Abstract

Advertising is a growing business and with advances in the Internet technology, the dynamics and landscape of
the business has changed as well. Prior findings on consumers’ attitude towards advertising are mixed. This
paper is an attempt to examine young adults’ attitude towards advertising. We conceptualized a framework to
examine the influence of six independent variables namely consumer manipulation, product information,
hedonic/pleasure, economic condition, social integration, and materialism on consumers’ attitude towards
advertising. Participants were selected from the southern region of Malaysia. The data were collected through
personal administration, and had 217 valid responses. The analysis reveals that four of the six hypotheses were
supported. Consumer manipulation emerged negative, which is consistent with past findings. These findings
would enable practitioners to be more consumer-sensitive to ensure that the advertising campaigns are properly
conceived to avoid adverse effects on a firm’s performance. The findings would also benefit consumers in
gaining additional understanding on the roles of social networks in persuading specific purchase. This paper also
contributes contextual literature on the perspectives of consumers’ in Malaysia.

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