How can level of effort and decisional control in taking part of an ad influence brand attitude, ad attitude and purchase intention?

Sammanfattning: In contrast to the widespread assumption that consumer effort are bad for business, recent research has demonstrated that companies could in fact benefit from demanding more effort from their customers. Although equity and dissonance theory stipulates that consumers tend to justify increased levels of effort by cognitively inflating their perceptions of the product and brand, this effect has yet never been examined on online video advertising with real brands as stimulus. In order to test the concept of consumer effort for real life online video advertisements, a quantitative experiment was conducted. For a total sample of 388 respondents, we manipulated consumer effort in regards of decisional control, and used real life advertisements of both high and low advertiser effort as stimulus. The findings demonstrate that consumer effort in general yields higher attitudes towards the ad and the brand, and that the effect is mediated by the consumer's perception of an equitable exchange. In addition, the study finds that the positive effect of increasing consumer effort in online video advertising is significantly greater when the consumers perceive themselves to be in control of the invested effort. The study contributes to the uncharted literature on consumer effort in advertising, and suggests that advertisers could fruitfully aim to incorporate elements of controlled effort to their advertising. In addition, the advertising industry in general would benefit if the concept of consumer effort were also introduced on a higher platform level.