Effective Advertising and Its Influence on Consumer Buying Behavior

Introduction

It is very important for a company to generate sales in other to meet the operating costs to remain in business and considering the importance of sales in a company and also the importance of the connection between customers and sales, advertising can be a very essential tool in other to influence consumers buying behaviors (Consumer buying behavior is simply the sum total of a consumer’s attitudes, preferences, intentions and decisions regarding the consumer’s behavior in the marketplace when purchasing a product or a service) in the market. Advertising or promotion is the only way for them to survive in the market because the market is full of products which comes with the same characteristics and satisfactions.Advertising is a very important element, it is distinguished for its long lasting impact on viewer’s mind. Advertising also provides some useful information about the quality of the product, its characteristics, where the product can be found and also some information about the company in question. However, it’s important for a company to invest in promotional purposes if they want to become a leader in the market, the competition in the business world in our days is very high and need for a company to be even more creative in other to have a competitive advantage in the market.

Advertising makes a company appear bold to face the challenges that will surface after the information about the product has been given out. This particular issue has its competitive grieves and the regulatory bodies that controls these system are always waiting to get such publicized information about a claim in order for such a company to tender prove. but in general sense, advertising a product could be the starting point for a company to know or understand if such a product would harm or satisfy its users in a short run of such publicity. the most interesting part of this system is that it will help both the company and the general public to be faced with opportunity as the market promises to favor everyone.

Industry overview

Company overview

Adidas Corporation has its headquarters in Herzogenaurach, in Germany. Adidas is today the biggest sportswear company in Europe (with its three strips which represents her logo) and second in the world after Nike and was founded on 18/08/1949 by Adolf Dassler which is a product of a fight that happened between him and his elder brother (Rudolf) during World War II and decided to start up his own brand and quit from Puma which was co-owned by both brothers. Adidas whose history to them, can be identified through this phrase “we started in a wash room and conquered the world. And in-between, we have scored big and also, sometimes, struggled to reach our goals. We have done our best for the best. We have improved and grown. looking ahead for the future, always remembering where we came from” (http://www.adidas-group.com/en/group/profile/), is today ranked the 61th most valuable brand with more than 92 companies, 53.731 employees http://www.adidas-group.com/en/group/profile/), a $19.50 billion revenue, $15.03 billion of assets and $650 million profit in 2015 (http://www.forbes.com/companies/adidas/). The company is well known in sports clothing, shoes, bags, shirts, watches, eyewear and many other products. The company has more than 1000 stores around the world and is very successful company especially in terms of innovation for example, with the advertising and some other marketing tools, the company created influential marketing. The company also produces other products besides sports footwear like bags, shirts, watches, eyewear and other sports and clothing related goods. The company greatest competitors are Nike and Puma; Nike being the largest sportswear manufacturer in the world.

Customer overview

Adidas main target audience are customers from 13-30 years old involving themselves in some discipline and sports of their choice. adidas products comes with high quality and also an affordable prices, it is considered that adidas is a premium brand for international players.

adidas company also target a smaller audience. It constituates of those who are not into sports, these customers are from 16-25 years old, working-middle class both male and female. And could even go above since it is said that, the sporting goods industry is growing faster than many other industries including customers electronics recently (http://www.adidas-group.com/en/group/strategy-overview/) and the trend will tend to continue, and the fact that sports is central to every culture and society and, is core to an individual’s health and happiness, is only going to increase the expected targeted customers as even non athletes and older people tend to demand the product for their own exercise.

Research objectives

The decision of the group members to focus on Adidas company is to be able to understand and explain its concept in the area of online advertising which was recorded as a huge success in the ( 2014 ) world cup football championship which was organiz ed by FIFA. The following areas of target on advertising by company Adidas can be related to any company or organization who would want to understand the impact of advertising on a particular group or organization. To be sincere, the birth of technology has made it possible for anyone to be able to sell a product or receive a service. If this is true then this activity will certainly be competitive given rise to speed which must reach demand on time and with a satisfactory service as claimed by the advertiser. The following study and research will be reached to create a guide to a company’s best interest.

With the importance of advertising effects on consumer behaviors in mind, and following on from the considerable research that has been conducted on this previously, there are two key objectives that the research is looking to achieve. The objectives are as follows:

• To review and understand the existing research on advertising and the effects this has on consumer behaviors.
• Further explore the case of 200 FPT University Students who studied into the categorizing of advertisement audiences, identification of advertising strategy perception from Adidas and how this can influence purchasing behavior.

Research questions

the idea in research is to get the feel back in order to make good decisions that would favor both the company and all the users of such product. The Adidas company focuses in making sports wears and the rate of interest its existing product has generated will also be evaluated to understand more of the core advertising part that won the game for Adidas. lots of potential comments which was perceived by the end users as of (Adidas) better quality. this potential customers will be targeted to retrieve information that will form the criteria in our ( descriptive ) research.

From the aforementioned objectives, a number of research questions are raised, these are as follows:

• What relationships are found between advertising and consumer behaviors in the theories based around the two?
• What types audiences are found in the FPT University study on Adidas?
• What perceptions are there of advertising?
• How are purchasing behaviors affected by advertising perceptions?

Methodology and data overview

Research design

A proper well organized system of research method was adopted for this study. Data and information was gathered through the use of structured questionnaire which covered all the areas related to their notion about online advertisement and its influences. A total number of 200 questionnaires were printed and distributed to 200 online users but only 168 users were willing to respond without errors and mistakes. Or it is an elaborated draft of how an investigation will take place; it will typically include how data is to be collected, what instruments should be at work, how these instruments should be applied and also the intended means for analyzing the data collected. However the research design that is going to be used here is the exploratory research design which is the investigation into a situation which gives insights to the researcher. The research is determined to provide some details where a small number of infos exist. Exploratory research can be done thru trial studies, interviews, group discussions, experiments or other things for the purpose of gaining information; most often exploratory research lays the initial groundwork for future research.

Sample size

A sample size of 200 will be enough since it is an exploratory study. Appropriately 200 respondents from the target audience were approached to fill in the online questionnaire which was created to target the retrieval the information from the customers. The best method of selecting sample will be simple random sampling.

Data collection

The primary data was collected by questionnaire, a well structured questionnaire was prepared in other to collect data from respondents and the secondary data is taken through the internet and books. The questionnaires were collected and compiled after a few days from the respondents and their responses used for analysis.

limitation

In research, there are many different issues that might hinder the truthfulness of our evaluations. but to be prompt, we did the casual response interviews first to understand the best time to gain appropriateness from our target audience. Despite that, there are other areas that cannot be maintained or managed due to their natural effects. those areas includes the following,

• Lack of human resources
• Unclear question or answers
• State of mind
• Regulations
• lies as answers
• Reach

To consider the above mentioned points, some of the product users who went through interview might be a hard or busy time, making it difficult for the whole answers to be accurate or distinctive. it also goes a long way and in many cases interviews might be stopped for regulation sake. These are the main points that will in a way effect the accurateness of our work.

Thesis outline

One of the most important instruments of marketing is advertisement. In the past years with attention to the array of products and the addendum of centralized burning market, profiting from this important business tool in its capital that is business has extended. The entire pattern of accumulation media has as well created a suitable parcel for broadcasting and circulation of altered trading announcements. In accession the abstraction of antagonism is absoluteness concept by profiting from advertisement. One of the factors which acquired commercial to ability to the today’s degree of accent is the gap and ambit which it has generated over the assembly and buming phenomenon that in the accomplished human communities had derived of it. This research consists of five chapters. The chapter 1 which has focused upon the advertisement and its effect upon consumer behavior in general and tried to have a brief outlook upon the proposed topic and he also described the research aim and limitations. For the research purpose, adidas was used as a case study. In chapter 2, we collected various articles books and magazines regarding the advertisement and its effect and this chapter overview all the articles, books magazines and summarizes the important points from them which can be beneficial for the study. In chapter 3 we described the research methodology which he is going to use. As a result is based upon qualitative measures so it’s focusing upon descriptive studies and for the generation of primary data, questionnaire was developed which is going to fill from the students. In The chapter 4, we collected all the findings and analyzed them in a proper manner,, in chapter five all the findings will be taken into view, the results has been concluded and some suggestions will be given according to the results.

Literature Review

Introduction

In this chapter, the first objective of the research will be covered by identifying and analyzing the existing literature on advertising, consumer behaviors and the relationship between them. To begin with, the definitions and concepts of each term will be explored individually followed by a review of the literature on the behaviors of customers, their reactions toward advertisements and the change in their purchasing behaviors after being exposed to the advertisements. This will be followed by a section on secondary data where a number of studies that have been conducted and their findings would be presented on the subject. In the following section, gaps in the literature review will be identified in order to demonstrate the necessity for this research to be conducted. Last but not least, the conclusion will briefly summarize the key findings from literature review and previous existing studies and a brief description of the selected theoretical model.

