international journal of consumer studies issn 1470-6423

Attitude towards fashion advertisements with politicalcontent: impacts of opinion leadership and perception ofadvertisement messageBeth Harben1 and Soyoung Kim2

1Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA2University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

Keywords

Fashion advertisements, opinion leadership,political message, advertisement attitude,product attitude.

Correspondence

Beth Harben, Auburn University, Auburn, AL334-844-1343, USA.E-mail: [email protected]

Soyoung Kim is an associate professor inMerchandising at the Department of Textiles,Merchandising and Interiors at the Universityof Georgia.

doi: 10.1111/j.1470-6431.2007.00648.x

AbstractFashion advertisements with political content are unique in that they go against theaccepted strategy of advertising. As fashion advertisements with political content becomemore prevalent, consumers’ reactions to them become an important subject of research.This study examines consumers’ attitudes towards fashion advertisements with politicalcontent with respect to fashion and political opinion leadership, political views, perceptionof advertisement message and product attitude. Results showed that attitude towardsadvertisements with political content was influenced significantly by the viewer’s politicalviews and agreement with the advertisement message, but not by political opinion lead-ership. Fashion opinion leadership influenced product attitude only for advertisementswithout political content. The viewers’ advertisement attitudes were carried over to productattitudes regardless of the presence of political message.

The focus in a growing number of fashion advertisements in thelast 10 years has been on a political or social theme rather than onthe product of the company that created the advertisement. Advo-cacy advertising is a form of institutional advertising throughwhich a variety of organizations express their views on social,economic and political issues, and also hope to influence publicopinion and behaviour (Salmon et al., 1985; Haley, 2001). Anexample is the extensive campaign launched by Philip Morris in1996 that emphasized the dangers of youth smoking and promotesthe company’s youth access prevention programme. This cam-paign was part of the tobacco company’s efforts to repair itsdamaged public image and credibility by widely publicizing thecompany’s position opposing youth smoking. While advocacyadvertising is typically used to favourably position the companyon key issues and to ultimately create a favourable public image,fashion advertisements incorporating political issues have differedfrom the mainstream advocacy advertising in that they are aimedat sparking great controversy.

The Italian apparel company Benetton brought advocacy adver-tising to fashion in 1984 with its campaign, ‘All the Colors of theWorld’ (Tinic, 1997). The purpose of the campaign was to promoteracial unity, and its advertisements featured young adults fromdifferent racial groups wearing brightly coloured clothing while

smiling and embracing. Since then, the company’s advertisementshave become more controversial by removing merchandise fromthe advertisements and covering topics such as capital punish-ment, AIDS, world hunger, war and abortion. The advertisementshave featured shocking images, such as a nun and a priest kissing,a man assassinated by the Mafia and a car engulfed in flames.Similarly, Kenneth Cole featured in its advertising various politi-cal messages taking a stance on issues such as gun control, abor-tion rights and domestic violence. In 1985, Kenneth Cole was oneof the first apparel marketers to address AIDS awareness inits advertisements. The advertisements displayed eye-catchingphrases such as ‘AIDS can’t be fought on a shoe string budget,’and ‘What we stand for is more important than what we stand in’(Cardona, 2003). Since then, Members Only, Diesel, Sisley andExpress have also issued advertisements with controversial politi-cal messages (Kim et al., 2001). Diesel’s campaign in 1997included violent pictures of mutilated body parts under the themecalled ‘Diplomacy is a kick in the face’ (Andersson et al., 2004).

The political content of fashion advertisements was quicklynoticed and widely discussed by the public. For example, thecampaign entitled ‘We, on Death Row’, which featured picturesand interviews with death row inmates, caused Sears, Roebuck andCompany to pull Benetton US products from store shelves(Reuters, 2000; Taylor, 2000). The campaign was condemned forhumanizing the inmates, and the manner in which Benetton gainedaccess to the inmates was investigated (Davis, 2001). Morerecently, Kenneth Cole launched an advertisement that negatively

Beth Harben completed her Masters degree in Textiles, Merchandising,and Interiors at the University of Georgia in 2004, and is currently a PhDstudent in the Department of Consumer Affairs at Auburn University.

International Journal of Consumer Studies ISSN 1470-6423

88 International Journal of Consumer Studies 32 (2008) 88–98 © The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

mailto:[email protected]

portrayed the Bush–Cheney administration. However, after theterrorism of September 11, the designer ended the campaign due tocomplaints that the advertisements were anti-patriotic.

