Website Interactivity and Promotional Framing on Consumer Attitudes Toward Online Advertising: Functional versus Symbolic Brands

In light of the rapid increase in the number of online consumers, advertising on websites is increasingly popular. However, previous research has indicated that consumers have negative attitude toward online advertisements. Hence, how to increase the effectiveness of online ads and understanding what factors affecting consumer attitudes toward website ads are important. This paper reports findings from an experiment that examined the effect of website interactivity, promotional framing (price discounts versus premiums), and different brand images (functional versus symbolic) on consumer attitudes toward the ads and toward the product in the advertisement. The results indicate that both website interactivity and promotional methods can enhance consumer attitudes, but price discount is effective only when the brand perception is functional but not effective when the brand image is symbolic.. The findings are valuable to advertisers and researchers in understanding factors that affect the effectiveness of website advertisements.

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