Advertising

Both the traditional and new media companies depend on advertising to generate revenue to survive. The emergence and development of the 2.0 web has brought a new and diverse system of connectivity allowing people and institutes to use its interactive features to advertise their ideas, service and products to a wide range of global audience. In doing this, the audience as well can take part in modifying, responding, and most importantly make purchases through the internet. This can be called back-and-forth flow of information. Placing an advertisement on the internet is made possible with the help of search engines like Google or Yahoo. It is stated by Dominick (2009): “internet advertising is a big business, generating more than 16 million dollars in 2016”. Consequently, what is advertising and why it assumes such a substantial role to global economy?

Definition

Advertising is a primary instrument for businesses to influence the performance of their ideas, services or products by making consumers aware of presence and characteristics of them (Bovée & Arens, 1992). Depending on different organizations or individuals, the term advertising has different definitions.

The term ‘advertising’ appeared at the beginning of twentieth century. According to an immortal story in the advertising world, in 1904, Albert Lasker who helped to usher in the new age of modern advertising was inspired by a writer named John E. Kennedy to describe advertising as “salesmanship on paper, driven by a reason why”. As stated by Kennedy, advertisements should propose the reasons why people should buy the products or use the services by saying what a salesman would say in a face-to-face conversation (Kotler, 1994).

Advertising can also be defined in a more modern way as “the non-personal communication of information, usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature, about products (goods and services) or ideas by identified sponsors through various media” (Bovée & Arens, 1992, p. 7). In order to make it clearer, the statement can be taken apart. According to Bovée and Arens’ (1992) extra explanation, advertising is called ‘non-personal’ due to its direction to knots of people at one moment rather than individuals (p. 7-8). Communication implies any way through that information can be passed. Then what is information? Information is defined as “facts provided or learned about something or someone” coming in many forms. In advertising, incomplete information is employed. Due to the lack of time, advertisers only briefly show what they think the customer needs the most to know about the products and how the products can benefit them. In order to make people aware of their products or services, the costs for the creation of an ad in the media must be “paid for” by the companies. It can be understood that advertising is a non-personal tool, for which companies pay to identify and differentiate their products from others in order to persuade customer to buy those products. Advertisers can utilize any ways or any channels of communication to have the products been aware by people.

According to Kotler (1994), advertising seeks to stimulate a purchasing response or a tendency to explore more about the product or service. Arens (1999) also supported this idea by stating that advertising is an essential method for businesses in order to directly or indirectly influence and convince the public and consumers.

Chronologically, the definition of advertising might be slightly different in words but still the same in meaning. Taking all the above definitions into comparison, it appears that companies invest a large amount of money in advertising (Ramaswani and Namakumari, 2004) which carries no direct information related to the product but a signal of quality to maintain the customers’ interest in their products and to persuade them to buy those ones.

Purposes of advertising

According to Aaker and Myers (1975), there are three major types of advertising purposes on customers: to inform, to persuade and to remind.

Initially, the need to inform arises when the company wants to market a new or existing product or service, suggest new customer segment for an existing product, announce a change in the price of a product or service, describe the operating mechanism of a product or construct the branding image for a company, according to Aaker and Myers (1975). In addition, the need to persuade arises when the company finds it necessary to change the customer’s impression of a certain product or service, when convincing customers to buy a product or use a service or when changing the brand image, according to Aaker and Myers (1975). Last but not least, advertising is used to remind customers: the necessity to purchase the product, the place to make purchase, to maintain the image of the brand on consumers’ mind at all time, according to Aaker and Myers (1975).

Types of advertising

When it comes to advertising, there exist various forms of which advertisers could make advantages to get noticed, such as: television, radio, print, outdoor and online advertising.

Television advertising has a very widespread reach and can be considered as one of the most effective types of advertising, since everyday a majority of people spend hours watching TV than paying attention to other medium (Singh and Cole, 1993). Television advertising salvages the advantage of sight, sound, movement and color to stimulate and persuade customers to buy the products. However, compared to other forms of advertising, television advertising is high cost and makes companies hard to target their customers, notes Priest (2010).

Radio advertising is a less popular form of advertising compared to television but still a great way to reach the customers. Radio advertisements broadcasted at public places can easily attract attention of new customers (Radio Ad Lab., 2004). Besides the advantage of extensive reach, there are some disadvantages advertisers have to deal with if they choose this type of advertising. Radio Ad Lab. (2004) indicates only having sound is a significant weakness of radio. Lacking of visual capacity makes it hard for audiences to remember the message they have heard. The best way to make the audiences keeps the content of the advertisement in their mind is to repeat habitually, which leads to the rise of costs (Picard, 1989).

Another form of advertising is print including newspaper, magazines, brochures, catalogues, leaflets and so on. Although every advertising medium has its own advantages and limitations (Speck and Elliott, 1997), print media has always been a good choice when it comes to advertising. Unlike television and radio, print advertisement can contain details about the products, such as features, prices, manufacturers’ phone number or address (Berte and De Bens, 2008). Furthermore, the costs for print advertising are less than those ones companies must pay for TV or radio. However, companies have to aware that there would be many readers skip the advertisement section or do not pay attention to the advertisement.

Outdoor advertising is also a widely-used form of advertising but not really effective (Houck, 1969). Outdoor advertising like billboards, kiosks, trade-shows and events may give quick communication of simple ideas but the display time is too short so people cannot read and tend to ignore them, indicates Agnew (1985). Moreover, depending on the size and the location, outdoor advertising can be very expensive.

Online advertising is a sub – branch of advertising that consists of many types of commercial content from electronic advertisements, for example, billboards, banner ads to more modern ones such as corporate websites, social media, etc. (Schlosser, Shavitt and Kanfer, 2000). Internet and other interactive technologies have helped to facilitate advertisements that are more targeted, but more personal in which advertising is an experience in which the customer are engaged in, according to Lombard and Snyder – Duch (2001). Online advertising is a kind of mass communication which is built on conventional methods of advertising but develops its own communication strategies in relationship with new and advanced technology and media and often consists of contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, rich media ads, social network advertising, interstitial ads, online classified ads, advertising networks and email marketing (O’ Connor and Galvin, 2001). Our previous knowledge and concept relating to traditional advertising is closely associated with modern internet advertising. The additional complexities of interactivity and greater proximity to reality available through the web, additional specifications of function and structure are clearly needed, according to Rodgers and Thorson (2000). According to O’ Connor and Galvin (2001), advertising online majorly consists of banners which served as advertising space on the website that carry advertisements and may contain animation in order to attract users to click on the relevant links on the advertiser’s website (O’ Connor and Galvin, 2001).

Barriers of advertisement

According to Krugman (1965), there are many barriers to advertising which makes it not an optimal marketing strategy in some aspects. One of the barriers include the fact that advertisement is the form of communications that customers seem to ignore on a frequent basis, or make the least effort to be aware of its existence (ibid).

Other barriers of advertisements may include economic factors, media environment factors, legal restrictions, cultural differences, language barriers, etc., according to Wilkins (2002). For the economic factors, different countries or regions have a different pace of development, therefore products that are normal goods in the United States such as McDonalds’ burger would become luxurious in developing countries such as Vietnam.

For the media environment factor, forms of media may vary from regions to regions, therefore it is essential to adapt to the forms common in the local area in order to advertise, according to Wilkin (2002). This factor may have an adverse impact on the advertisement that people are exposed to and how they will perceive these advertisements. For example, consumers in some countries in Africa found it most influential to see advertisers going up and down the rivers in boats to play loud songs and advertising to the public as they go, according to Oravsky (2001).

Legal issues and restrictions are also factors to consider when advertising as some countries have restrictions on the type of advertisements allowed as well as the content that they display, according to Wilkins (2002). For example, in Vietnam and many other countries, it is illegal to be advertising products such as cigarettes as it is harmful for the health of people.

In terms of cultural factors, the value and belief of the people of a country may affect their behaviours, habit and knowledge of a certain issue. For example, in the consumer behavior toward snack products such as crisps in the United Kingdom is completely different from Vietnam, where the daily meal routines are strictly followed during the day.

Measurement for effectiveness of advertising

Research has demonstrated the positive influence and efficiency of advertising in the past decade, several popular means of evaluating the effectiveness of an advertisement may include but not limit to ad recalls, ad recognitions, brand awareness, clicks or clicks through rate, attitude towards the ad and purchase consideration, according to Danaher and Mullarkey (2003) and Lim, Yap and Lau (2011). It is as important to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the different forms of advertising as implementing the advertising strategies themselves.

There is currently, however, not a standardized and globally – accepted method to evaluate the effects of advertising due to various reasons, according to Arshad et al. (2014). One of them is the fact that advertising is not an independent variable alone but it also associates with other factors such as financial capability of the consumer, competition, etc. (Calisir, 2003). In addition, the effectiveness of advertising is subjective and not always quantifiable, according to Bhat, Bvans and Sengupta (2002). Moreover, advertising, if effective will only has its effect during the period that the cost is incurred, so it does not guarantee a long term effect. This idea seems to correlate with that of Batra et al. (1995), the effects of advertising should be associated with the increase in sales in the short term.

