Targeted Advertising Unintended Effects

Although advertising has been a major area of study in marketing, limited research investigating the unintended effects of targeted advertising beyond social and moral issues has been conducted. This research contributes to the current body of knowledge by examining the unintended effects of ethnically targeted advertising on ethnic groups that are not targeted, but who are still likely to see the advertising. The research also develops a holistic model for measuring the effects of targeted advertising using four variables; emotions, attitude to the advertisement, attitude to the company and behavioral intentions. The conceptual basis of the model is accommodation theory, which allows for different levels of targeting based on the language mix used in advertisements. The model was tested on three different ethnic groups in Malaysia, namely the Malays, Chinese, and Iban.