Study to find the advertisement skepticism about MNOs and banks through

two main media of advertising.

Researchers:

M.Nadeem ndm.best@yahoo.com

Nasir Javed willer_ch777@yahoo.com

Saqib Ali Bajwa rainyroads97@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT

This Research has been conducted in order to find out the believability or trust that the people
have on the advertisements through different media. For this research the final analysis were
performed on the 118 correct responses and correlation analysis were performed to find the
relationship between variables and regression analysis were performed to check the validity for
the hypothesis. The analysis of the research revealed that there is a positive and significant
alliance of self esteem and social desirable responding towards advertising skepticism and also it
was found out that the social desirable responding has a greater influence over the advertising
skepticism. The results also depict that social desirable responding should be focused for making
any advertisement for increasing its credibility. For the best knowledge of researchers this is the
first research in which the skepticism towards the advertisements is observed through the self
esteem and social desirable responding and its impact on the media used for advertisements was
checked out for its credibility which has not been focused before.

INTRODUCTION

Advertisement is something that comes directly with the contact of the customers, who judge
that weather the advertisement is probable or not on the basis of few reason which include the
personal behaviors of the consumers, the past experiences of the consumers, the culture and
environment of the consumers and the most importantly is the standing of the source or of the
intermediate through which the advertisement is being coming into the contact of the customers.
These all are the few main factors or causes which play a vital role and enable the customers of a
product to judge that weather an advertisement is believable or not.
The purpose of this research is to find out the advertising credibility of two different products
and service providers through the two main heads of media by considering skepticism towards
advertisements and finding this skepticism through self-esteem and social desirable responding.
The two main products and service providers were chosen on the basis of the consumers
preferably as the mobile network operators and the banks respectively. From the telecom sector
the mobile network operators have been choose on the basis of their large number of customers
and the banks have been choose on the basis of their relation basis services providing business.
Both of the businesses provide different sort of facilities to their customers and that is why the
two main sectors were chosen for the research as they also differ on the basis of their customers
targeting and their advertising campaigns.

The mediums for evaluating these two above mentioned competency providers were selected
with great care as they play a great role to assess the overall performance and the trustworthiness
of mobile network operators and the banks. The users for different products and services have
various uncertainties about the advertisings and the results of those products and services an in
those advertisements. It is also one of those realities that when an advertisement is shown to the
consumers then it is most often happens that the advertised products and services do have
different meanings in the minds of the customers to whom these products are being shown to,
and also there is most of the times in the minds of the consumers that the amount of information
provided in the advertisement is only up to the extent the business whose advertisement it is want
its consumers to know about it (Lamons, 2002). This is why the television and the newspapers
these two main medias have been select to find out the actual sincerity of the two businesses
which are mentioned earlier, and the reason for selecting the television is to know the responses
of the people who believe that television is the most credible source of advertisements and the
cause for selecting the newspapers is to analyze the customers perspective about the trust on the
advertisement through this channel, also in Pakistan the television and the newspapers are the
two main mediums on which all the advertising businesses mainly depend and focus because
near the people these medias are considered as most genuine. To understand the behavior and
conduct of the people in the society and with its help finding out the actual integrity of the
advertisements the skepticism and the self-worth of the people has been focused so that the true
picture of the integrity of the advertisement could be observe and for this purpose the societal
responding of the people has also been under the hub in order to get the clear study of the people
who were to selected in order to get their response for the advertising authority judgment.

In Pakistan there are so many medias are involved for the promotion and advertisements of
different products, and from these medias the two earliest medias in the history of Pakistan and
which have most influence on the consumers perception when it comes to advertisement are the
television and the newspapers, therefore in this specific study to find out the advertisement
credibility in Pakistan the television and on the other hand the newspapers were selected, also the
mobile network operators and the banks were taken as the two types of the products or service
providers to know the credibility of the medias and the reason for choosing them is that these
two are in the direct or indirect linkage with every person in Pakistan. Also in Pakistan the
people have different opinions about the different sort of advertisements, the reason for this
difference in the attitudes of people was necessary to be observed in order to get the true and
actual results of the research that’s why for the first time in Pakistan the dissimilar behaviors of
the people are judged through social desirable responding and its impact on the skepticism
towards advertisements and this way the actual representation of the consumers behavior towards
the credibility of the advertisements and their mediums has been originated.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Advertising Credibility and Product Type:

Credibility is the amount of judgment of the receivers upon the source who is providing some
information to them which actually base on the different observations of the person receiving
that information (Adler and Rodman, 2000, p. 421). It is a common assumption that when the
people come to know that a person is trying to make them convince for something then most
often they make up their minds to not believe that person as he is going to take something from
them (Hovland et al., 1982, p. 23). Advertising is based on arguing techniques with the purpose
of convincing the customers and making them believe the information in it (Cameron, Hallahan
(1999b). Some of the research’s have also shown that most of the consumers like the
advertisements containing puffery (Haan and Berkey, 2002).
Media Credibility:

The importance of credibility of the source has its roots in the history and therefore its
importance has been proved through history (Pendleton, 1999, p. 11). The believability of the
advertisements mediums is broadly based on the perception of the viewers and the viewers trust
depends on the total amount of ads being attached to that medium (Kiousis, 2001). Every
medium or source of advertisement is different from the other source or medium and that how
the mediums are indifferent from each other (Aaker and Brown (1972).

Advertising Skepticism:

Skepticism is mostly connected with the idea that it is the doubt in the minds of the consumers
about the argues presented in different ads and due to these doubts the consumers don’t believe
the product and even the source for that product (Obermiller and Spangenberg, 1998). The
skepticism is the idea in the consumers mind that if it is more in the consumers mind then he or
she will be more unclear and uncertain but if it is low then the amount of certainty of the
consumer increases about the produce as well as medium (Obermiller and Spangenberg, 1998;
Hardesty et al., 2002). The consumers are no believing about the advertisements and therefore
they believe those information which have some common points between each other (Harris,
1991).

Self Esteem:

The main objective of self esteem is to increase the self concept of an individual (Markus and
Nurius, 1986). Thinking of the customers is something which builds self esteem in them and this
leads to make them decide that which products they don’t like and creates distance between them
and the products are not important in their opinion (Shavitt, 1989; 1990). In the study (Sirgy,
1982, pp. 289-90) it was taken out that for the strong self esteem it is required that the person
possessing self esteem should take care of his own character, because it will then be easier for
him to reject all the products that are not suitable to his character.

Social Desirable Responding:

The social recognition of a person is that how he thinks that which societal group he belongs to
and what are the values of that society members and then adopts those special attributes and
work exactly according to the values which are offered by that social cultural group (Tajfel
,1982, p. 31). Specific rules in a culture are that which build the concept of self esteem in an
individual, therefore when a person acts more strongly to these rules and systems then the more
new sort of self concept behaviors comes to exist(Kelman, 1961; Verplanken and Holland,
2002). The effects of a region and country’s demographics effect on the customers choices about
the trustworthy of the commercials as in the research of (Pornpitakpan, 2004). Liu (2002, p. 123)
it was found out that customers with more education have more positive attitude towards ad
trustworthy whereas in another study ( Shavitt et al. 1998, p. 7) it was discovered that customers
with less learning and the buyers who are young are more likely to have a positive extinct for the
ads believability.

“On the basis of the literature review presented the following hypothesis
have been proposed”.

H1: There is a positive and significant relation between advertising skepticism and self esteem.

Table 4 indicates that there is a positive correlation (R: 0.184) between advertising skepticism
and self esteem which is also significant at 0.046 level, therefore H1 is accepted.

H2: There is a positive and significant relation between advertising skepticism and social
desirable responding.

Table 4 indicates that there is a positive correlation (R: 0.244) between advertising skepticism
and social desirable responding which is also significant at 0.008 level, therefore H2 is accepted.

H3: There is a positive and significant relation between self esteem and social desirable
responding.