According to Corvi and Bonera (n.d), there are two fundamental models for measuring the effectiveness of advertising: the dichotomous model and the three – dimensional model. According to Corvi and Bonera (n.d), the dichotomous model takes into account the two types of effect which are sales and communication effect, in which the former takes into account the rise in the amount of sales and the latter accounts for the extent to which the message of the advertisement reached and influenced the consumer segments.

However, Cavill and Bauman (2004) pointed toward a different model to evaluate the effectiveness of an advert namely the hierarchy of effects model, demonstrated through four stages of the process including: awareness, interest, desire and action. Awareness, as the first stage of interacting and attracting customer, is considered as the cognitive phrase in advertising, as according to Ashcroft and Hoey (2001). Within this stage, the advertisers will inform the customers about their products and their features, to make customers acknowledge the product’s existence inside their minds, which serve as an essential step to excel further, according to Baca et al. (2005). The next steps – are to seek interest from the customers in the products and enhance their desire for such products (Cavill and Bauman, 2004). In these separate phases, the needs of the customers match with the benefits and functions that the products offer, hence the customers have interest in finding out more about the product (Cavill and Bauman, 2004). After that, they take into account and assess all other factors associated with the product, ie. Price, functionality, durability, aesthetic, branding, etc. in compared with similar products and begin to develop desire for the product (Cavill and Bauman, 2004). In the final stage, the customer will take the step to fulfill this desire by paying to possess this product, before which, a number of factors could play a role in provoking the customers to take actions more quickly such as limited sales or discounts (Rawal, 2013). The Hierarchy of Effects Model could be used to evaluate the extent to which the advertisements are effective in persuading the customers to buy the products, depending on how far up the ladder did the customer excel (Cavill and Bauman, 2004).

Consumer purchasing behaviours

Consumer behaviour concept

As being stated by Schiffman et al. (2007), consumer behaviors are “the behavior that consumers display in searching for, purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing of products and services that they expect will satisfy their needs”. Solomon et al. (2006) also share the same thought on defining consumer behaviors. He indicates that consumer behaviors are the study that deeply digs into the customers’ process of selecting, buying, utilizing or disposing products or services. Conclusively, it can be concluded that consumer behaviour is a psychology process, during which customers are aware of their demands, seek ways to assess, analyzing the purchasing decisions.

In today era of the changing business environment where competitions severely take place, every business requires high consumption to boost revenue. The key for high consumption is the purchase decision, and the customer is the decision maker, which leads to the fact that businesses must find the way to comprehend their customers, precisely customer behaviors if they yearn for the success (Solomon et al., 2012). According to Kotler and Keller (2007), studying the contemporary consumer behaviors is essential to the success of businesses in the modern world as consumers are becoming more important, more educated and more complex. The results found by researchers related to consumer behaviors are utilized to develop different solutions and products that will enhance the business’ profitability and operations.

Consumer purchasing behaviors

Consumer purchasing behaviors are also known as the customer decision making process which could be described as “the behaviors patterns of consumers, that precede, determine and follow on the decision process for the acquisition of need satisfying products, ideas or services” (Du Plessis, Rousseau and Blem, 1991, p.11).

The customer decision-making processes have long attracted the attention of researchers. In early stages, the act of purchasing is the main focus of the most studies related to decision making, indicates Loudon and Bitta (1993). After the 1950s, when modern concepts of marketing were put into the studies, it was pointed out that customer decision-making processes consist of a variety of activities, not only purchase action (Engel, Blackwell and Miniard, 1995). The research also notes that the customer decision making is influenced by many other factors than the ultimate consequence itself. Thus, it can be concluded that customer decision-making processes have two aspects: purchasing process and factors affecting purchasing behaviors.

Purchasing process

Wentz and Eyrich (1970) developed a model that describes the buying process. Wentz-Eyrich highlights that the purchase process is initiated before the actual purchasing and kept on after purchase. Based on the model, a customer decision making process consists of the stages as follows:

• Stimulus
• Problem identification
• Searching for alternatives
• Evaluation of alternatives
• Making purchase decision
• Post-purchase evaluation

Another model emphasizing the phases of purchasing process is the Engel-Blackwell-Miniard Model. Engel et al. (1968) have the similar approach towards defining purchase process phases: the buying process comprises pre-purchase phase, purchase decision phase and post-purchase phase. It was also indicated that marketers should pay attention to the purchase process as a whole incorporated system of behavior. Precisely, the purchasing process passes through five stages:

• Problem identification (need)
• Search for information
• Evaluating alternatives
• Purchase decision
• Post-purchase behavior

After taking the two Models into comparison, the purchase process can be described as follows:

• Pre-purchase Phase
• Problem recognition or the Awareness of need
• Search for information
• Search for alternatives
• Evaluation of alternatives
• Decision making
• Purchase decision Phase
• Purchase
• Post-purchase Phase
• Post-purchase evaluation

Factors affecting purchasing behaviour

According to Dudovskiy (2015), it has been found that consumer behavior is the results of the demands and desires of the customer which provokes them to buy the products to fulfill these personal demands and desires. According to Brosekhan et al. (2014), there are many factors that influence the consumer purchasing behavior such as: social, cultural, personal, environmental and psychological factors, most of which are not easy for advertisers to change to serve their objectives but they still have to be taken into account as these factors play an essential role in shaping the purchasing behaviors of the consumer. Dudovskiy (2015) classified these factors in a different way; his classification includes personal factors (age, psychology and personality) and other external factors. Wiedermann et al. (2009) also formulated a similar categorization which takes into account internal and external factors. However, Winer (2008) ’s way of classification seems to associate with that of Brosekhan et al. (2014) which consists of social, personal and psychological elements. Similarly, Hoyer et al. (2012) categorized the factors into four groups namely: situational, personal, social and cultural elements. In whichever way they may be classified, most of the factors are mutual among the various classifications and whether under the same or a different name, these factors still carry the same descriptions.

The most widely – accepted framework for classifying the factors that influence consumer behavior could be considered as Hoyer et al. (2012)’s way of classification as it is broad, inclusive and comprehensive. According to this framework, the first group of factor that affects customers’ buying behavior is situational factors involving anything from venue, surroundings, time or weather (Hoyer et al., 2012). As part of the scheme to provoke the desire and the buying actions of the customers, the company will seek ways that will contribute to this and ensure a higher chance of customer purchasing the products, utilizing factors in the surrounding environment. For example, in stores or supermarkets, in order to enhance the shopping experience and stimulate the purchasing desire of the customer, the stores often play enjoyable music in the background. In terms of smell, they often spread very stimulating smells such as light spring flowery fragrances or the salivating smell of breads, cheese or cakes, in which the source of smell is often placed at the end of the store to attract the customer to shop throughout the store, hence increase the chance of purchasing more products.

The second factor category – the personal factors – includes everything related to the personal circumstances of the consumer such as: taste, habit, hobby, style preferences, income, financial capability, etc. (Hoyer et al., 2012). These factors are carefully taken into account by the business as they will base on this to develop and market new products and services that will meet these demands, desires and preferences of the customers. The third classification of factors – social factors – play an important role in influencing the consumer behavior as the consumers will tend to base on the opinions of other people who are closely related to them in the society or whom they look up to, such as: friends, family members, celebrities, sports players, successful CEOs, etc. The final classification of factors – the cultural factors – is also an important group to consider as cultural values, beliefs and morals can greatly influence a person’s behavior in general and their purchasing behavior in specific (Hoyer et al., 2012). For example, when a car manufacturing company wants to market an electric car in Vietnam, they have to take into consideration the cultural factors of the country – Vietnamese people believe that motorbike is a more convenient means of transport as it is smaller, lighter, more mobile and easier to park; hence they would probably not willing to spend money on buying an electric car that takes up a lot of space, inconvenient and more costly.

Advertising and consumer purchasing behaviors

Although customers are often cautious of advertisements and prefer to ignore them either accidentally or purposefully, it must be admitted that advertising and consumer purchasing behaviors have a tightly close relationship. Indeed, consumer purchasing behaviors has always been focused in literature study of advertising and its effectiveness (Ajzen, 2002). There are some studies conducted to illustrate the close relationship between advertising and consumer purchasing behaviors or in other words, how advertising influences consumer buying behaviors. Bolatito (2012) conducted a research that emphasizes the way effective advertisements affect customers’ brand selection and their fondness for specific brand in telecommunication industry in Nigeria. Findings show that MTN Telecom Company gains much attention from the customers, both males and females. Studies are also carried out to investigate the customer purchasing behaviour towards Bournvita food drinks after watching their advertisements. It is pointed out that most of people decide to buy the products due to their preference towards Bournvita’s advertisements (Ayanwale, Alomi and Ayanbimipe, 2005).