The complaints against these advertisements are not geographi-cally restrained. During the Gulf War in 1991, Benetton created anadvertisement that contained a picture of a war cemetery. With theexception of one Italian newspaper, mass media around the worldrefused to print the advertisement. Hundreds of journalists criti-cized the company for attempting to profit off an image of death.In response to the criticism, Benetton created an advertisementwith an image of birth. The image of a newborn baby still attachedto the umbilical cord was highly condemned in Italy, France, GreatBritain and Ireland. However, the advertisement eventually wonawards in Sweden and the Netherlands (Benetton, n.d.). InGermany, Benetton licensees sued the company, claiming that thecontroversial advertisements prevented customers from wanting toenter their stores (Nash, 1995). Although the Benetton advertise-ment which featured a man dying from AIDS was praised by aGerman AIDS group, both Germany and France prohibited theadvertisement from being publicly displayed (Tinic, 1997).In Sweden, some of the advertisements by Diesel and Sisleyhave been reported to The Market Ethical Board, and Benetton’scampaigns have been reported to the Department of Justice(Andersson et al., 2004).

Institutional advertising with weak persuasiveness and incon-sistency with the corporation’s actual practices can also presentthe danger of backfiring. For example, Shell Oil has waged a greenmarketing campaign proclaiming its commitment to environmen-tal issues, even while it is widely known that it is fighting lawsuitsand criticisms on a large number of fronts throughout the world forits purportedly environmentally and socially irresponsible actions.This green marketing campaign triggered environmentalistsand human rights supporters, including Greenpeace, to launch amassive counter-campaign in the media, slashing sales and result-ing in considerable damage to the corporate public image (Doyle,2004).

Therefore, while fashion advertisements with political contentare unique, going against the accepted strategy of advertising, itremains to be seen whether they will prove to be effective in thelong run. Conventional advertising shows the positive character-istics of a product or the company itself, with the intent of sellingthe product to the viewer. Many advertisements even go a stepfurther and try to sell not only the product but also a pleasantsituation or a desirable quality that could result from the product’spurchase. In contrast, fashion advertisements with politicalcontent differ, because they do not mention the product’s qualities.Often the product is not even pictured in the advertisements. Theseadvertisements may show or describe the harsh reality of the worldinstead of the pleasantries of a fantasy land. Benetton claims thatthese advertisements are innovative and thus spark interest, as theyare different from what society is accustomed to experiencing. AsHuang (1997) argues, even advertisements that elicit negativefeeling can still be favoured by consumers, thereby increasingadvertising effectiveness.

As fashion advertisements with political content become moreprevalent, their effects on consumers become an increasinglyimportant subject of research. Marketers know that these adver-tisements will attract consumers’ attention, but they also need toknow how the consumers’ attitudes towards these advertisements

(hereafter ‘advertisement attitude’) will affect their attitudestowards the products. Often practitioners of advocacy advertisingbelieve that their campaigns enhance their credibility and influ-ence public opinion, but little research has been conducted toprove the effectiveness of their campaigns (Burgoon et al.,1995). The current study examines consumers’ attitudes towardsa fashion advertisement with political content in terms of whatfactors influence them and how advertisement attitude affectsattitude towards the product featured in the advertisement. Thisstudy has chosen to take the positivistic-empirical approach tounderstanding these relationships, and designed a case studywhere two fictitious advertisements were tested using collegestudents as a research group. This study also includes a deter-mination of whether opinion leadership is related to advertise-ment attitude and product attitude. Opinion leaders are thepeople in society most affected by formal media and theycommunicate their views most frequently and more influentiallythan others. Therefore, their attitudes towards advertisementswith a political message bear potential significance formarketers.

It should be noted that this study examined advertisement atti-tude from an American perspective, inasmuch as the politicalmessage chosen referred to the US government’s decision to go towar with Iraq. In the late spring of 2004, the war in Iraq was ahighly controversial topic for the presidential campaign. The issuesparked debate around the country; it revived an interest in politicsfor a historically apathetic demographic group in America, thecollege student. In 1972, immediately after the governmentchanged the voting age from 21 to 18, the percentage of peopleaged 18–24 who voted was 49.6% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000).From 1972 to 2000, the percentage of voters in this age group hasranged around 20–30%, with a low of 16.6% in 1998 and a peakof 42.8% in 1992 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000, 2002). Studentshave cited apathy by way of explanation pointing out that thepoliticians were not addressing issues that were important to them(Speckman, 2004). However, students believed that the war was animportant issue, as many had friends who were going over to Iraqto fight, and that the war was having a negative effect on jobs andthe economy (Ebenkamp, 2004). As the war in Iraq inspired debateand protests around many of the nation’s campuses, college stu-dents were as divided as the rest of the nation. Speakers werejeered off the stage for condemning the Bush administration’spolicies on one campus and asked to leave the stage for praisingthe administrations’ policies on another campus (Marcus, 2003).Therefore, this particular political issue makes it an appropriatechoice for the study, as it may be less likely to be subject to collegestudents’ political apathy.

