The Mediating Role of Consumer’s Attitude toward Advertising on the Relationship between Advertisement Content Credibility and Attitude toward Brand: The Case of Beauty Soap in Indonesia

Abstract

Beauty soap producers in Indonesia have been observed to use advertising to aggressively communicate and promote their product brands to consumers at large. With sales soaring for various brands like Lux, GIV, Dove and Citra, dependency on this advertising as a marketing strategy proved to be successful for the beauty soap retailers. This study hypothesizes that advertising content credibility (AC), consumer’s attitude toward advertising (AAD) and attitude toward brand (AB) to be linked with one another. Thus, the study proposes that consumers’ attitude toward beauty soap advertising (AAD) acts as a mediator on the relationship between advertisement content credibility (AC) and attitude towards brand (AB). Based on the SmartPLS-SEM  analysis results from a survey participated by 405 beauty soap customers in Indonesia, AC shows a direct influence on AAD and AB, AAD shows direct positive path with AB, and importantly, AAD plays the mediating role on the AC and AB relationship. The findings imply the importance of the three variables, particularly AAD for its mediating role on the other two variables. For practitioners applying advertising strategy, the results imply the importance for them to ensure consumers as audience must have positive attitude toward the beauty soap ad as such attitude would affect their attitude toward the brand portrayed in the advertisement. In addition, the ad itself must be able to be perceived as credible ad as this would influence their attitude on both advertising and brand.