There is not an abundant source of previous research on the influence of advertisements on consumer behaviors. One such research is that of Bolatito (2012) who conducted a research in the telecommunication industry in Nigeria to explore the role of advertisement on consumers’ brand selection and preference for brands. The results turned out to be that both male and female consumers equally sustain an impact of advertisements, according to Bolatito (2012). A different research was conducted in the telecom sector by Abideen and Saleem (n.d) to find out how the advertisements can change the customers’ behaviours, more specifically, how environmental and emotional responses derived from the advertisements could change the consumers’ buying intentions after being exposed to it. As it turned out, the results of the study found that the emotional response had a more significant impact on the consumers’ purchasing behavior, according to Abideen and Saleem (n.d). A similar study was conducted in the music industry, where the impact of online web formats was assessed upon the buying behaviors of consumers on CDs, according to Adelaar et al. (2003). In the study, descriptions of the three different formats of the online web were mentioned including: lyrics text, images and videos. As a result of the study, it was concluded that lyrics text display was the most effective forms of web display of all as it created an impact on the impulse and emotional purchasing attitudes of the consumers, according to Adelaar et al. (2003). Another research which carries much similarities was conducted in the food and drink industry, to be specific – Bournvita food drink. The objective of the research was to explore the extent to which customers bought the products after watching their advertisement videos and the extent to which their course of actions was affected by the advertisements. The findings of the study came out that most consumers showed good impression towards the product after watching its advertisement video and those who did also bought the drink, according to Ayanwale, Alimi and Ayanbimipe (2005).

In addition, some similar studies were also conducted to explore the impact of various factors on consumers’ purchasing behaviours. Acebron, Mangin and Dopico (2000) conducted a study on this topic with the target to identify and assess the influence of past experience on consumers’ purchasing behavior for groceries, in specific – mussels. As for the research methods, the researchers applied structural equation frameworks to explore the link between the experience in the pasts in relation to the purchasing decision of consumers (Acebron et al., 2000). As a result of their study, it was found that personal preferences and past experiences of customers have a direct influence on their buying decisions and actions, in the case of buying mussels, according to Acebron et al. (2000). In addition, a correlation between the product image and the buying decisions of the customers was found inferring the necessity to enhance the branding image and the products’ design so as to boost customers’ purchase and increase sales, according to Acebron et al. (2000). A different research was carried out in 2010 by Variawa (2010) which identified the impact of package design on the low – income consumers’ behavior, more specifically – their purchasing decision for FMCG (fast moving consumer goods). The method of research that they applied was conducting a survey among 250 people a small town. The results were that low – income customers tend to prefer premium packaging because they will be able to use them again and again later on, according to Variawa (2010).

Although there are tons of models utilized to illustrate the impact of advertising on consumer purchasing behavior, the models using responses have been given the most attention by researchers and practitioners, which have become the most widely-used and effective ones. An effective advertisement can bring forth environmental and emotional responses of customers, that point of view is proved by numerous studies. In the words of Abideenand Saleem (n.d), even though customers are influenced by both environmental and emotional responses, they are driven to the decision of purchasing the products by emotional feelings.

In marketing field, advertising is utilized to generate brand awareness, preference and selection. It is one of the helpful tools of marketing communication to emotionally persuade consumers to purchase the products or services. Indeed, most of the time, consumer purchasing behaviors are influenced by fondness or aversion to the advertisements (Smith et al., 2006). That means it is essentially the emotional response generated towards advertised products that affects the consumer behaviors (Allen et al., 1992). Adelaar et al. (2003) suggested that emotional response is affected by three independent factors: pleasure, arousal and dominance.

• Pleasure is the state of being gratified or feeling joyful.
• Arousal is the state of feeling that is varying from person to person in the difference of situations.
• Dominance is individual feelings, which are in control or free to act in specific situation.

These factors emerge when consumers watch an advertisement, develop fondness towards it and even decide to purchase the product. These factors may affect consumer behaviors in two directions: positive and negative. Hoyer et al. (2012) stated that effective advertisingtend to arouse good feelings and positive emotions from within the consumers, hence, tempt them to buy the products. On this basis, Rehman et al. (2014, p. 407) posited that advertising and consumer buying behaviors are positively related to each other.This idea seems to correlate with the ideas that came before that, such as Goldsmith and Lafferty (2002). They stated that the key objective of advertising is to provoke a positive attitude towards the advertisement, so that they take actions to buy the products. However, controversies over the affection of advertising to consumer buying behaviors have always been existent (George, 1989). There is a large part of society argues that advertising may create a negative emotional response (Barbara, 1997). Sometimes, advertisers do tend to vastly exaggerate the advertisements about a brand, which leads to the unpleasant feelings of consumers. According to Bishop (1997), most of the consumers avoid advertisements because they consider the advertisements as something annoying and misleading.

As aforementioned, there is a significant relationship between environmental responses and consumer purchasing behaviors. The two major determinants of environmental response are information rate and sensory stimulus. Information rate can affects the ability of consumers to obtain the information about the products through advertisements. Therefore, this model is applicable to text and lyrics, pictures and images, and videos which are displayed in the advertisements and closely related to each other. According to Greenley and Foxall (1997), environmental variables may have some impacts on consumer purchasing behaviour. Studies regarding to marketing issues reveal that environmental helps consumers to have some kinds of experience which are used to advertise and put the products in sale (Adellar et al., 2003). Moreover, Morris and Boone (1998) noted that these studies also explain the impacts of environmental conditions on consumers’ purchase decision, which are considered as sensory stimulus. Sensory stimulus consists of the sight, scenes, and images of the advertisements, the feeling of touch that the advertisements give off and the sounds of the advertisements. According to Kotler (1973), visual dimension including light, color, size and shapes could considerably influence customer purchasing decision. Regarding to touch sensory cue, Sonneveld and Schifferstein (2008) highlighted a variety of explanation of experience like hardness – softness, rough-smooth and thin-thick. It is proved that great touch experience gives special affection to consumer behaviors. Sound like background music is a powerful medium which makes use of the influences on consumers’ moods to provoke consumers to buy the products (Matilla&Wirtz, 2001).

To sum up, the relationship between advertising and consumer purchasing behaviors can be represented as follows:

Emotional response vs consumer buying behavior

emotional response is a very important part of effective advertisement. the ability of positive attitude is stronger than the negative attitude towards any product(Lafferty and Goldsmith 2002). the aim of consumer behavior is to determine how clients behave in certain manner but in diverse situations.(Ayanwale., Alimi and Ayanbimipe 2005). the graph shows that there are three factors affecting the emotional response which is pleasure, dominance and arousal; these factors become visible when consumer watches an advertisement about the brand and biuld up likeness for the brand then acquire it.(Lafferty and Goldsmith 2002)

Environmental response vs consumer buying behavior

sensory inflection and rate of information comprises environmental reaction and information rate is to obtain information through advertisements.(ADELARR, et al. 2003). the environmental response is made up of two main factors which is the information rate that can influence customers to obtain information from advertisement and the sensory stimulus that can be suggested color, brighness, size, visual dimension that impact consumers’ purchase intention.(kotler, 1973/74). a cool color(eg. blue) is more affective on pleasure- arousal emotions that influence the customer’s spending money and time(Bellize & Hite, 1992)

Gaps in Literature

After conducting the comprehensive literature review, the most common findings among all the studies was that advertising has a profound effect on the behaviors of consumers in theories. For this research paper, it is not plausible to implement a broad – scale research with sample size of thousands in order to test this hypothesis due to the constraint in time, budget and the number of researchers available. Therefore, the sample size of the study will be kept small and only within a specific setting with appointed respondents, who are the students of FPT University in Hanoi – Vietnam.

From the literature review above, it is clearly seen that there has been several previous research in exploring the impact of advertising on the purchasing behavior of consumers in different sectors such as: telecommunications, food and drinks, sportswear, etc. However, the studies found are too similar in their findings. The majority of the authors have concluded that advertising does create significant impacts on the consumers purchasing behavior. But none of them has identified any risks or raised questions associated with the consequences of doing advertising activities such as: would it cause hatred for the consumers, would it create an adverse feeling for the consumers, would it cause offense or conflicts upon certain groups of people. Therefore, as part of our research, we would take into considerations those factors and explore whether it is true that advertisements only bring positive impacts, or do they also create negative feelings as well.

Conclusion and Selection of Theoretical Models

It is concluded that advertisement seem to play an important role in the marketing of either new or existing products or services, to change the perceptions or brand image of a product or service in the mind of a particular segment of customer. Existing literature on the topic has proved that there is a direct connection between advertising and the consumer behavior. However, there still exists gap in the current literature; hence it is essential to carry out this research in order to achieve the put – forward objectives. The chosen model for investigating the impacts of advertising is through the responses that an advertisement create to influence consumer purchasing behaviors, namely emotional and environmental responses.

Methodology

Introduction

This chapter focuses on building a constructive plan that can help the researcher draw out the answers for the above stated questions. The chapter is structured into four main sections. Section 3.2 underlines the fundamental methodological approach that underlines how the research plan would be shaped. Section 3.3 describes the research strategies and directions which are developed on the basis of the chosen methodological approach. Section 3.4 portrays the detailed investigating plan including the design of the questionnaire, sampling method, data collection method, and the ways to analyze data. Last but not least, section 3.5 shows some ethical matters that need paying attention to and how the validity and reliability of the research can be guaranteed.

Methodological approach

The methodology of this study would be constructed on the basis of the researching framework: the “Research onion” theory developed by Saunders et al. (2015) and illustrated briefly in the figure below:

Research philosophy

The very first thing to do when making a research plan is to determine the methodological approach that will be used as the platform to direct the investigation. It means to decide the research philosophy and research approach.