Table 4 indicates that there is a positive correlation (R: 0.170) between self esteem and social
desirable responding but is not significant at 0.065 level by a very small margin, therefore H3 is
rejected.
 METHODOLOGY

The research has been conducted in order to find out that which type of products/services are mostly liked
by the customers and also that which are the media that make customers to think about the trustworthy of
that product or service being advertised through them. The consumer’s behavior towards advertisement in
relationship toward ambiguity and sense of worth has also been surveyed. In favor of this rationale a
sample of 120 questionnaires was filled from the University of Sargodha, Sargodha which is one of the
prominent universities of Pakistan. The questionnaire which is endorsed for this research was taken from
the studies of Prendergast et al.’s (2002b); Spangenberg’s (1998); and Boush et al. (1994). The
questionnaire for this particular research were filled from the students of different departments of the
university and also from the Central Library of the University and the time taken by the entire
questionnaire to be filled for this research took about four days. For this specific research two products
were selected such that banks and MNOs (Mobile Network Operators) which are mainly in Pakistan are
named as Mobilink, Telenor, UFone, ZONG and Warid on the basis of the customers high interest
towards them and two media were selected as print media (Newspaper) and electronic media (Television)
on the basis of their interaction with people and also because in Pakistan all the product and service
providers usually use these two medias to advertise their products through them. Out of the total 120
questionnaires, 119 questionnaires were returned, one of the questionnaires was lost during the process
and the remaining one of them was wrongly filled. In order to check the response of the respondents five
point Likert type scale was adopted representing 1= Strongly Disagree up to 5= Strongly Agree. The
questionnaire for the research consisted of a total 22 questions out of which one question was about the
age of respondents and one was about their age respectively, the additional 20 questions were related to
the variables of the research, the respondents of the research consisted of 68 male and 50 female
respondents. Descriptive statistics and the comparison of mean have been used to study the response of
the sample. The Cronbach's Alpha revealed the result for the overall items of scale used in this research to
measure the variables on the basis of the respondent’s response although the result of the combined
cronbach's alpha was not the highest one (0.653) but as this research has focused on the various
dimensions related to the advertising and its mediums and also observed the behaviors of the different
advertising audience that is the reason why this reliability is also an encouraging one, also as this is an
exploratory research therefore the alpha is acceptable (Hair et al., 1998). Correlation analysis was used
to study the relationship between the variables. Regression analysis was also applied in order to test the
hypothesis for this research.
 DATA ANALYSIS

Table 1 “Gender” Table 1.1 “Age”

Gender of respondents Frequency Age of respondents Frequency
17-19 Years 28
Male respondents 68
20-22 Years 82
Female respondents 50 23 Years and above 8
Total respondents 118 Total 118

Tables 1 and 1.1 show that that there are total “118” respondents in which “68” respondents are
male and “50” are females and 28 respondent’s age is between 17 to 19 years, 82 respondents are
between 20 to 22 and 8 respondents are of the age of 23 years and above respectively.

Table 2 Descriptive Statistics of means

N Mean Std. Deviation

Claims made in the advertisements of all Banks are true and can be 118 3.0763 1.00560
believed

Claims which are made in the advertisements of mobile network 118 3.0424 1.16497
operators

Advertisements by mobile network operators (Ufone, Mobilink etc) on 118 3.7119 0.98798
T.V are convincing

Advertisements by mobile network operators (Ufone, Mobilink etc) in 118 3.4322 0.91967
newspapers are convincing

Advertisements by banks on T.V are convincing for people 118 3.4576 1.03481

Advertisements by banks in Newspapers are convincing for people 118 3.5424 0.86374

Table 2 shows that advertisements on the television by the mobile network operators are very
much convincing because of the related item has a high mean value as compared to the item
related to the believability upon the claims made in those advertisements because it has low
mean, therefore the mobile network operators should focus on increasing the believability of the
customers related to their claims in their different advertisements.
 Table 3 Comparison of Means w.r.t “Gender”
Claims made in the Claims which are Advertisements by Advertisements by Advertisements by Advertisements by
Gender advertisements of made in the mobile network mobile network banks on T.V are banks in
all Banks are true advertisements of operators (Ufone, operators (Ufone, convincing for Newspapers are
and can be mobile network Mobilink etc) on Mobilink etc) in people convincing for
believed operators T.V are convincing newspapers are people
convincing

