The Effects of Online Advertising on Consumer Aggression - Chris Lobus

THE EFFECTS OF ONLINE ADVERTISING ON CONSUMER AGGRESSION
Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the
Alliant School of Management
Alliant International University
San Diego
In Partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Business Administration
by
Christopher A Lobus, M.S.
2014
Approved by:
Ute Jamrozy, Ph.D., Chairperson
Rachna Kumar, Ph.D.
Wendy Chung, Ph.D.
Martin Cary, Ph.D.

iiRunning Head: THE EFFECTS OF ONLINE ADVERTISING ON CONSUMER AGGRESSION
© Christopher A. Lobus

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Abstract
Marketers continue to understand that over-exposing consumers to advertisements enhances
brand and product recall, but this situation also agitates consumers. Advertisements purposefully
serve as distracting agents that disrupt consumer focus and create freedom-threatening situations.
According to the theory of psychological reactance, this causes people to do anything possible
(even if it is violent) to restore that lost freedom; hence, the likelihood for an aggressive
consumer response to an advertisement. Furthermore, while marketing exists in all countries, the
United States and United Kingdom are two of the world’s richest countries. Firms in these
societies advertise with some of the largest advertising budgets in the world, exposing their
citizens to the highest online advertising levels possible. This study focused on: (1) how
intrusive online advertisements are perceived, (2) how much reactance online ads arouse, (3) if
online advertising locations and levels of animation contribute to greater levels of reactance
arousal, and (4) if heightened states of reactance lead to aggressive consumers. These effects
were measured amongst British and American consumers. It was found that country of origin
best explains results for perceptions of ad intrusiveness. US participants experienced this to
greater levels than UK subjects; however, UK subjects began the study with already higher
perceptions that ads are intrusive. Fully animated ads on the right side of the page were
perceived as the most intrusive. Similar results were achieved for reactance arousal. US and UK
subjects both became highly reactant with US subjects experiencing it more, but UK subjects
began in already higher reactant states. It was unclear which treatment combination achieved
this, however. Age was also evaluated as a covariate, revealing that older US consumers
perceive online ads to be more intrusive and more highly reactant to them than younger shoppers
from the UK. While not clear on which advertising treatment combinations best explain it, the

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analysis revealed that increases in intrusive levels increase reactance arousal and, as reactance
arousal increases, so does the desire to respond aggressively to the advertised brand or product as
a consumer.

vTHE EFFECTS OF ONLINE ADVERTISING ON CONSUMER AGGRESSION
Acknowledgements
This dissertation could not have been completed without the support and encouragement of
many friends, family, colleagues, and my dissertation committee. Regarding the support of my
committee members, I am most grateful that never gave up on me and challenged me
appropriately throughout my doctoral transformation process, which was essentially this
dissertation. Because they served their positions on my committee well and up to the most
serious of academic standards, I am a better academician for it, feeling fully confident in the
reliability, validity, and robustness of my study. Dr. Cary offered a unique perspective from the
field of psychology, providing me with the right amount of multi-disciplinary insight needed to
appropriately contribute to behavioral knowledge. Dr. Kumar and Dr. Chung both helped me see
how my study fits into Marketing’s bigger picture, enlightening me to elements I had not
previously considered multiple times throughout the time it took me to complete it. They also
both supported my approach and provided critical guidance when it was greatly needed. Dr.
Jamroy’s unique ability to trigger self-learning among—the most important quality of teaching,
in my opinion—could not have been more apparent with me during this study. This study and
writing this dissertation was a transformative process for me and Dr. Jamrozy instigated like any
high-quality teacher should. She challenged me appropriately so that I can conduct myself in the
field of Marketing independently with authority. I cannot thank her enough.
Amongst colleagues, I owe thanks to many. Dr. Matthew Wheeler, Dr. San Bolkan, Dr. Gor
Sarkisyan, and Dr. Aaron Wester, who are all doctors in other fields besides Marketing, provided
me with key mentorship at different times throughout my writing of this dissertation. Dr.
Wheeler inspired me to even begin. Without seeing him graduate, I would likely not have
thought such a feat was possibly by my doing. He offered critical encouragement and

