An Effects of the Quality of Argument and the Maker Credibility On Attitude

Lee, Sang Kyoung

Major in PR and Advertising, The Graduate School of Mass Communication, Chung-Ang University

The purposes of this study are to confirm the effect of variables that change the attitude of consumers by advertisement using Elaboration Likelihood Model(ELM) that has been studied by American psychologists -Petty and Cacioppo etc.- since 1981, and to test the effect of the variables by high or low involvement. This study looked into the effect of three independent variables -the quality of argument, maker credibility, involvement- on the evaluation of advertisement, product, and purchasing intention.

Cosmetics was used as the product and the data was obtained by the four kinds of advertisements(strong argument + high credibility maker, strong argument + low credibility maker, weak argument + high credibility maker, weak argument + low credibility maker) from 180 sophomore, junior and senior students of women's university in Seoul. The involvement was analyzed differently by measuring the enduring involvement into high involvement group and low involvement group. The involvement groups were divided into the high one for 1/3 of top and low one for 1/3 of bottom. The Taepyungyang Cosmetics was selected as the high credibility maker and Jin Yang Cosmetics as the low credibility maker by pre-investigation.

This study is designed to test the following three hypothesis.

Hypothesis 1: The attitude of consumer toward the product will be influenced by involvement, the quality of argument, and maker credibility.

Hypothesis 2: The effect of maker credibility and the quality of advertisement will be different depending on involvement group.

Hypothesis 3: The cognitive response(favourable/unfavourable) formed by advertisement will be influenced by maker credibility.

The test results of Hypothesis 1 showed that the quality of argument significantly had influence on evaluation of advertisement and product, purchasing intention. But the involvement and the maker credibility only showed interaction effects in the evaluation of the product.

According to the test results of Hypothesis 2, the effect of variables was not shown differently by the involvement group. In the high involvement group, none of the variables showed significant effects. But the low involvement group appeared to be influenced by the quality of argument. It suggests the possibility that the quality of argument operates as a peripheral cue. The test results of Hypothesis 3 showed that maker credibility significantly had influence on the form of favorable response.

The results can be summed up as follows:

1. The quality of argument have influence on consumer's attitude.

2. The low credibility maker appears to be more influenced than the high one by the quality of argument.

3. The maker's credibility have influence on not only the favorable responses but also customers' attitude.

There are so many peripheral cues beside them. Therefore, they will be also studied continuously.