Saunders et al. (2015) defines research philosophy as the procedure to build up the “the background, the knowledge, and the nature of the search”. In other words, research philosophy contains the set of “shared assumptions, values, concepts and practices” that forms the perspective of the researcher and help him to conduct the study in an effective manner (Johnson and Christensen, 2005). Generally speaking, there exist three dominant research philosophies discovered and generalized by the scholars, namely positivism, interpretivism, and realism.

The first philosophy (positivism) pays special attention to the objectivity and stability of the surrounding reality. It reinforces the belief that the only genuine knowledge is the “objective and unbiased truth”, which can be obtained through observation and measurement (Saunders et al., 2015). Therefore, generalization and laws are detected, as it concentrates on the facts and elements of the world, which interact with each other in “an observable, determined and regular manner” (Collins, 2010). The research following positivism philosophy has a highly structured methodology with quantifiable observations and statistical analysis (Johnson and Christensen, 2005).

The remaining philosophies possess contracted perspective with positivism. Interprivism philosophy claims that the social construction affects the complexity of the world, so there is no “absolute truth” and actually many meanings behind of a fact or event (Collins, 2010). Unlike positivism, human thinking and interest have huge impacts on the way a research should be conducted (Saunders et al., 2015) and alters the “factual” truths to suit every situation and research problem (Johnson and Christensen, 2005). In this philosophy, interacting only with the environment is not adequate enough to interpret the collected results. Various factors affecting the outcome such as living standards, individual personality, cultural traditions, and so on should be considered and interpreted in a logical manner (Collins, 2010). As a result, statistical methods are not the only suitable ones for researching. The research can utilize several methods for different aspects of the phenomenon.

Independency is the center of realism philosophy (Collins, 2010). In realism, the studied entities are believed to “exist independently of being perceived or independently of our theories about them” (Phillips (1987) cited in Johnson and Christensen (2010)). In other words, human values and beliefs have no effects over the studied phenomenon. Instead, they are affected and shaped by the external environment (Johnson and Christensen, 2010). This philosophy also guides researchers and scholars to study how individuals react towards a real-world situation.

After assessing the three philosophies in accordance with the objectives of this study, the researcher concludes that realism is the most suitable one to follow. There are two reasons for this selection. First of all, the ultimate focus of the research is to study the current perception of consumers’ on advertising by grouping into categories with common features. This objective carries the characteristic of interprivism and makes it contractive with positivism. However, these human values and beliefs drawn out from the first objective will be used for investigating their influence on consumers’ buying behaviors. It means the outcomes achieved from answering the first research question would form several real situations, in which the individual actions and behaviors are investigated. This point makes the research not fit in the interprivism, which becomes the second reason.

Research approach

After choosing the philosophy as the foundation base, the next step is to select the research approach, which gives guideline to the logical process of the study (Johnson and Christensen, 2010). Commonly, there are two approaches for all researchers to choose between. They are deductive and inductive approaches (Saunders et al., 2015). The differences between the two approaches are illustrated in the following figure:

Deductive research starts with the theory or general statement. The researchers base their work on this ground to make assumptions or hypotheses, they then test them in reality through observations, and reach a certain conclusion about them (Collins, 2010). In simpler term, it means to predict something and gather information to test whether those predictions are true. This logical reasoning is often assorted with positivism philosophy.

Induction is an opposite reasoning process of deduction. The research starts with specific observations to pull out the pattern and make expansive generalization (Saunders et al., 2015). In inductive reasoning, the reality guides theory. Comparing the two approaches, it can be seen that induction fits more with this study than deduction. This is because the study aims to reach a general statement about people’s perceptions about advertising activities of Adidas and how they affect consumers’ buying behaviors by gathering data from specific individuals at FPT Company.

Research strategy

The second stage of formulating a research plan is the creation of the researching strategy, which means the overall activities that need to be done to carry out the project (Bryman and Bell, 2015). Typically, available research strategies include experiment, survey, case study, grounded theory, ethnography and action research (Saunders et al., 2015) Taking into account the research directions, the philosophy and approach having been chosen above, the final conclusion for this study is a mixed strategy of Case study and Survey.

Yin (1994) defines case study as “empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident”. Based upon this definition, it is clear that the first reason for the selection of this strategy. Though the literature review has revealed that there is possibly some linkages between individual perception of advertising on a particular matter and their purchasing behavior theoretically, no obvious and explicit evidences about the case of Adidas at a small scope of a company within Vietnamese context have been found so far. Furthermore, the focus of this study is to find out how the perceptions influence specific behaviors from consumers, while Yin (1994) reckon that case study is the best strategy to seek the answers for the question “How” and “Why”.

The research aims to provide both generalized set of findings with statistical data and in-depth analysis within a single investigation. A combination of both quantitative and qualitative methodology could satisfy this objective. The case study strategy help to capture a detailed understanding of the studied, but it still needs to be complemented by one quantitative method for the generalization. The research has some considerable restrains on time, financial capability and collectable ability. Therefore, when assessing all quantitative strategies, the most fitting one for time-and-budget-sensitive projects is survey, as this strategy is the most effective and cost-saving (Kwak and Radler, 2002).

Research design

Data collection method

There are a variety of ways to collect data within survey strategy such as interview, focus group, and telephone interview. After evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of all available methods, the researcher finally reached a decision of using online questionnaire. The facts causing this selection include: the wide-spread use, the money-saving characteristics, and the sample size. Firstly, among the possible way, questionnaire is the most-widely used and easily applicable one for collecting primary data (Saunders et al., 2015). Secondly, taking advantage of the benefits of Internet, questionnaire, especially when distributed online, can be extremely cost-saving, fast and pervasive, making it highly suitable with the limited time and budget of the project (Kwak and Radler, 2002). Last but not least, as the number of surveys to be sent out is fairly sizeable, the ease of distribution of online questionnaire wins over other methods.

Questionnaire design

The questionnaire would be divided into two sections. The first section contains questions that ask respondents their demographic information such as age, gender, level of education and so on. This section has 5 questions. The second section is the main part of the questionnaire, where all the essential data for answering the research questions are collected. The brand perception of Adidas and the purchasing behaviors in this survey are focused on and derived from three main factors, which are emotional response, environmental response and consumer buying behaviours. Aside the ranking, there are at least 3 statements attaching to each element. The respondents are asked to give an assessment on their agreements with the statement, using a Likert scale from 1 to 5.

Time horizon

Saunders et al. (2009) indicate that time horizons are essential for research design. Only when the researcher has a specific schedule to conduct the research and sticks close on it, can she budget her time properly to be able to handle everything. In addition, the time taken for researching is unconstrained by the methodological approach which is selected for the study.

The major types of time horizon consist of Longitudinal and Cross-sectional (Bryman, 2012). The targeted subjects of studies utilizing longitudinal time frame are constantly observed over a period of time, which is prolonged. Normally, researchers observe or investigate the same circumstances or inhabitants a number of times or in a continuous manner to find out change procedure. Meanwhile, the time frame of a researching using cross-sectional horizon is restricted. It is normally conducted when there is restriction of time. In that case, researchers collect data once in a short period of time. While carrying out this research, the researcher applied Cross-sectional time horizon. The researchers had wisely spent one month from 15th March to 15th April to complete every single task.

Sampling

According to what written in “Business Research Methods” by Krishnaswam & Satyaprasad (2010, p.50), a member of the population is an element. It is the subject on which measurement is taken, which is called the unit of study. A part of the population is known as a sample and “the process of drawing a sample a sample from a larger population” is called sampling. As found by Ghauri&Grønhaug (2005), sampling techniques aid researchers in reducing the amount of collected data through focusing on a part of population instead of the whole population. In order to conduct a successful research, a good sampling procedure is a must because it greatly affects how accurate and excellent the research is (Bryman & Bell, 2011). According to Saunders et al. (2012), sampling techniques may be classified into two common types which are probability (as known as ‘random’) and non-probability (as known as ‘non-random’) sampling. During the process of conducting this research, the researcher made a decision to use the probability random sampling technique for her study for two reasons. Firstly, random sampling technique is considered as an impartial way of selecting sample from a given population. While applying this technique, each member of the population has an equal chance of being selected, leading to the degree of symbolic powerwould be raised and thusit is reasonable to make several sweeping generalizations to the whole population (Krishnaswam & Satyaprasad, 2010). Secondly, the sampling bias of the study will be prevented by using this technique, which is important to draw conclusion from the results of the study (Saunders et al., 2012). Even though random sampling is more expensive and time-consuming than those of non-random technique, the benefits it provides has win over the overall costs.

The researcher needs to highly pay attention to the size of the sample as well. According to Newman (1998), the sample size represents the number of individuals selected from the whole population of the research. The sample size could not be chosen randomly but would be affected by factors like available money, researching capability, and temporal restriction of the research (Krishnaswam & Satyaprasad, 2010). After assessing all these factors, the sample size of this research is 200.