viTHE EFFECTS OF ONLINE ADVERTISING ON CONSUMER AGGRESSION
confidence building in order for me to even begin the program. Dr. Bolkan helped me
understand the key concepts I used early on and enlightened me on necessary aspects when I
conceived my theoretical framework. Dr. Sarkisyan challenged my approach and procedures as
well as provided me with insight into the process to help me understand what to expect. Dr.
Wester greatly helped at the end by offering an outside perspective and helping to clarify my
perspective on the results of my study.
Also during my study, Dr. BangXiu Zhao and Richard Gardner (MA) spent many hours with
me ensuring that I took the correct statistical approach and built my survey appropriately.
Without their help I would have been lost and it would have taken me twice as long to find my
way. They were crucial to the success of my study. BangXiu spent an especially lengthy
amount of time with me, helping me understand the statistical context in which I was referencing
as well as pointing me to appropriate sources for me to cite and from which to learn. She also
helped me learn how to learn on my own in the statistical realm, which (again) makes me that
much stronger and confident.
Last, but not certainly least, I have many friends and family to thank. My parents and
extended family always inquired enthusiastically about my study and greatly helped me think
through parts of it. My friends at home, work, and in my immediately surroundings here in San
Diego as well as those from previous residences and experiences continuously expressed their
sincere support and encouragement. Most notably, however, was my wife, Alison Lobus.
Throughout this entire doctoral program and the writing of my dissertation, she has been an
intellectual sounding board as well as my chief supporter and encourager to get through it. This
program was an extreme transition into a new life for me and she was just as much of a part of it
as I was with the amount of time it took away from us and for the period in which it felt like it

viiTHE EFFECTS OF ONLINE ADVERTISING ON CONSUMER AGGRESSION
was putting our lives on hold. I can’t think of anyone else who could possibly be so patient with
me other than her. For a while, I unfortunately put something before her love and I regret that
this had to be done. But, it is over and to thank her for her patience and understanding is vastly
understated and does not truly capture my sentiment and gratuity. My appreciation for her
always, but especially during this time in our lives, is so much greater. While we will always
love each other with all of our hearts, getting through this program and study and finally
completing the transition to a new academic level has made us even stronger as a couple. I know
that I am meant to spend the rest of my life with her, but her perseverance throughout this
dissertation showed me that in such a brighter light than I was ever able to see it before. Alison,
while I cannot say it enough, I still will to begin to express my love and appreciation for you: I
love you and thank you for all that you have done for me to help me complete this dissertation.

viiiTHE EFFECTS OF ONLINE ADVERTISING ON CONSUMER AGGRESSION
Table of Contents
Abstract iii
Acknowledgements v
List of Tables xiii
List of Figures xiii
CHAPTER I. Introdction 1
Current State of Advertising 3
An Increasing Use of Digital Advertising 5
Marketing Reform and the Ethics of Advertising 7
Ethics of Using Sex and Violence in Ads 9
Models for Marketing Reform 10
Theory of Psychological Reactance 13
Reactance and Consumer Behavior 14
Advertising as a Possible Cause of Psychological Reactance 15
Information Processing and Overload 15
Reactance with Online Advertisements 17
Purpose of this Study 19
Scope of the Study 23
Manipulations 23
Objectives of the Study 24
Research Questions and Hypotheses 24
Definition of Terms 26
Aggression 26

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Aggressive Consumers 27
Psychological Reactance 27
Online Advertisements 27
Online Consumers 27
Chapter I Summary 28
CHAPTER II. Literature Review 29
Chapter Introduction 29
Exploring Aggression 30
Basic Aggression: Insights from Animals 30
Human Aggression: Cultural Insights 31
Consumer Aggression toward Advertising 34
Increases in Exposures to Violence Leads to More Violence 37
How Aggressive Responses to Advertising Result in Consumer Reactance 38
The Boomerang Effect 40
In-store Experiences 42
Negative and Positive Word-of-Mouth Communication 43
Anti-Brand and -Product 46
Effects of Personality, Mood, Attitude, and Feelings on Advertising Aggression 47
Personality 47
Attitude and Mood 51
Feelings and Emotions 56
Qualities of Online Advertisements that lead to Aggression 59
Frequency of online Advertising 61

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Duration and Timing of online Advertising 62
Advertising Location 65
Advertisement Animation Levels 68
Chapter II Summary 74
CHAPTER III. Methodology 75
Research Design 75
Experimental Stimulus 78
Subjects 82
Sampling Procedures 85
Instrument 95
Data Analysis 96
Chapter III Summary 101
CHAPTER IV. Research Findings 102
Samples 102
Profile of the Respondents 103
Treatment Groups 104
Exploratory Factor Analysis 106
Data Screening and Manipulation Checks 106
Descriptive Statistics 110
Reliability and validity 112
Assumptions 112
Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) 116
Descriptive Statistics for Perceived Ad Intrusiveness 116