Male Mean 3.1029 2.8676 3.7059 3.4853 3.5588 3.5882

N 68 68 68 68 68 68

Std. Deviation 1.02418 1.20824 1.09352 .90591 1.09793 .90166

Female Mean 3.0400 3.2800 3.7200 3.3600 3.3200 3.4800

N 50 50 50 50 50 50

Std. Deviation .98892 1.06981 .83397 .94242 .93547 .81416

Total Mean 3.0763 3.0424 3.7119 3.4322 3.4576 3.5424

N 118 118 118 118 118 118

Std. Deviation 1.00560 1.16497 .98798 .91967 1.03481 .86374

In the table 3 the item with the maximum mean regarding male respondent is the one which
studies that the ads which the mobile network operators advertise through the television media
are very much effective as compared to the other media such as newspapers similarly the female
respondents have also grade the same medium as more credible for the mobile network operators
as compared to others media, the male have responded that the claims which are made in the
advertisements of the mobile network operators are not trustable regarding their deals in those
ads. On the other hand the female group has responded that the claims which are made in the ads
of the banks are not trustworthy as compared to mobile network operators. Now when the
combine mean is analyzed then it is found out that again the advertisement related to the mobile
network operators are very much induced as compared to the ads regarding banks on different
mediums where as the combined mean of both genders suggest that the claims in the mobile
network operators are not the one which can be believed and this is something which is
damaging the credibility of the mobile network ads.
Table 3.1 comparison of Means w.r.t. “Age”
Claims made Claims which Advertisements Advertisements Advertiseme Advertisement
Age in the are made in the by mobile by mobile nts by banks s by banks in
advertisemen advertisements network network on T.V are Newspapers
ts of all of mobile operators operators convincing are convincing
Banks are network (Ufone, Mobilink (Ufone, for people for people
true and can operators etc) on T.V are Mobilink etc) in
be believed convincing newspapers
are convincing

1 7 to 1 9 Mean 3.0357 2.8571 3.8214 3.6071 3.3929 3.5714

N 28 28 28 28 28 28

Std. Deviation .88117 1.23871 .86297 .99403 1.13331 .83571

2 0 to 2 2 Mean 3.0976 3.0854 3.6341 3.3293 3.5000 3.5000

N 82 82 82 82 82 82

Std. Deviation 1.06121 1.16747 1.02454 .88965 1.00922 .90608

23 years Mean 3.0000 3.2500 4.1250 3.8750 3.2500 3.8750

and above
N 8 8 8 8 8 8

Std. Deviation .92582 .88641 .99103 .83452 1.03510 .35355

Total Mean 3.0763 3.0424 3.7119 3.4322 3.4576 3.5424

N 118 118 118 118 118 118

Std. Deviation 1.00560 1.16497 .98798 .91967 1.03481 .86374

The table shows that the respondents aged between 17-19 years have a greater believe on the ads
of the mobile network operators ads through the television and the same sort of response was
obtained through the other respondents age ranging from 20 years and above it which shows that
the advertisements by MNOs on the television are very much convincing for the customers of
those networks. On the other hand the respondents age between 17 to 22 years rated that those
claims which are made in the advertisements of the mobile network operators are not true and
cannot be trusted while the age group respondents belonging to 23 years and above responded
against the claims which are made in the ads of the different banks in newspapers, therefore the
banks should focus on other media rather than newspapers.
 Table 4 “Correlation”

Advertising Self Esteem Social Desirable

Skepticism Responding

* **
Advertising Pearson Correlation 1 0 .1 8 4 0 .2 4 4
Skepticism
Sig. (2-tailed) 0 .0 4 6 0 .0 0 8

*
Self Esteem Pearson Correlation 0 .1 8 4 1 0 .1 7 0

Sig. (2-tailed) 0 .0 4 6 0 .0 6 5

**
Social Desirable Pearson Correlation 0 .2 4 4 0 .1 7 0 1
Responding
Sig. (2-tailed) 0 .0 0 8 0 .0 6 5

N 118 118 118

*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

There is a positive and highly significant relationship between advertising skepticism and social
desirable responding (r =0.244*, Sig: 0.008).
There is positive and significant relationship between advertising skepticism and the self esteem
(r = 0.184*, Sig: 0.460).
There is positive but no significant relationship between social desirable responding and self
esteem (r =0.170, Sig: .065).