Literature review

Fashion and political opinion leadership

Opinion leaders are those who exert ‘influence on the opinions ofothers within a specific field through personal communication’(Hellevik and Bjorklund, 1991), and who are interested in thatfield (Weimann, 1994). Because opinion leaders in one fieldare not necessarily opinion leaders in another (Hellevik andBjorklund, 1991), we included in our study two types of opinionleadership: fashion and political opinion leadership.

B. Harben and S. Kim Fashion advertisements with political content

International Journal of Consumer Studies 32 (2008) 88–98 © The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 89

In his study of French female fashion opinion leaders, Vernette(2004) states that fashion media should target opinion leaders to besuccessful, because opinion leaders tend to be more positivetowards media advertising than non-leaders. Given that opinionleadership is linked to use of the media for information seekingand opinion leaders influence the attitudes of other individuals byproviding a primary word-of-mouth source of information (Herret al., 1991; Shah and Scheufele, 2006), his argument appears wellsubstantiated. Vernette further explains that because fashionopinion leaders have enduring involvement with fashion products,and also because advertising is their frequent topic for discussion,their views carry more weight in communication with others,thereby strengthening advertising persuasion. In his study,however, the respondents were asked about their attitudes towardsfashion advertising in general rather than about their attitudestowards any specific advertisement. Advertisement attitudewas measured by such questions as ‘Life would be dull withoutadvertising’ and ‘I find advertising entertaining’. An examinationof whether fashion opinion leaders will be in favour of fashionadvertisements despite controversial political messages containedtherein should provide interesting insights into the role of fashionopinion leadership in advertising effectiveness.

As our study involved advertisements with political content, itseemed appropriate to investigate the influence of political opinionleadership as another form of opinion leadership. Political opinionleaders are those who have a major influence on others’ opinionsabout various political issues. A few dominant characteristics ofpolitical opinion leaders identified in previous studies include ahigh level of media exposure, strong interest in political issues andactive involvement in political affairs and organizations. Hellevikand Bjorklund (1991) also discovered that political opinionleaders tended to hold more extreme views than non-leaders.Given that political opinion leaders are strongly interested inpolitical topics, use mass media frequently and tend to formextreme views, we hypothesized that political opinion leadershipmay have a measurable impact on attitude towards advertisementswith political content.

Hypothesis 1: Fashion opinion leadership will have a signifi-cant impact on attitude towards advertisements featuringfashion products.Hypothesis 2: Political opinion leadership will have a signifi-cant impact on attitude towards advertisements with a politi-cal message.

Perception of advertisement message

Advertisement attitude is ‘the predisposition to respond in afavourable or unfavourable manner to a particular advertisingstimulus during a particular exposure occasion’ (MacKenzie et al.,1986, p. 130). Advertisement attitude is based on one’s reactionsto various elements of the advertisement, such as model, celebrityendorser, colour, layout and text message (Kim et al., 2002). AsSchlossberg (1992) noted, advertisements with positive socialmessages bring about positive responses by shaping public atti-tudes in the intended manner; however, in the context of adver-tisements dealing with controversial political issues, the impact ofa message on consumer attitude is not clear. As illustrated bypublic reactions to campaigns by Benetton, Kenneth Cole andothers, the impact may depend not only on the degree of contro-

versy of the issue, but also on personal characteristics such asagreement with the message or interest in the topic.

Lord et al. (1995) reported that message agreement stronglyinfluences advertisement attitude. This finding was corroboratedby Laczniak et al. (1999), who studied the influence advertisingmessage involvement, product involvement and product knowl-edge have on the way a consumer processes an advertisement. Ofthe three variables, advertising message involvement had thestrongest influence on advertisement processing. In fact, productinvolvement and product knowledge had little impact on a con-sumer’s response to the advertisement after controlling for theinfluence of advertising message involvement.

Additionally, recognition and understanding of an advertise-ment message may also be a factor in determining advertisementattitude. For example, one study examining the effectiveness ofMobil Oil’s advocacy campaign (Adkins, 1978) found that only9% of those polled understood what the advertisements weresaying. The fact that more than half of the sample indicated anegative attitude towards the campaign may be associated with thefact that the message was not understood by the majority. All thesestudies suggest that how one perceives the message in the adver-tisement may influence one’s advertisement attitude.

Hypothesis 3: Perception of advertisement message will havea significant impact on attitude towards advertisements with apolitical message.

Advertisement attitude and product attitude

Consumers’ advertisement attitudes ultimately lead to the forma-tion of attitudes towards the products featured in the advertise-ments, because consumers use advertisement claims to makeevaluations about product benefits (Burton and Lichtenstein, 1988;Kim et al., 2002; Mostafa, 2005). Although political messages infashion advertisements have little to do with endorsing products orpromoting product attributes, it would be of interest to see whethera close connection between advertisement attitude and productattitude could be established for this type of advertisements.

