Business Role Schema Effects: Exploration of Information Processing in the Perception of Values Advocacy Advertising

The study found consumers hold different types of business role schema. When participants viewed values advocacy advertisements, those who held socially oriented schema were more sensitive to the company’s prior perception (called individual company schema in this paper) on evaluating the sponsor’s motives than those who held business oriented schema. Sponsors’ perceived motives had influence on evaluating attitude toward and trustworthiness of the sponsor. Issue involvement significantly interacted with perceived motives. High-issue involvement subjects were more sensitive to perceived motives on the perceptions of the sponsor (trustworthiness and attitude) than low-issue involvement subjects. Issue involvement was also significantly interacted with the attitude toward the sponsor on purchase intention; when subjects had a high level of issue involvement, they became sensitive to the perception of attitude toward a sponsor when evaluating their purchase intentions. However, low-issue involvement consumers were less sensitive to the perception of attitude toward a sponsor when evaluating their purchase intention. Interestingly, the study showed the different results between the two designs, McDonald’s ad and Miller’s ad, which were discussed in this paper. Finally, the current study demonstrated that values advocacy advertising can achieve both goals from social perspective (enhancing socially conscious behavior) and from business perspective (purchase intention). Further, interestingly, self-efficacy toward the advocated actions was found to be an important factor influencing consumers’ purchase intention. The results suggest that consumers’ perceptions toward advocated action by a sponsor and evaluation of their purchase intention for products produced by a sponsor are likely to interact together rather than consumers process those two different goals separately.