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Descriptive Statistics for Reactance Arousal 116
Descriptive Statistics for Desire for Consumer Aggression 119
Multivariate Effects 119
Univariate Effects for Perceived Ad Intrusiveness 122
Univariate Effects for Reactance Arousal 126
Univariate Effects for Desire for Consumer Aggression 130
Correlation Analysis of the Dependent Variables 133
Post-Hoc Analysis 136
Additional Findings 137
Chapter IV Summary 140
CHAPTER V. Findings, Contributions, Limitations, and Future Research 143
Discussion of Findings and Conclusions 143
Contributions of This Research 149
Limitations and Future Research 153
References 157
APPENDIX A. Screenshots and Sequence of the Study 177
Introduction Page 178
Demographic Page 179
Pre-Test Page 180
Treatment Page 181
Post-Test Page 185
Incentive Page 186
Exit Page 187

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APPENDIX B. Pre- and Post-Test Questionnaires 188
APPENDIX C. Treatment Groups 195

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List of Tables
Table 1. Treatment Groups 77
Table 2. Treatment Combinations 82
Table 3. US and UK Participant Recruitment Websites 83
Table 4. Measurement Items and Scales Used in the Pre- and Post-Test Questionnaire 95
Table 5. Re-Distribution of Measurement Questions after Rotation 109
Table 6. Item Mean Scores for Pre- and Post-Test Responses 111
Table 7. Descriptive Statistics for Perceived Ad Intrusiveness 116
Table 8. Descriptive Statistics for Reactance Arousal 118
Table 9. Descriptive Statistics for Desire for Consumer Aggression 120
Table 10. Multivariate Results for Between Groups Effects 121
Table 11. Multivariate Results Before and After Treatments Combined with Country 122
Table 12. Between Groups Effects on Perceived Ad Intrusiveness 122
Table 13. Repeated Measures Effects on Perceived Ad Intrusiveness 123
Table 14. Between Groups Effects on Reactance Arousal 128
Table 15. Repeated Measures Effects on Reactance Arousal 128
Table 16. Repeated Measures Effects on Desire for Consumer Aggression 131
Table 17. Paired-Samples t Test of the Before and After Results for Dependent Variables 133
Table 18. Correlation Results for Post-Treatment Dependent Variables 135
Table 19. Multivariate Results of Between Groups Effects for Covariates 138
Table 20. Multivariate Results of Repeated Measures Effects for Covariates 138
Table 21. Between Groups Effects of Age 139
Table 22. Repeated Measures Effects of Age 139

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Table 23. Summary of Hypothesis Testing 140
Table C1. Number of Usable Samples by Treatment Group 196

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List of Figures
Figure 1. Theoretical Framework. ................................................................................................22
Figure 2. Conceptual Model. ........................................................................................................73
Figure 3. Ad Location...................................................................................................................80
Figure 4. Ad Animation Levels. ...................................................................................................81
Figure 5. Advertisement Used to Recruit Participants..................................................................84
Figure 6. Number of Respondents by Age for US Subjects. ......................................................103
Figure 7. Number of Respondents by Age for UK Subjects.......................................................104
Figure 8. Number of Respondents per Treatment Group. ..........................................................106
Figure 9. Perceived Ad Intrusiveness by Country. .....................................................................124
Figure 10. Perceived Ad Intrusiveness due to Level of the Ad’s Animation. ............................125
Figure 11. Reactance Arousal by Country..................................................................................130
Figure A1. Screenshot of the Introduction Page.........................................................................179
Figure A2. Screenshot of the Demographic Page.......................................................................179
Figure A3. Screenshot of the Pre-Test Page. ..............................................................................180
Figure A4. Screenshot of the Treatment Page without Any Treatments Applied. .....................181
Figure A5. Ad Treatment: Top of the Page. ...............................................................................182
Figure A6. Ad Treatment: Left Side of the Page........................................................................183
Figure A7. Ad Treatment: Middle of the Page. ..........................................................................183
Figure A8. Ad Treatment: Right side of the Page. .....................................................................184
Figure A9. Ad Treatment: Bottom of the Page...........................................................................184
Figure A10. Screenshot of the Post-Test Page............................................................................185
Figure A11. Screenshot of the Incentive Page............................................................................186