Hypothesis 4: Advertisement attitude will have a significantimpact on attitudes towards the products featured inadvertisements.

Method

Description of the survey

Four web pages were designed to collect data for the study. Eachweb page included one of four jean advertisements created by theresearchers, as well as a link to a five-part online survey. The fouradvertisements designed specifically for this study comprised: (1)a pair of female jeans and a political message (Fig. 1); (2) a pair offemale jeans and a non-political message (Fig. 2); (3) a pair ofmale jeans and a political message (Fig. 3); and (4) a pair of malejeans and a non-political message (Fig. 4). Jeans were chosen asthe fashion product in the advertisement, because they are com-monly worn by both male and female students and thus familiar toall students in the sample. A contemporary style of jeans waschosen, but the jeans did not have trendy features that mightdistract the respondents.

The topics that were used in the message for the advertisementswere also familiar to the sample. The political message was ‘While

Fashion advertisements with political content B. Harben and S. Kim


the President was busy creating a reason for war, we were busycreating the perfect pair of jeans’. The message was referring tothe controversy surrounding the President’s decision to go to warwith Iraq. This topic was chosen because it was widely beingdiscussed among college students at the time of this survey. Thenon-political message was ‘We have a fit for everybody inAmerica’. This message simply advertises the jeans. Aside fromthe differences in message, the advertisements were made to lookidentical. The same background was used for both advertisements,and the jeans and the message were placed in the exact sameposition in the advertisements.

Fashion opinion leadership

The first section of the survey included nine questions measuringfashion opinion leadership on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = stronglydisagree, 7 = strongly agree). The questions were adopted from ascale of product-specific opinion leadership developed by Flynnet al. (1996). Examples of the questions included ‘Other peoplecome to me for advice about choosing clothing’ and ‘I often

influence people’s opinions about fashion’. The reliability indexfor the nine-item scale was low at 0.60. Examination of item-total statistics indicated that the reliability would improve by thelargest amount upon removing two questions (‘I don’t needto talk to others before I buy clothing’ and ‘I like to getother’s opinions before I buy clothing’). The reliability of theremaining questions was acceptable with the Cronbach’s alphaof 0.78.

Political opinion leadership

Eleven questions measuring political opinion leadership wereeither adapted from Hellevik and Bjorklund (1991) or createdby the researchers. Hellevik and Bjorklund divided politicalopinion leadership into three parts based on different aspects ofpolitical discussion: (1) whether the respondent speaks his or herviews during political conversation or listens to others’ views(1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree); (2) whether therespondent engages in political discussion at all (1 = never,

Figure 1 Advertisement with female jeans and a political message. Figure 2 Advertisement with female jeans and a non-political message.



7 = daily); and (3) whether others are influenced by the respon-dent’s views (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). Theresearchers added five questions asking how frequently therespondent engaged in various political activities and how fre-quently he or she acquires political information from the media(1 = never, 7 = weekly or daily depending on question). The reli-ability for this scale was 0.81.

Perception of advertisement message and

advertisement attitude

The respondents were then asked to review the assigned adver-tisement and asked questions regarding their (1) recognition ofthe political message in the advertisement (‘I believe the adver-tisement is communicating a political message’); (2) understand-ing of the message (‘I understand what the political message inthe advertisement is trying to say’); (3) strength of agreementwith the message (‘I agree with the political message in theadvertisement’); and (4) strength of feelings about the message

(‘I have strong feelings about the political message in the adver-tisement’). The respondents then proceeded to answer four ques-tions regarding advertisement attitude (interesting, effective,good, likable). The reliability for the advertisement attitude scalewas 0.87.

Product attitude

Three questions adapted from studies by DeLong et al. (2002) andKim et al. (2002) were used to measure product attitude (‘Theproduct in this advertisement is stylish’, ‘The product in thisadvertisement is attractive’ and ‘Overall, I like the product in theadvertisement’) (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). Thereliability for this scale was 0.84.

Survey participants

In order to provide a broad sampling of college students, respon-dents were recruited from diverse fields of study (biology,

Figure 3 Advertisement with male jeans and a political message. Figure 4 Advertisement with male jeans and a non-political message.



advertising, political science, psychology, leisure studies,housing). The survey web site address was distributed to a total of1268 students, of whom 179 responded. One of the researchersvisited each of 12 selected classrooms, briefly explained thesurvey and handed out a small slip of paper with the followinginformation printed on it: (1) the title of the survey, ‘CollegeStudents’ Opinions of Fashion Advertisements’; (2) the webaddress for the survey; and (3) the phrase ‘Your opinion counts!’in order to better motivate the students to participate in the survey.An equal number of flyers were distributed for the advertisementcontaining a political message and for the advertisement with anon-political message. The web sites were available for 5 weeks.

