The surprise effect of ambient ad on the path leading to purchase: Testing the role of attitude toward the brand

Abstract

Enterprises have made changes in their marketing and communication activities because of increased competition and changes in consumer behavior. In seeking to stand out from their competitors, brands have started to use more creative, extraordinary, interactive, and nontraditional approaches in their advertisements. One of these approaches is ambient advertising, which involves the guerilla marketing activities and alters environmental elements that consumers interact with (e.g., pedestrian paths, bus stops) creatively and unexpectedly and renders these elements meaningful in terms of advertising. In ambient advertising literature, relationships between perceived surprise, attention toward the ad, attitudes toward the ad and brand, purchase intention, and mediation effect of attitude toward an unknown brand have not been hierarchically tested. In this study, the effectiveness of ambient advertising was evaluated based on a structural equation model and the data were collected from 194 consumers through cross-sectional survey method. The results revealed some statistically significant relationships. In conclusion, perceived surprise was determined as a strong antecedent of attention toward the ad, attitude toward ambient advertising was found to have a positive effect on purchase intention, and it was also found that attitude toward the brand had a mediating effect between attitude toward the ad and purchase intention.