PREDICTORS AND OUTCOME OF ATTITUDES TOWARDS ADVERTISING: DEMOGRAPHICS, PERSONAL FACTORS AND WOM

Attitudes towards advertising represent an important research concept of consumer behaviour and marketing communication. The main purpose of this research is to explore the importance of demographics (age, gender, education) and personal factors (shopping enjoyment, price sensitivity, intellect) for attitudes towards advertising formation, as well as the influence of such attitudes on word-of-mouth communication (WOM). The research included representative sample of thousand Croatian respondents. Data were analysed with a variety of statistical techniques including the structural equation modeling method. The results indicate that all researched factors represent the significant predictors of attitudes towards advertising, which additionally impact WOM dissemination. Besides the novel scientific insights these results provide some practical marketing implications. Namely, marketing experts can better understand the factors that predict consumer's favourable attitudes towards advertising, which impact WOM information sending, and thus create adequate appeals and persuasive marketing communication. Research limitations and further research directions are presented at the end of the paper.