The low response rate of 14% may be due to the particularmethod used to recruit participants. Each of the classes was visitedonly once; thus there was no repeat contact with any of the stu-dents. In addition, no incentive was offered for taking the survey.This method of recruitment, while promoting strictly voluntaryparticipation, raised a concern as to the representativeness of thefinal sample. The response rate might have been improved, if apersuasive cover letter had been given to the students when theywere initially contacted. A cover letter was made available onlywhen a student correctly accessed the web page. The weakresponse rate can be also attributed to the fact that male studentsmight not have found the subject of fashion advertisement impor-tant and intriguing enough to participate in the survey. As classeswith a balanced representation of both genders were deliberatelychosen, low participation by male students may be seen as a majorcause for the poor response rate.

After 5 weeks, a total of 177 usable data were generated. As thesurvey was completed in a volunteer manner, an even distributionof respondents for each advertisement could not be ensured. Evenso, our results yielded an almost even distribution between theadvertisements; 84 students (47%) viewed the advertisement withpolitical message (hereafter to be called the political messagegroup) and 93 students (53%) viewed the advertisement with nopolitical message (the non-political message group).

Results

Description of respondents

The ages of the respondents ranged from 18 to 27 years with anaverage of 21 years; the majority of the respondents were female

(n = 126, 70%). Participation by male students (n = 52, 29%) mayhave been low as fashion is still largely viewed as a feminine topicof interest. Almost all of the students were single (n = 171, 96%).When asked about their political views (1 = very conservative;4 = neutral; 7 = very liberal), the respondents tended to be neutralwith a mean of 4.32 (SD = 1.75).

The political message group strongly believed that the adver-tisement was communicating a political message (mean = 6.23,SD = 1.14), and strongly indicated that they understood themessage (mean = 6.28, SD = 1.05). However, their overall agree-ment with the message was relatively weak with a mean of 3.05(SD = 2.08). They had somewhat strong feelings about themessage (mean = 5.70, SD = 1.26), but they were not asked if theirfeelings were positive or negative.

Group comparisons

T-tests were conducted to compare the political message groupwith the non-political message group in terms of advertisementattitude and product attitude (see Table 1). When summated scalesfor both advertisement attitude and product attitude were used, thepolitical message group did not significantly differ from the othergroup in either variable. Additional t-tests were performed todetermine whether the two groups differed for each of theindividual items constituting advertisement attitude and productattitude. Significant differences were detected for two itemsmeasuring advertisement attitude; the political message groupbelieved more strongly that the advertisement they viewed wasinteresting (P < 0.001), and the non-political message groupbelieved more strongly that the advertisement they viewed wasgood (P < 0.05).

Multiple regression analyses

Ordinary least squares regression was used to examine howstrongly advertisement attitude and product attitude were pre-dicted by demographic characteristics and the selected perceptualvariables. Using the enter method of multiple regression, a set ofdemographic variables was first entered into the equation followedby fashion opinion leadership, political opinion leadership andpolitical views simultaneously, then by perceptions of advertise-ments, and finally by advertisement attitude. In order to compare

Table 1 Comparisons between politicalmessage group and non-political messagegroup

Political message(n = 84)

Non-political message(n = 93)

Mean SD Mean SD T-value

Ad attitude 3.42 1.67 3.51 1.42 -0.37The ad is interesting 4.62 1.93 3.49 1.59 4.21***The ad is effective 3.27 1.98 3.66 1.68 -1.39The ad is good 2.90 1.93 3.49 1.57 -2.24*I like this ad 2.89 1.99 3.39 1.61 -1.82

Product attitude 5.10 1.25 5.01 1.16 0.49The product is stylish 5.26 1.43 4.89 1.45 1.70The product is attractive 5.18 1.34 5.01 1.22 0.87Overall I like the product 4.87 1.66 5.14 1.14 -1.25

*P � 0.05, ***P � 0.001.



the political message group with the non-political message group,two separate sets of regression analyses were conducted.

Advertisement with political content

For the political message group, the following independent vari-ables were included in the regression model: demographic charac-teristics (age and gender), fashion opinion leadership, politicalopinion leadership, political views and four message-perceptionvariables (recognition of the message, understanding of themessage, agreement with the message and feelings about themessage) (see Table 2). The enter method was employed tocompare the influences of demographic characteristics and percep-tual variables.

