Beliefs about the influence on attitudes of Turkish university students toward advertising through sport

Abstract

This research study had two main goals; the first was to compare consumers' attitudes towards advertising in general and attitudes towards advertising through sport, while the second was to verify the association of beliefs about and attitudes towards advertising through sport. The data was collected from 173 randomly selected students (male: 75; female: 98) who attended Middle East Technical University in Ankara. The questionnaire contained eight socio-demographic items and 39 items that were related to attitudes and beliefs about advertising through sport. A factor analysis was carried out to select the most influential item of each construct, and a Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test was used to compare attitudes toward advertising in general and advertising through sport, while the Optimal Scaling Method was used to discover whether beliefs about the influence of consumer's attitudes toward advertising through sport that have been more positive than their attitudes toward advertising in general. This analysis confirmed that consumers'attitudes towards advertising through sport were significantly more positive than advertising in general, while some beliefs (social role and image, hedonism/pleasure and annoyance/irritation) significantly influenced Turkish consumers' attitudes towards advertising through sport.