Data analysis method

Since the study utilized questionnaire to collect quantitative data, it is essential to have specialized statistical software to process and analyze those data. Recently, there are three prominent packages which are recommended for research of postgraduate level, namely SPSS, SAS, and Stata (Acock, 2005).

Among the three softwares, SAS is a great choice for users who conduct complicated data management on constant basis, as the statistically analytical capability it provided with users is extraordinary with regard to the paid price. However, because of this, it is also fairly complex to use and master. SAS is also a better selection if cutting edge research is involved. Unfortunately, this study does not require the function of managing complex data or aim at a becoming leading research, so SAS is not a fitting choice.

Regarding Stata, it is friendly to academic research with statistical analysis focusing on factor analysis, regression, survey, etc. This makes a reasonable choice for this research. However, it has weaknesses that prevent it from becoming a suitable pick. The interface of Stata is not very user-friendly. It is moderately hard for beginners like the researcher to learn the usage in a short time.

On the other hand, despite not offering great data management capability, SPSS wins over Stata and SAS in terms of ease of use and learning, adequate competence of statistical analysis, and common application. In short, SPSS is the final choice for the research.

Research consideration

Validity and reliability

Validity

According to Coates & Sloan (2008), validity relates to the way data is measured. This measurement should display the level of accuracy of the information represented in the set of data. It can be understood that validity refers to the credibility or believability of the research. In order to ensure the validity of the research, the study is continuously examined and given feedbacks by the thesis supervisor.

Moreover, to avoid bias and equivocal responses, the questionnaire used in this research possesses the most effective and fitting design and structure. In order that the survey can be taken in the most effective way, the researcher decided to carry out pilot test. Pilot test is understood by Saunders et al. (2012) as a simulation of the survey carried out on a small scale with members of the population of the research. It is a widely-used technique, which is often associated with the survey and questionnaire. It is an instrument that allows the researcher to detect any likely hindrances and to make some modification, which enhances the validity and reliability of the research (Bryman & Bell, 2011). The pilot test was carried out twice with 20 individuals of FPT University. Helpful feedbacks have been gathered, most of which helped to discover what is wrong with the questionnaire. They are how long the survey is and the way some questions are displayed. There are some modification suggestions being made, namely the removal of some questions and the alteration of some specialized terms, which make the survey a bit hard to be understood. Therefore, the researcher reached a decision to omit two questions and review the remaining ones.

Reliability

Coates & Sloan (2008) indicate that “reliability is associated with the consistency of the measures, meaning there should have necessary evidences for the fair and objective way of conducting research”. According to what was found by Gay (1987) and cited by Moskal&Leydens in “Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation” (2000), the major types of statistical methods used to establish reliability comprise of test/retest reliability, equivalent-forms reliability, split half reliability and rational equivalence reliability. In the research procedure, the researcher selected test/retest reliability as the main method to ensure reliability. Test/retest reliability refers to a measure of reliability obtained by implementing the same test twice over a period of time to a group of members of the population (Moskal&Leydens, 2000). Then, the researchers can make a direct comparison between the responses collected from two times to evaluate the test for stability over time. In specific, the researcher decided to use questionnaire and pilot test mentioned above to collect data needed to conduct the research.

Ethical consideration

The primary matters concerning with the ethics of the research is the privacy of information. It is obligatory that the confidentiality and anonymity of the respondents’ information should be provided (Cooper & Schindler, 2006). From the start of the research, the researcher has notified the participants in advance about the content of the questionnaire, how their responses would be collected and used in the researching procedure and that their personal information would be protected. She also makes sure that the participants have received the full disclosure of the characteristics of the study, the jeopardies and the opportunity to put questions about the questionnaire in particular and the study in general. The private information and data collected for the research will remain greatly confidential, because the researcher has a full awareness of having respects for the anonymity of the respondents. The data will be utilised merely for the stated objectives of the study. In case the researcher has intention to use the information and data for other purposes, she will have to get approval from the respondents.

Conclusion

The chapter has constructed a detailed framework in order for the research to be conducted and implemented. The realism philosophy and induction approach were adopted in the research procedure. The final conclusion for this study is a mixed strategy of Case study and Survey. Because the research aims to provide both generalized set of findings with statistical data and in-depth analysis within a single investigation, a combination of both quantitative and qualitative methodology could satisfy this objective. Among a variety of ways to collect data within survey strategy, the researcher finally made the decision on using online questionnaire. The explanation and description of questionnaire design, choice of sampling, data analysis method, validity, reliability and ethical issue of the research are also presented respectively. In specific, the sample size of the research would be 200 after taking into account all factors. SPSS was selected in data analyze process. Because the researcher is aware of the importance of validity and reliability, she carefully chose the most suitable methods to carry out. While implementing the survey, the researcher always ensured ethical issue of the research by respecting the anonymity of the respondents and protecting their information from being leaked out.

Findings and Analysis

This section of the paper explores the demographic and the research questionnaire data in an organized and systematic manner. The section is divided into demographic data, correlation analysis, and discussion.

Sample Characteristics: Demographic Data

In order to establish the impact of effective advertising on consumer purchasing behavior in the case of the Adidas brand, the researcher collected data from 100 respondents and the demographic results are summarized in table 1 below. The data was collected to include demographic variables such as age, gender, level of education, ethnicity, and employment status. 100 valid and completely filled questionnaires were collected.

Table 1: Characteristics of the sample (N=100)

Table 1 above provides a summary of the demographic characteristics of the sample population as collected in the questionnaire survey. The above results are discussed below.

Gender

There are 100 respondents who took part in the study survey. 14 respondents were females with the rest being males. The findings revealed that a higher percentage of male respondent participated in the study. The actual percentage of male respondents was 84%. This is summarized in pie-chart 1 below.

Age

In terms of the distribution of age, the researcher noticed that more respondents fall within the age bracket of 10-25 years. Specifically, this age bracket comprised of 43% of the respondents. The age group between 26 and 35 years was represented by 22 respondents, which is equivalent of 22% of all the respondents. The participants between the age of 36 years and 45 years were 21, which is equivalent to 21% of the respondents. Those above the age of 45 years represented 14% of the sample population. However, none of the respondents was above the age of 50 years. Interestingly, the majority of the respondents were within the age of 18 years and 35 years. This is summarized in the pie-chart 2 below.

Education background

As established in table 1 above, it is apparent that the education background of the majority of the respondents was Bachelor degree level. Specifically, respondents with a degree level of education represented 65% of the sample population. Respondents with high school and below education level represented 12% of the sample population. The participants with Masters Level of education represented 12% of the population. Only 11 respondents had Doctorate degree level of education and above. This is summarized in table 2 and diagram 3 below.

Ethnicity

Majority of the respondents were of the American descent at 30% of the sample population followed by the Europeans at 21% and Middle East descent at 15%. The Asians represented by 9% of the sample population and Africans were 13. This summarized in the table and histogram below.

Employment status

From the data generated in table 1 above, it is apparent that 53% of the respondents are in employment with 47% of the sample population indicating that they are unemployed. This means that more than a half of the sample population was drawn from the working class group. This percentage supports that assumption that the respondents have income that can support their purchase of the Adidas product brands. This is summarized in the pie-chart below.

Regression Analysis

This technique was used to evaluate the impact of an effective advertising on consumer purchasing behavior. To carry out regression analysis, it is important to come up with the dependent and the independent variables. In this case, the consumer behavior was the dependent variable while advertisement represented independent variable. The regression equation took the form shown below.

Y = a₀ + a₁X₁ + a₂X₂ + a₃X₃ + a₄X₄ + a₅X₅ + a₆X₆ + a₇X₇ + a₈X₈ + a₉X₉

Summary of the Regression results

Consumer buying behavior 1

Table 3: Descriptive Statistics

Table 4: Correlations
Variables Entered/Removed^b

• a. All requested variables entered.
• b. Dependent Variable: consbeh.

Table 5: Model Summary^b

• a. Predictors: (Constant), iQ3, Dominance, SQ2, pleasure, SQ3, iQ2, iQ1, SQ1, Arousal.
• b. Dependent Variable: consbeh.

ANOVA^b

• a. Predictors: (Constant), iQ3, Dominance, SQ2, pleasure, SQ3, iQ2, iQ1, SQ1, Arousal
• b. Dependent Variable: consbeh.