The results showed that neither of the two demographic vari-ables significantly influenced advertisement attitude. The R2 coef-ficient was rather low (6%) with only two variables included in theequation. When two opinion leadership variables and politicalviews were added to the model, the R2 coefficient increased to0.22. Only one variable, political views, was significant (b = 0.43,P < 0.001) revealing that the more liberal the student is, the morepositive attitude he or she holds towards the advertisement.Neither fashion nor political opinion leadership was significantin predicting advertisement attitude. When the four message-perception variables were entered into the equation, the R2 coeffi-cient increased to 0.48. Of the four message-perception variables,only agreement with the message significantly influenced adver-tisement attitude. Respondents who more strongly agreed with themessage exhibited a more favourable advertisement attitude(b = 0.69, P < 0.001).

The second regression model tested the impacts of the samevariables and advertisement attitude on product attitude (seeTable 3). Age (b = 0.25, P < 0.05) and gender (b = 0.27; P < 0.05)were significant predictors of product attitude when only demo-graphic variables were included; older and female respondentsresponded more favourably towards the product featured in the

advertisement than younger and male respondents. The same twovariables, however, emerged as insignificant when other percep-tual variables were entered into the equation. Of the perceptualvariables, only advertisement attitude was significant (b = 0.51,P < 0.001). The final model explained 32% of the variation inproduct attitude.

Advertisement without political content

For the non-political message group, the two demographic vari-ables, two opinion leadership variables and political views wereexamined for their impacts on advertisement attitude (see Table 2).Age was the only significant predictor of advertisement attitude,with older students being more positive towards the advertisement(b = 0.39, P < 0.001). The R2 coefficient of the final model was0.20.

A separate regression model tested the impacts of the samevariables and advertisement attitude on product attitude (seeTable 3). Age and gender were both insignificant when enteredalone, but emerged as significant when three other variables(fashion opinion leadership, political opinion leadership, politicalviews) were added to the equation. Older (b = 0.24, P < 0.05) andfemale students (b = 0.32, P < 0.05) held a more positive attitudetowards the product in the advertisement. The respondent’spolitical view did not have a significant impact on product atti-tude. The R2 coefficient increased from 0.05 to 0.14 when thethree perceptual variables were added. When advertisement atti-tude was added to the equation, the R2 coefficient increased to0.20. Age became insignificant but gender remained significant(b = 0.32, P < 0.05). Interestingly, both fashion and politicalopinion leaderships emerged as significant predictors of productattitude; higher levels of fashion opinion leadership (b = -0.32,P < 0.05) and political opinion leadership (b = -0.25, P < 0.05)were associated with less favourable product attitudes. Asexpected, advertisement attitude was a significant predictor ofproduct attitude (b = 0.28, P < 0.05).

Table 2 Regression analysis results for adattitude

Ad attitude

Political message groupNon-politicalmessage group

Beta Beta Beta Beta Beta

Demographic characteristicsAge 0.16 0.09 -0.03 0.41*** 0.39***Gender (1 = female) 0.21 0.13 0.06 0.09 -0.03

Perceptual variablesFashion opinion leadership 0.02 0.02 0.24*Political opinion leadership 0.13 0.03 0.15***Political views 0.43*** -0.02 -0.07

Perception of ad messageRecognition -0.25Understanding 0.28Agreement 0.69***Feelings 0.05

R2 0.06 0.22 0.48 0.15 0.20

*P � 0.05, ***P � 0.001.



Discussion

Hypothesis testing

Fashion opinion leadership

Fashion opinion leadership did not have a significant impact oneither advertisement attitude or product attitude for the advertise-ment containing political content, but did significantly influenceproduct attitude for the advertisement without political content,offering partial support for Hypothesis 1. Interestingly, thoserespondents with a higher level of fashion opinion leadershipexhibited less favourable attitudes towards the product in theadvertisement without political content. This finding may be dueto the fact that the product chosen for the advertisement stimuliwas jeans, which, although contemporary in style, lacked trendyfeatures. As fashion opinion leaders tend to actively monitor thelatest fashion trends (Summers, 1970; Vernette, 2004), they mayhave found the ordinary jeans less than exciting. In order to gain afull understanding of the role of fashion opinion leadership in theformation of attitudes towards fashion advertisements, futurestudies need to include a variety of products with a varying degreeof fashionability.

Political opinion leadership

The results from multiple regression analyses also showed thatpolitical opinion leadership did not have a significant impact oneither advertisement attitude or product attitude for the advertise-ment with political content, contradicting our Hypothesis 2. Thesefindings, however, should not be generalized to the population atlarge without caution. Many of the questions measuring politicalopinion leadership required the respondents to indicate how oftenthey use the media to gain information on current political affairs.These questions may not have been as appropriate for collegestudents as they might be for others, as many college students may

not place as much importance on keeping up with current events inthe world as older adults do. A larger sample with a better repre-sentation of the general population might reveal different findings.