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Figure A12. Screenshot of the Exit Page....................................................................................187

1THE EFFECTS OF ONLINE ADVERTISING ON CONSUMER AGGRESSION
CHAPTER I
Introduction
Advertising is all around us. Rayport (2013) writes that “in this media saturated world,
advertising strategies built on persuading through interruption, repetition, and brute ubiquity are
increasingly ineffective” (p. 78). Common marketing industry beliefs are that the effects of
advertising are long-term (Clarke, 1976; Lodish et al., 1995) and there is extensive literature to
support the effectiveness of carry-over benefits and increased learning through repetition
(Sawyer & Ward, 1979). Thus, advertising’s ubiquity is carried out by design and fueled
through the tens of billions of dollars marketers spend on advertising throughout the world every
year. Furthermore, advertising’s reach and repetition is ever-expanding through advances in
technology. Fearful of marketing’s impact, many scholars continue to study the discipline in
order to better understand consumer behavior and seek out appropriate methods for regulation
and reform.
Marketers often launch manipulative campaigns on purpose: not because they appease
consumers, but because they continue to drive sales and increase revenue. Quandt (1956)
conducted an experimental study, finding that consumers do not purchase products according to
the features in which they find critical to their needs; rather, some consumers decide to purchase
products based on features in which they previously found as irrelevant. The behavioral
phenomena that are central to these conclusions are supported by the decision-making research
of Zajonc (1980) many years later, who explored how humans process their inputs
subconsciously and their effects on automatic recognition, concluding that such behind-the-
scenes variables are major drivers of human decision making. For marketing, the implications
from these two studies is that if annoying ads somehow standout and trigger an automatic

cognition process, then they may affect a consumer’s behavior. To add even more validity, this
line of thought is aligned with Fritz’s (1979) conclusions that annoying ads are effective because
of their high memory recall.
In addition to proliferating annoying ads on purpose, many marketers push hard-sell tactics
through their advertising as well, leaving consumers less than pleased. Campbell (1995) finds
that when ads are manipulative, consumers are not persuaded by them as much as when they are
not found to be manipulative. This research is supported by previous studies on hard-sell
campaigns. Saegert (1987) studied various types of coercion in advertising, showing that
subliminal advertising, for instance, is not effective since it only leads to annoying consumers.
Also, Singhapakdi and Vitell (1990) uncover that Machiavellian motivations influence many
ethical decisions processes of marketing managers when they attempt to sell more of their
company’s products and services through advertising. By these studies, it is understood that
such hard-sell tactics and coercion methods lead to consumer aversion of advertising.
Uncovering the aspects of advertising that lead to advertising avoidance is explained through
many seminal studies that identify consumer reactions to them. Raymond and Greyser (1968),
Aaker and Bruzzone (1985), and Wang et al. (2002) showcase how consumers perceive
advertisements to be irritating and annoying, which leads to increases in their levels of
frustration. Similar to this, Edwards, Li, and Lee (2002) found that consumers view
advertisements as intrusive, which also adds to increases in levels of consumer frustration. It is
also known from Speck and Elliot (1997) that consumers outright avoid advertisements when
frustration levels are high. So, understanding the psychology of frustrating advertisements is
necessary for this study.

Through his research, Aronson (2008) finds that “frustration is most pronounced when the
goal is becoming palpable and drawing within reach, when expectations are high, and when the
goal is blocked unjustifiably” (p. 273). Therefore, it is necessary to further investigate the
psychological phenomena that address blocking one’s goals. Jack Brehm’s (1966) theory of
psychological reactance continues to be the only one that accounts for a person’s autonomy. He
explains that reactance is aroused when someone’s freedom is blocked or the threat of that
freedom is taken away. Several authors have since applied this knowledge to advertising and
agree that reactance is seen when the consumer is frustrated by an advertisement (Clee &
Wicklund, 1980; Edwards, Li, and Lee, 2002; Li & Meeds, 2005, Li & Meeds, 2007) or some
aspect of the advertisement (Dillard & Shen, 2005; Miller et al., 2007).
Current State of Advertising
Marketers have a long history of pushing advertisements to consumers in various ways
throughout the world. For the past several hundred years, businesses have paid for advertising
(versus achieving it through simple forms of word-of-mouth) to sell and market their brands and
products. Beginning with the first print ads in London newspapers in the seventeenth century
(Advertising, Encyclopedia Britannica, 2010), however, the placement of advertisements began
their expansion into creative new places. Also, countries like the United Kingdom and France
started the development of their deep advertising history. Now, all nations throughout the world
advertise in every place, format, and location imaginable with the countries home to the world’s
most wealthy businesses dominating global advertising expenditures. The distribution of global
advertising spending for 2013 was dominated by countries in North America (35.6%), Asia-
Pacific (27.9%), and Western Europe (21%) with all other regions accounting for a
comparatively small remaining amount (Statist, 2014). Within these wealthy groups, the United