Coefficients^a

• a. Dependent Variable: consbeh

Coefficient Correlations^a

• a. Dependent Variable: consbeh

Residuals Statistics^a

• a. Dependent Variable: consbeh

Consumer buying behavior 2

Model Summary^b

• a. Predictors: (Constant), iQ3, Dominance, SQ2, pleasure, SQ3, iQ2, iQ1, SQ1, Arousal
• b. Dependent Variable: consbeh2

ANOVA^b

• a. Predictors: (Constant), iQ3, Dominance, SQ2, pleasure, SQ3, iQ2, iQ1, SQ1, Arousal
• b. Dependent Variable: consbeh2

Coefficients^a

Consumer buying behavior 3

Model Summary^b

• a. Predictors: (Constant), iQ3, Dominance, SQ2, pleasure, SQ3, iQ2, iQ1, SQ1, Arousal
• b. Dependent Variable: consbeh3

ANOVA^b

• a. Predictors: (Constant), iQ3, Dominance, SQ2, pleasure, SQ3, iQ2, iQ1, SQ1, Arousal
• b. Dependent Variable: consbeh3

Coefficients^a

• a. Dependent Variable: consbeh3

Consumer buying behavior 4

Model Summary^b

• a. Predictors: (Constant), iQ3, Dominance, SQ2, pleasure, SQ3, iQ2, iQ1, SQ1, Arousal
• b. Dependent Variable: consbeh4

ANOVA^b

• a. Predictors: (Constant), iQ3, Dominance, SQ2, pleasure, SQ3, iQ2, iQ1, SQ1, Arousal
• b. Dependent Variable: consbeh4

Coefficients^a

a. Dependent Variable: consbeh4

Discussion of results

Descriptive statistics

The results for descriptive statistics give information on the mean and standard deviation. The mean for the dependent variable was 1.33 while the standard deviation was 0.473. On the other hand, the mean for the independent variable ranged between 2.15 and 2.57 while the standard deviation ranged between 1.038 and 1.449. This implies that there was no significant difference in the mean of the independent variables. This means that the independent variables, which are pleasure, arousal, dominance, sensory stimulus, and information rate, have relatively the same mean. This may be an indication that the independent variables are likely to have the same impacts on the dependent variable, which is the consumer buying behavior. Therefore, the regression results indicate that the aspects of pleasure, arousal, dominance, sensory stimulus, and information rate of the Adidas ads may have similar level of influence on consumer buying behavior when other factors are held constant. For instance, a customer might be influenced by the information rate in the Adidas adverts in the same degree as the dominating nature of the same adverts. Besides, a potential customer may be influenced by appeal to pleasure in the Adidas adverts in the same way he or she is influenced by arousal nature of the same advert.

Correlation

The results of correlation analysis show the nature of association between the explanatory variables and the dependent variables. Specifically, the coefficients show whether there is a positive or a negative relationship between the two variables that are being analyzed. As indicated in table 3 above, the results of correlation shows that there is a weak positive relationship between consumer buying behavior and arousal, feeling of touch the advertisements give off, sounds and noise of the advertisements, and the videos used in the advertisements for the Adidas products. Specifically, all the values generated were very close to zero, which is an indication of a very weak correlation between the dependent and independent variables. The positive coefficient shows that the consumer purchasing behavior will move in the same direction as these independent variables. The results also shows that there is a weak negative association between pleasure, dominance, sight, scenes, images of the advertisements, the text and lyrics in the advertisements, and pictures and images in the advertisements. This implies that the variables will be moving in opposite directions. This further suggests that the consumer buying behavior will move in opposite direction of these independent variables. The values of the significance shows that there all the correlation coefficients between consumer buying behavior and the explanatory variables are not statistically significant. This can be explained by the fact that the values of significance for all the independent variables are greater than the values of alpha (0.05).

Model summary and ANOVA

This section reviews the R-square value, F-test, and Durbin Watson test, which are critical diagnostic tools for evaluating the validity of the regression line in testing the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. These tools are discussed below.

R-square value

This coefficient gives information on the explanatory power of the independent variables. That is, the amount of variations of the dependent variable explained by the independent variables. A high coefficient of determination implies that the explanatory variables adequately explain variations in consumer buying behavior. Further, the value of coefficient of determination (R-square) is 0.028. The value is quite low and it shows that the independent variables have a weak explanatory power. That is, they explain only 0.28% of the changes in consumer buying behavior. This can also be interpreted that the model does not fit the data well. The adjusted value of R-square is -0.069. In addition, the value of R (0.167), as captured in the model summary results in table above, is quite low and it shows that the regression model is weak.

F – test of the regression models

The overall significance of the regression model can be analyzed using an F – test. The test will be carried out 5% significance level.

• Null hypothesis H0: β0 = β1 =, = βp
• Alternative hypothesis H1: βj ≠ 0, for at least one value of j

The null hypothesis implies that the overall regression line is not significant. The alternative hypothesis implies that overall regression line is significant. The value of F calculated is 0.286 while the significance F is 0.977. The significance F is greater than Alpha. This implies that the overall regression line is not statistically significance. Therefore, it cannot be used for further analysis and to make further inferences about the data.

Durbin Watson Test

This test is used to analyze autocorrelation which is a scenario where the error terms of different periods are related. The null and alternative hypothesis in the Durbin Watson test is shown below.

• Null hypothesis Ho: d = 2 (no autocorrelation)
• Alternative hypothesis H1: d ≠ 2 (There is autocorrelation). It can be positive or negative)

The null hypothesis implies that there is no autocorrelation while the alternative hypothesis implies that there is autocorrelation. The value of Durbin Watson in the results above is 2.348. When rounded off, then the value is two. Thus, the null hypothesis will not be rejected. This implies that there is no autocorrelation.

Analysis of coefficients

The regression equation can be rewritten with the coefficients as presented below.

Y = 1.438 + 0.000X₁ + 0.013X₂ – 0.010X₃ – 0.042X₄ + 0.026X₅ + 0.017X₆ – 0.037X₇– 0.014X₈ – 0.002X₉

The signs of the coefficients of independent variables are consistent with the outcome correlation.

T-test

The t-test will be used to evaluate the statistical significance of the explanatory variables. A two tailed t- test is carried out at 5% significance level.

• Null hypothesis: Ho: b_i = 0
• Alternative hypothesis: Ho: b_i ≠ 0

The null hypothesis implies that the variables are not significant determinants of savings. The alternative hypothesis implies that variables are significant determinant of savings. The results in the table above show that the p-values for all the independent variables are greater than the value of alpha (0.05). Thus, the null hypothesis will not be rejected and this implies that all the independent variables are not significant determinants of consumer purchasing behavior. The results of the regression for the three other consumer buying behaviors are similar to those of the first consumer behavior discussed above. The results show that advertising perception does not have a statistically significant effect on consumer purchasing behaviors.

Discussion: Relating the Findings to the Research Questions

Question 1: Relationships between advertising and consumer behavior theories

Apparently, the regression results indicated that there is a weak but positive correlation between advertisement component and consumer purchasing behavior, probably because of the data sample. However, the findings indicated a positive relationship between advertisement components such as the aspects of pleasure, arousal, dominance, sensory stimulus, and information rate of the Adidas ads as having similar level of influence on consumer buying behavior. The positive relationship between consumer buying behavior and marketing is a clear indication that consumers can be influenced by the advertising component to accept a product, as was the case with the Adidas ads. The positive relationship conforms to the hierarchy of effects model which relates advertisement awareness, interest, and desire as propelling a potential customer to take the action of buying a product. This means that customer behavior is the results of the demands and desires of the customer which provokes them to buy a product to fulfill personal demands and desires, as presented in the content of an advert (Kotler & Keller, 2007). Apparently, from the research findings, it is apparent that advertisement content can be presented to stimulate, dominate, arouse, and inform a client of the potential benefits that can be derived from buying such a product. These factors are equivocal to variables established in the literature review such as personal, culture, and psychological factors as potential influencers of the customer purchasing behavior. This means that studying the contemporary consumer behaviors is essential to the success of businesses in the modern world as consumers are becoming more important, more educated and more complex as was the case with the Adidas case study. Besides, the findings indicated that the three ads by Adidas play an important role in the marketing the company’s sports apparel, changing the perceptions or brand image in the mind of a particular segment of customer. In this case, the youthful customers were the most influenced by the content of the Adidas ads. In addition, customers are always pursuing accurate information when making a decision to buy a product or service as was discovered from the findings of the Adidas case study. This is in conformity to the Engel-Blackwell-Miniard Model proposed by Engel et al. (1986). Same as the case with the above model, the buying process as influenced by the content of the three Adidas adverts comprises of pre-purchase phase, purchase decision phase and post-purchase phase. At the pre-purchase stage, the findings indicated that potential customers of the Adidas brand have to identity the sensory inflection to ensure that the environmental reaction is captured from an advertisement message. This strategy is necessary to ensure that any emotional response results in an effective decision making.

Question 2: Audiences found in the FPT University case study

The audience found in the FPT University study on Adidas is diverse and was classified under different demographic characteristics. In terms of gender, 86% of the respondents were males with only 14% being females. This could be attributed to higher population of the male gender in the university than the female gender. In terms of ethnicity, majority of the respondents were Americans. Specifically, the respondents of American ethnicity were 30% followed by 21% of European ethnicity. The African ethnicity was at number three at 4 at 13% after the Middle Eastern ethnicity at 15%. Only 9 Asians participated in the study. The high percentage of the persons of American and European ethnicity can be attributed to the existence of the university in the US and closer integration of European continent to the US. In terms of level of education, persons with high school education and below comprised of 65% of the sample population followed by respondents with Bachelor degree at 12%. The respondents with Master’s degree were 12 with those possessing Doctorate degree and above at only 11% of the sample population. The disparity in the level of education among the respondents may be attributed to availability to participate in the study. Lastly, in terms of employment, 53% of the respondents who participated in the Adidas study at the university stated that they are employed, with 47% being unemployed. The high unemployment rate among the respondent can be related to environment of the research, which is a learning institutions where majority of the population consists of full time students.

