing the influence of brand ethical value on consumer ad avoidance behaviour

Background & Aims: How we arrive at an ethical notion of good versus bad, right over wrong, beneficial or harmful, is complex. When consumers decide on the perceived ethical value of brand advertisements (e.g., on social media), a consequentialist approach is a standard evaluation method used for ethical assessments and eventual decision-making. Consequentialism considers the outcome as the basis of arriving at a notion of what is good, right, or beneficial. For individuals, this ethical theory suggests that one evaluates beneficial over harmful alternatives and that the most favourable outcome (i.e., generates the most benefits with the least harm) would constitute the ‘right’ choice. Companies invest in strategies to develop and leverage their brand ethical value (BEV) to consumers, and marketing communicates this across channels like social media advertisements. However, BEV may potentially influence consumer avoidance behaviour towards these advertisements. Based on this, the main research objective is to examine the influence of BEV on ad avoidance behaviour (AAB) for consumers in the context of unsolicited social media advertisements. Building on previous studies, we developed our conceptual framework to show how BEV can influence a consumer’s AAB to achieve the research objective. We first expect that BEV has a direct negative influence on AAB. Moreover, we also expect that the negative relationship between BEV and AAB is mediated by perceived ad benefits (PAB) and a feeling of intrusiveness (I) from unsolicited social media advertisements. Based on the expectations, we develop the proposed hypothesis model

Design/methodology/approach: We collected a total of 837 samples from users of social media. The participants were shown a social media advertisement from a company with high brand ethical value. They then were asked about their perceived ethical value, perceived ad benefits, a feeling of intrusiveness, and intentions to avoid the social media ad. Data analysis was done with structural equation modelling (SEM) to test the proposed hypothesis model after confirming the reliability and validity of the data.

Findings: It was found that BEV has a direct negative impact on AAB (p < .05) which supports H1. It was also found that BEV positively influences perceived brand benefits (p < .01) which in turn negatively influences a feeling of intrusiveness from social media ads (p < .05). These results support H2 and H3, respectively. In addition, it was found that a feeling of intrusiveness positively influences AAB (p < .01). Based on the SEM analysis, we could conclude that BEV reduces a consumer’s intention to avoid a social media ad from the company, and the relationship is mediated by perceived ad benefit and a feeling of intrusiveness.

Contributions/Implications: We believe that our research findings make significant contributions for both academics and industry practitioners of social media marketing. As the importance of attracting a consumer’s attention to social media advertisements is getting more recognized, previous studies have recently focused on understanding how consumers behave towards unsolicited advertisements on social media. However, this research area remains under-explored. In this sense, our research findings can provide a better understanding by revealing the underlying psychological mechanism of the relationship between brand ethical value and a consumer response towards social media ads.