Interestingly, political opinion leadership negatively impactedon product attitude for the advertisement without political content.Although the relationship between the two variables was not pro-posed for the advertisement without political content, the findingwas not completely unexpected. The negative direction of therelationship may suggest a lack of interest in fashion productsamong political opinion leaders.

Political message vs. non-political message

The result of t-tests showed that the presence of a politicalmessage did not necessarily affect the respondent’s overall adver-tisement attitude. This finding, however, should not be consideredconclusive. When individual items measuring advertisement atti-tude were examined, those who viewed the advertisement withpolitical content agreed more strongly than those who viewed theadvertisement without political content that their advertisementwas interesting, but agreed less strongly that the advertisementwas good. When individual items measuring advertisement atti-tude were tested for their impacts on product attitude, ‘good adver-tisement’ exhibited a stronger positive relationship with productattitude (b = 0.50, P < 0.001) than ‘interesting advertisement’(b = 0.27, P < 0.05). These findings suggest that some advertise-ments with political content, even when perceived as interesting,can still be considered poor, resulting in less favourable productattitudes. These findings lend support for an early study byBerlyne (1960), who suggested that degree of interest should notbe combined into one global measure of overall advertisementattitude, as there exists a non-monotonic relationship betweendegree of interest and overall liking for an advertisement.

Factors that contribute to the perception of interesting but pooradvertisements with political content may include the viewer’spolitical view and his or her level of agreement with the political

Table 3 Regression analysis results for pro-duct attitude

Product attitude

Political message groupNon-politicalmessage group

Beta Beta Beta Beta Beta Beta Beta

Demographic characteristicsAge 0.27* 0.25* 0.19 0.21 0.19 0.24* 0.13Gender (1 = female) 0.24* 0.27* 0.23 0.20 0.18 0.32* 0.32*

Perceptual variablesFashion opinion leadership -0.10 -0.12 -0.13 -0.25* -0.32*Political opinion leadership 0.01 -0.12 -0.14 -0.21* -0.25*Political views 0.22 -0.09 -0.08 -0.13 -0.11

Perception of ad messageRecognition -0.20 -0.07Understanding 0.14 0.00Agreement 0.20 -0.16Feelings 0.20 0.17

Ad attitude 0.51*** 0.28*R2 0.11 0.12 0.18 0.32 0.05 0.14 0.20

*P � 0.05, ***P � 0.001.



message conveyed in the advertisement. As findings from multipleregression analyses revealed, attitudes towards the advertisementwith a political message were significantly influenced by therespondents’ political views, and also by their strength of agree-ment with the message in the advertisement. As the politicalmessage chosen for this study took a stance against the RepublicanPresident’s decision to go to war with Iraq, it was not surprisingthat the more politically conservative the viewer was, the lesspositive attitude he or she held towards the advertisement. Inaddition, the less strongly the viewer agreed with the message inthe advertisement, the less positive attitude he or she held towardsthe advertisement. The fact that a respondent’s political views andagreement with a message were significant predictors of adver-tisement attitude suggest that marketers should be aware of thenegative impact of their advocacy advertising for those who do notshare the same political views.

Agreement with advertisement message and overall

advertisement attitude

Hypothesis 3 was only partially supported, as just one of the fourvariables measuring perceptions of advertisement message (i.e.agreement with the message) appeared as a significant predictor ofadvertisement attitude. Neither recognition nor understanding ofthe message affected the respondents’ attitudes towards the adver-tisement. Further, emotional reactions to the message, measuredby feelings towards the message, did not influence advertisementattitude. This finding suggests the need for further investigationinto the roles of emotional vs. cognitive reactions to advertisementmessages. One possible explanation from a methodological pointof view is that the respondents might have found it easier toindicate their level of agreement with the message, but were notsure of how to respond in terms of the strength of their feelings.Additionally, it is possible that the relationship between emotionalreactions to the message and overall advertisement attitude may besignificant only for either positive or negative feelings; thus, futurestudies need to consider the nature of the viewer’s emotionalreactions with a question specifically asking whether their feelingsare positive or negative.

Advertisement attitude and product attitude

Consistent with Hypothesis 4, advertisement attitude significantlyinfluenced product attitude for both types of advertisements. Thisfinding suggests an important implication for fashion advertisers.The viewer’s positive or negative attitude towards the advertise-ment can be carried over to his or her attitude towards the product,even when the advertisement does not contain any message per-taining to the product. If the viewer does not agree with themessage in the advertisement, he or she will likely respondunfavourably towards the advertisement, which will, in turn, leadto an unfavourable attitude towards the product.