Question 3: Perceptions of advertising

Apparently, the potential customers of Adidas brand are influenced by two factors, that is, internal and external elements such as self-concept, attitude, motivation, perception and emotions derived from an advertisement. These factors have a great influence on the perception and purchasing behavior of customers since they forms patterns that are aligned to the direct and indirect feelings attached to the Adidas brand. In addition, the feelings are often integrated into belief, values, and opinion, which is responsible for shaping the consumer’s buying decision. From the results gathered, it is apparent that customers view the Adidas products are conforming to their beliefs as presented in the advertisement videos. Besides, the respondents were categorical in associating value of the Adidas products as good and satisfactory.

The aspect of psychological effects of marketing on purchasing behavior towards the Adidas products from the advertisement videos proved very difficult to authenticate. The complexity of the psychological factors determining product intake from the Adidas ads was a result of the difficulty in quantifying the psychological variables determining product acceptance and intake. The emotional aspect of consumer behavior connotes the effective perception attached to a product. For instance, in the case of the Adidas ads, the youthful customers, between the age bracket of 18 and 35 years, indicated that the emotional display of the ads exposed them to a certain level of stimulation to develop a positive attitude towards the products. In this case, the attitude of the customers was activated by their level of experience with the product and how the ads reinforced this aspect. Apparently, the respondents indicated that the ads by Adidas were very convincing in creation of a positive perception. The research findings indicates that the purchasing trend of Adidas products tend to progress in a proportionate to the evolving psychographics such as age, education, and gender. For instance, most of the respondents who indicated positive perception towards the Adidas ads fall within the youthful customer brackets. Specifically, majority of the respondents within the 18-25 years and 26-35 years brackets indicated the highest positive perception of the Adidas products from the three ads they watched. The older respondents from the age of 36 and above were not very convinced by the ads to develop positive perception towards the Adidas products. In terms of the level of education, majority of college students (undergraduates) indicated positive attitude towards the Adidas ads and were willing to purchase the products being advertised.

The respondents within the college education bracket were convinced that the value attached to the Adidas products were well represented in the three ads they watched. Those will high school level of education and below were not convinced very much that the positive value attached to the Adidas products were articulated in the ads. The respondents with Masters Degree and above were also not highly convinced that the value of the Adidas products is well articulated in the ads. From the level of education perspective, it is apparent that the highest positive perception of the Adidas products from the three ads was recorded among the respondents with college education. This can be related to their youthful nature and love for products that are associated with sports. Besides, this group falls within the glitterati customer segment; easily convinced by positive review or fashion statement. This explains they positive perception of the Adidas products as influenced by the ads they have watched. However, the respondents with high school education and post graduate qualification are not heavily influenced by trends, thus the low product acceptance, based on the ads. Therefore, it is in order to state that the current ads run by Adidas appeals more the college students than any other customer segment because of the trend, brand association, and the unique sporty culture. In terms of gender, the male respondents were more persuaded by the Adidas ads into accepting the products being marketed than the female respondents. The high product acceptance rate among the male population can be related to their love for sports and the fact that the Adidas brand is associated with several international sporting events. The male gender’s love for sports is a potential factor that influenced the positive perception towards the Adidas products from the ads. Although the female gender is equally active in sports, many males are actively involved in sports as fans and are very keen in celebrating their favorite sports.

Question 4: Purchasing behaviors and advertising perceptions

The regression results indicated that there is a weak but positive relationship between consumer buying behavior and advertisement of the Adidas products. Specifically, there was a weak but positive correlation between the dependent variable (purchasing behavior) and independent variables (aspects of pleasure, arousal, dominance, sensory stimulus, and information rate of the Adidas ads). Therefore, bases on the results of the regression analysis, advertising perception has a small effect on consumer purchasing behavior in the Adidas case study at the university. The small effect can be related to the demographic variables of the research sample population. For instance, almost 50% of the respondents were unemployed and may not be in a position to purchase some of the products they see in the adverts. This created an attitude of disinterest in the subject of customer behavior measurement. Besides most of the targeted population are often impulse buyers who might not give a clear picture of the relationship between marketing and product purchasing behavior.

Conclusion and Recommendation

The research paper attempted to establish the impacts of effective advertisement on consumer purchasing behavior with reference to the Adidas adverts. As a matter of fact, the findings revealed that consumer purchasing behavior is positively related to the content of the marketing or advertisement platforms such visual, audio, or print. The results of the analysis revealed that product advertisement is playing a critical role towards product acceptance as part of consumer purchasing behavior. Specifically, there was a positive correlation between the advertisements variables (aspects of arousal, feeling of touch the advertisements give off, sounds and noise of the advertisements, and the videos used in the advertisements for the Adidas products) and product purchasing behavior among the respondents. Through primary research, consisting of a sample population of 100 respondents, the findings confirmed the theoretical models such as the Engel-Blackwell-Miniard Model and hierarchy of needs model. As indicates in these models, there are internal and external influencers that determine the decision to buy or accept a product before the actual action of buying happens. Besides, the findings of the research conform to the several past case studies that revealed a positive correlation between marketing (specifically advertisement) on consumer purchasing behavior. However, the weak positive correlation could be associated to the case study environment, which is a learning institution where almost half of the sample population is unemployed. Limited or lack of income is equally an external factor that might determine consumer purchasing behavior.

Recommendations

Implementing the traditional marketing approach for the case of the Adidas brand may not be as effective as it was more than ten years ago due to the every dynamic psychographics which determine the consumer behavior as influenced by a marketing strategy. Specifically, the current advertisement strategies that are being applied by Adidas were found to have a weak correlation to the consumer purchasing behavior. This is an indication that the Adidas Company should review its current marketing strategy in order to have stronger influence on the customer purchasing behavior towards its numerous products. Besides, in order to establish the trend in purchasing behavior among targeted customers, the Adidas marketing team should integrate the aspect of direct customer engagement to improve on the brand scale. The current strategy of excessive focus on the marginal brands may be counterproductive, especially for the youthful customers interested in very affordable apparel. This recommendation will give the potential customers an opportunity to scale up their perceived quality value associated with the advertisements of the Adidas products. In addition, the current marketing strategies should be improved to introduce the aspect of emotions since most customers of the Adidas brands are sports enthusiasts. For instance, use of celebrity or glitterati messages might actually improve on the current level of consumer purchasing behavior as influenced by the Adidas adverts.

Area of future research

Incorporating different marketing strategies with the purchasing behavior of a consumer is a wide field because the trends that determine the purchasing behavior are not static. Since the research was targeting to establish the impact of effective adverting on consumer purchasing behavior in the case of the Adidas brand, little attention was accorded the specific performance of different Adidas brands in different cultural environments. Therefore, there is need to zero in on a single brand in a research that covers different cultural environments in order to derived a scientific conclusion that is representational of the entire market that is targeted by the Adidas advertisements.

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Appendix – Questionnaire

Impacts of Effective Advertising on Consumer Purchasing Behavior: The Case Study of Adidas at FPT University

The purpose of this survey is to investigate how advertising activities of Adidas influence consumer purchasing behaviors at FPT university. The personal information provided through the survey will be strictly kept confidential. The collected data will be used only for the above objectives.

***

Demographic Information

What is your age?

• 18-25
• 26-35
• 36-45
• Over 45

What is your gender?

• Male
• Female

What is your level of education?

• High school
• College
• Undergraduate
• Postgraduate

What is your ethnic?

• American
• Europe
• Middle East
• Asian
• African
• Others, please specify: ……………..

Are you currently working?

• Yes
• No. I’m unemployed.

Emotional Response

Please watch the following advertisements made by Adidas before reading the question:

• www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIqC9IYMUOU
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=CupTwyj3JrI
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA-_HGiV6eM
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO_uz3MHdjE

After watching and reading the chosen advertisements made by Adidas, please rate your feelings towards the advertisements with the adjective pair below. For each pair, choose the circle closet to the adjective which you believe to describe your feeling better. The more appropriate that adjective seems, the closer the circle to the adjective you choose.

Environmental Responses

Sensory stimulus

How do the following elements of the shown advertisements make you feel not want to buy Adidas products? Use the scale from 1 to 5 to rate your feeling towards these elements, which 1 = Not at all, 2 = Slightly not want, 3 = Not want, 4 = Very not want, 5 = Strongly not want

Information rate

How do the following elements of the shown advertisements make you want to find more information about Adidas? Use the scale from 1 to 5 to rate your feeling towards these elements, 1 = Not at all, 2 = Slightly want, 3 = Want, 4 = Very want, 5 = Strongly want

Consumer Buying Behaviours

After watching the advertisements, do you feel like buying Adidas products?

• Yes
• No
• Rate yourself as sport-wear Adidas person on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being lowest and 5 being heighest)_____________

Where do you often shop for Adidas products?

• Shopping mall
• Adidas Store
• Adidas website
• Other online Adidas retailers

How often do you buy Adidas products?

• Rarely
• Sometimes
• Often
• Usually
• Always