Consumers Attitude Towards Controversial Television Commercials and Its Impact on Purchase Intentions

Television commercials have been the main medium for advertising products/services/ideas to the masses. However, the use of controversial advertisements has shown a manyfold increase in the recent past. Controversial advertisements can be beneficial or harmful for the product; depending on how the target audience perceives them. Even though such advertisements may cause offense to a certain consumer group(s), but advertisers still don’t refrain from using such advertisements to market their or their clients’ product offerings in different segments namely products/services/ideas. Although the majority of research on consumer’s behaviour towards controversial advertisements has been reported from Western countries, very little is known in Asian perspective. In the present study, we attempted to analyze the Indian perspective of consumer’s attitude towards controversial television advertisements based on a survey of 609 respondents (312 males and 297 females). The results obtained indicated ‘political advertisements’ as the most controversial offering to be advertised on television. Consumers were found to be more offended with advertisements where ‘nudity’ was used as the main execution technique. Attitude of consumers towards controversial advertisements and their effect on purchasing behaviour were found clearly correlated to demographic variables including age, education and gender.