The effect of advertising relevance on avoidance with advertising engagement

Abstract

Despite many studies on online advertising and its effects, there are still few studies that try to examine the avoidance of advertising by a person. However, the number of advertisements that appears will make someone feel annoyed and trigger avoidance behavior towards the advertisement they see. Referring to psychological reactance theory, advertising can become a nuisance when it is considered unrelated and interferes with a person's freedom to access media which in turn can trigger avoidance behavior in an effort to regain his freedom. Using psychological reactance theory, the aim of this research was to further investigate the relationship between advertising linkage and advertising avoidance behavior mediated by advertising distraction and advertising engagement variables. This research uses Instagram as the object of research. Instagram was chosen because it is a social media whose number of users is growing every year and this is what triggers many marketers to place ads on Instagram. Respondents in this research were Instagram users who had avoided advertisements that appeared on their accounts, determining the number of samples in this research using a purposive sampling technique with a sample of 160 respondents. The method of collecting data is using a questionnaire, the data is analyzed using PLS-SEM.