Demographic characteristics

Although age and gender effects were not a focus of this study,regression analyses demonstrated that product attitude for bothadvertisement stimuli were significantly influenced by age andgender. Specifically, older students and female students responded

more favourably towards the jeans featured in the advertisementsthan younger and male students. As with fashion opinion leaders,younger students might have found the basic-style jeans not trendyenough to consider interesting. The gender difference, on the otherhand, may reflect the fact that women are generally more inter-ested in fashion items and therefore more favourable towardsfashion advertisements than men.

ConclusionsThis study marks a unique effort to investigate attitude towardsfashion advertisements containing political content with respect tothe effects thereon of fashion and political opinion leadership,political views and perception of advertisement message. Politicalconsumerism, however, is a complex issue that warrants consid-erations of social, economic and political contexts, and therefore,a case study involving a small sample of college students shouldbe reviewed with caution. Stolle et al. (2005) defined politicalconsumerism as ‘consumer choice of producers and productsbased on political or ethical considerations’. Although politicalconsumerism is typically discussed in conjunction with consumerboycotts, this study of consumers’ attitudes towards fashion adver-tisements with political content can also be seen to be in the veinof political consumerism, given that advertisement attitude oftenleads to product choice. A subsequent question for discussion iswhether the degree of a consumer’s involvement in his or herdecision-making process is a prerequisite for political consump-tion. Will it still be considered political consumption even if theconsumer is not deliberately making the decision to express his orher political opinion? The issue becomes even more complicatedwhen an argument is made that some people may decide againstpurchasing a product, not because they do not agree with thepolitical views contained in the advertisement, but simply becausethe advertisement deals with a political issue. A myriad of envi-ronmental and individual factors affecting a consumer’s politicalconsumption presents significant challenges to understanding theissue of advertisement with political content.

This study took the positivistic-empirical approach and investi-gated relationships among a few selected variables in an artificialenvironment. As such, it will face the usual criticisms of thepositivistic philosophy, one of which is that this mode of inquirytries to explain the rich complexity of human interaction insimplistic patterns. Although this study suffered from over-simplification, it on the other hand attempted a systematic inves-tigation into the effects of individual characteristics, such asopinion leadership, political views, agreement with politicalmessage and demographics.

Although social context and group characteristics are not part ofthese analyses, some of the findings can be discussed taking thesefactors into consideration. During the time of the study, the nationwas divided over the president’s decision to go to war in Iraq. Thedebate spread onto college campuses across the country. Collegestudents, a group that had been apathetic towards politics in thepast, were now voicing their opinions. The degree of interest anddivision of opinions rendered the issue appropriate for this study.Leading up to the war in Iraq, the president gave a number ofreasons to go to war, including Saddam Hussein’s cruel and inhu-mane practices, his disregard for UN weapons inspections andhis stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction (Purdum, 2002;



Gordon, 2003). While the first two reasons gave cause for thepunishment of Hussein, many believed that this did not warrantgoing to war. When officials found no weapons of mass destruc-tion, people began criticizing the president and many believed thathe had fabricated the intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq(Dean, 2003). US citizens and people from all over the worldbegan to question the Bush administration’s prewar intelligence,resulting in widespread mistrust of the US and a rapid deteriora-tion of public opinion thereof. As this is a rather extreme circum-stance, it is possible that choice of a less divisive political issuefor inclusion in the study might well have resulted in differentoutcomes.

The findings of this study seem to reveal college students’former reputation for apathy towards politics, and simultaneously,their new political awareness. Students’ lack of enthusiasm forpolitical consumerism may partially explain why political opinionleadership had no significant impact on advertisement attitude andproduct attitude for the advertisement with political content. Otherresults, however, reveal some degree of concern among collegestudents for the particular political issue chosen for this particularstudy. Students who expressed that the advertisement with politi-cal content was interesting and those who had somewhat strongfeelings about the message were found less favourable towardsthe advertisement. In addition, the more politically conservativethe viewer, the less positive the attitude he or she had towards theadvertisement. As previously pointed out, the choice of this par-ticular issue may well have impacted on these results in atypicalmanner.

A major limitation of this study pertains to the chosen sample.It was limited to college students at a single university, and alsogender unbalanced with females representing the majority. Otherlimitations concern the advertisement stimuli used in the survey.Future research should include diverse advertisement stimuli withdifferent political messages (both liberal and conservative) inorder to more fully understand the effects of political messages onadvertisement and product attitude. Another limitation of thisstudy was the small sample size, which has reduced power todetect true relationships among variables. In particular, for a mul-tiple regression model with as many independent variables as areincorporated in this study, a larger sample size is required foradequate statistical power. It is also possible that the fact that theadvertisements were not created by a professional might haveaffected the results in some way. Finally, as mentioned earlier,using a diverse selection of fashion products in the advertisementshould provide better insight into the relationship between fashionopinion leadership and product attitude.

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