Advertising Exposure, Financial Anxiety and the Self-Stigma of Money Problems among Young Indian Consumers: Survey Evidence

This study examines how exposure to advertising relates to financial anxiety, and how both connect to the self-stigma that young consumers attach to their own money problems. The work is motivated by a specific tension in the lives of young, income-earning Indians. They are the most heavily advertised-to group in the country, they have easy access to short-term credit through Buy Now Pay Later and equated monthly instalment facilities, and they operate in a culture where admitting to money trouble carries social embarrassment. A structured questionnaire was administered to fifty respondents aged eighteen and above, and four composite constructs were built from Likert-scale items: advertising influence, financial anxiety, self-stigma expressed through the concealment of money problems, and self-esteem. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, independent samples t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, and two multiple regression models were used to test the relationships. Advertising influence emerged as a moderate and highly significant correlate of financial anxiety (r = 0.48, p