Table 5 “Regression”

R Std. Error of the Estimate Durbin-Watson F Sig.

a a
0 .2 8 4 0.54733 1 .7 1 1 5 .0 3 7 0 .0 0 8

a. Predictors: (Constant), Social Desirable Responding, Self Esteem

b. Dependent Variable: Advertising Skepticism

Regression analysis have been performed to check out that whether the hypothesis are suitable or
not. Through regression analysis it was discovered that the R value (correlation) is 0.284 which
shows a strong association between dependent and independent variables. The F value (5.037) is
significant at 0.008 levels. The Durbin-Watson is also within the standard ranges which explain
that there is no autocorrelation. On the basis of regression analysis conducted to test our
hypothesis we accept our hypothesis i.e. there is a significant positive relationship of advertising
skepticism towards self esteem and social desirable responding.

Table 5.1 “Coefficients”

Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized

Coefficients

B Std. Error Beta Sig.

(Constant) 2 .3 2 0 0 .3 9 7 0 .0 0 0

Self Esteem 0 .1 2 9 0 .0 8 0 0 .1 4 7 0 .1 0 9

Social Desirable Responding 0 .1 9 4 0 .0 8 0 0 .2 1 9 0 .0 1 7

a. Dependent Variable: Advertising Skepticism

In this coefficients table the beta value of self esteem is lower as compared to the beta value of
social desirable responding, therefore the social desirable responding with the beta value (0.219)
has a greater impact on the advertising skepticism and is also significant at the level of (0.017).

FINDINGS AND MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS

On the basis of the results of the data analysis through various different responses, it was
observed that the when it came to select the media for the two product types such as mobile
network operators and banks in order to find out their advertising credibility then it was observed
that the respondent have chosen the television as the best sort of media for the advertisements of
the mobile network operators as compared to their advertisements through newspapers, also the
respondents suggest that newspapers are the credible source of advertisements for the banks as
compared through television media therefore on the basis of these results the mobile network
operators should focus on the ads through television but they should also focus that the claims in
those ads are as such which are fulfilled and the people can trust on them while the banks should
focus on the newspapers because their claims in those ads have been rated as more true as
compared to the claims of the mobile network operators in their television ads. In this research it
has been found out that the respondents belonging to all age groups and genders have highly
rated the television as a source of credible advertisements as compared to the newspapers for all
sort of products credibility. In the correlation analysis it was found out that there is a positive
relation between advertising skepticism, self esteem and social desirable responding but just the
relation between self esteem and social desirable responding is not significant thus the results
reveal that the skepticism towards the advertisements is positively tended by the social desire
response of the people or customers. The research also revealed that from the two independent
variables i.e. self esteem and social desirable responding the socio desirable responding has a
greater impact towards the dependent variable advertising skepticism. Therefore on the basis of
these pieces of information the credibility of the advertisements can be increased by focusing on
the social responses of the people as by understanding the people responses in a society the
believability of customers can be increased towards any product and service through different
mediums.

LIMITAITONS

The research which has been conducted has unlimited boundaries which should be addressed in
the future. The data for this research has been collected from the students of the University of
Sargodha, Sargodha as it should be conducted with the responses of the other people outside the
University as well. The banks and mobile network operators were selected only on the basis of
their high number of customers to check their credibility whereas the other product and service
providers were ignored which should be addressed as well. The two mediums selected for the
research were television and newspapers and the other important media were not used for
conducting this research such as internet, radio and cable network etc. The media credibility was
studied out with the help of skepticism towards the different advertisements through different
medias, as the media were limited therefore the skepticism of the customers towards the other
media is still to be addressed by other researches. As the research is limited to one city therefore
the different behaviors regarding other cities are still to be figured out with the increase in the
sample size of the research.
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