Impact of Gender Differences On Online Consumer Characteristics On Web-Based Banner Advertising Effectiveness

Summary

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The multimedia aspect of the Web creates opportunities for businesses to channel their advertising. Advertising effectiveness is important to the marketers to know if their advertisements have affected their target audience. Among the market segmentation variables, gender has had a deep history in the marketing environment and has been used as a primary segmentation variable. This research examines whether gender difference is a factor in the relationships between online consumer characteristics and banner advertisement effectiveness. The characteristic variables included in this study are: online consumer's internal flexibility, consumer expectations and consumer involvement. A questionnaire survey was administered with 190 online consumers who were senior students at a university. The study results gave mixed results. In the context of web-based banner ad, gender influences the following relationships: (i) banner ad judgment and attitude towards banner ad, (ii) focus & planning approach and attitude towards banner ad and (iii) consumer expectations and banner ad effectiveness. The study also found that there is no gender difference in other relationships between online consumer characteristics and banner ad effectiveness.

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Impact of Gender Differences On Online Consumer Characteristics On Web-Based Banner Advertising Effectiveness

INTRODUCTION

World Wide Web, also known as "the Web" is defined as 'userfriendly graphics-capable component of the Internet' (Pugsley and Trites, 2003) and as a cross between an electronic trade show and a community flea market (Berthan et al., 1996). The Web is flexible in that it can present information in numerous ways including text, images, video, and sound. The multimedia aspect of the Web could make the experience more fun and stimulating, thus holding the attention of the online consumer longer (Ghose and Dou, 1998). The Web has been able to reach more people, widely recognized and accessible in most parts of the world, and supports information in different languages and currencies. The Web has been used to disperse information to many consumers and more and more businesses are trying to incorporate the Web into their operations (Alba et al., 1997). Businesses have realized the potential benefits of the Web in direct sales, building brand awareness and providing market information for consumers. Businesses see the Web as an opportunity to channel their advertising, marketing and distribution of some of their products (Verity and Hof, 1994). In Web-based channel, the businesses can cut advertising cost compared to any conventional channels such as television, radio and magazines.

The marketplace is changing and it has been shifting towards online shopping, and virtual market businesses. Due to the changes in the environmental trend, the online businesses have to focus more on web-based advertisements. The marketers like to draw the online consumer's attention from thousands of other products or brands. Consumers have control over web-based advertisements, on what ads, when, where, and how long they would like to see them (Gallagher et al., 2001). Also, consumers can arrange advertisements to their liking and to their preferred scheduling. The consumers can close out advertisements they do not want to see or go back to the ads they would be interested in. This gives consumers numerous opportunities to view the web-based advertisement. It has been said that after a number of exposures to advertisements, the consumer would retain the information more (Vakratas and Ambler, 1999).

One of the primary g...

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