Factors mediating the effectiveness of TV advertisement (a conceptual and empirical study in the Gulf)

• Main Author: Al Mossawi, M.
• Published: University of Manchester 2009
• Subjects: 302.23
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.500649

According to the literature, there are four determinant forces in TV viewing: audience, message, media environment and viewing environment. For each of these forces, the factor most influential with Gulf audiences was selected by a pilot study for this thesis. These factors were found to be, respectively, religion, advertising contentiousness, clutter and number of viewers. This study proceeds to examine the role of these four factors in mediating audience response to TV commercials in the Gulf. While previous studies have mainly concentrated on a "single factor / single force" approach, this study has adopted a "multi-factor / multi forces" approach. Such approach was utilized to measure the individual and combined effects of mediating factors in advertising effectiveness and to examine the relative importance of broader (uncontrollable) versus narrower (controllable) factors. In this study, religion and the number of viewers (relating to audience characteristics and viewing environment respectively) are deemed broader factors and ad contentiousness and clutter (relating to message characteristics and media environment respectively) are narrower factors. All four mediating factors were statistically significant in ad effectiveness. Religion was the most influential , followed in descending order by advertising contentiousness (AC), number of viewers (NV) and clutter. For strict Muslims,, AC was the most important, followed by NV and then clutter. Conversely, for lenient Muslims, AC was the least significant, with NV most influential, followed by clutter. The study indicates that broader factors may also have a significant role in determining the response of the audience to TV commercials. The broader factors were found in some cases to be stronger than the narrower ones and should henceforth be given a prominence in the literature which they have not so far received. Thus, through its model and procedure, this study suggests a new approach which enables researchers to measure the effectiveness of TV commercials through the combined mediating effects of broader and narrower factors Some of the broader factors may be globally used in market segmentation. As evidenced by supplementary research for this study, conducted in the UK, on Muslims and Christians, religion was also found to have a significant role in determining how audiences respond to TV commercials. Finally, recommendations are made on how advertising effectiveness can be improved in the Gulf.