States is another country who displays a strong history and culture of advertising. From the rise
of hundreds of successful agencies on New York’s Madison Avenue in the mid-twentieth
century to internet advertising pioneers like America Online (AOL, Encyclopedia Britannica,
2010; corp.aol.com, 2014) in the 1990s and Google in the 2000s, marketers in the US continue to
pave future advertising paths that the world continues to follow.
As it stands today, marketers spend billions of dollars a year on advertising throughout the
world. According to Nielson, global advertising expenditures increased by 3.2 % in 2012 to
$557 billion (Nielson, 2013). In the US alone, marketers spent more than half of that amount at
roughly $300 billion—the top 100 firms of which accounted for nearly a third of that at $104.5
billion (Ad Age, 2013). In Europe, overall advertising expenditures decreased by 6% (Nielson,
2013) last year, but the UK actually increased the amount of money it spends on advertising by
2.3 % to over £17,176 billion (which is approximately US $26 billion according to global
currency exchange rates at the time of this writing). Furthermore, the pace of advertising
spending in these two countries is not expected to slow down. Both the US and the UK are
forecasted to increase their advertising expenditures over the coming years. According to the
analysis of several industry review groups (Nielson, 2013; Ad Age, 2013), both the US and UK
are on track to increase their year-over-year advertising spending amounts by at least 3%.
With such a long history of advertising and the rapid expansion of the Internet,
advertisements are now seen in many formats and places. They are separated into “traditional”
and “non-traditional” categories. Traditional placements are areas where consumers already
expect to see advertisements, such as a commercial on TV or a printed advertisement in a
newspaper. However, marketers now creatively place advertisements on cars, in the air with
colored smoke, and on the jerseys of professional athletes, offering up new and unique

advertisement placements in order to further reach their consumer base (Solomon, Consumer
Behavior, 2009). Combined with evidence that more exposure to advertising helps get their
brands and products noticed (Clarke, 1976; Lodish et al., 1995; Sawyer & Ward, 1979),
marketers continue to deliver advertisements in frequent, disruptive, and invasive manners,
creating a situation where pervasive advertising exists throughout society.
Finally, whether it is in a traditional or non-traditional location, online advertisements are
increasing contributors to this situation of pervasive advertising. While the digital space remains
to be only a small portion of total advertising expenditures by marketing firms all over the world,
year-over-year comparisons of marketing spending by category reveals that digital is emerging
as the fastest growing advertising investment space. By 2015, analysts predict the percentage of
overall advertising spending to be a quarter of total marketing budgets (Economist, 2013). This
is rationalized by the following logic:
Advertisers like them because they can be aimed more precisely at a target audience
(with a particular demographic profile and browsing history) than, say, television or radio
ads. They also get a better idea of whether anyone is actually looking at the ads they are
paying for (Economist, 2013).
Overall, as seen from their large budgets, marketers push advertisements to consumers in
various ways, contributing to pervasive advertising situations.
An Increasing Use of Digital Advertising. While television advertising continues to remain
the lion’s share of total world-wide advertising expenditures at over 60% in 2013, advertisers
around the world increased the amount of money they spent on Internet advertising by 9.9 % to
1.9% of global advertising expenditures in 2012 (Nielsen, 2013). Furthermore, nearly 22% of
global ad spending is now on digital advertising mediums (such as the Internet, TV, and mobile

devices) and such expenditures are expected to increase to 27% by 2017 (Vranica & Bender,
2013).
Internet advertising expenses continue to grow throughout the world, achieving nearly
double-digit increases year-over-year in the United States and Europe (Nielsen, 2013; Ad Age,
2013). In the US, digital marketing expenditures for 2013 exceeded analysts’ expectations
(Nielsen, 2013; Vranica & Steward, 2013) by nearly $10 billion, reaching over $43 billion total
(Sebastian, 2014; Johnson, 2014). In the UK, the amount of Pound-Sterling spent on digital
marketing rose by nearly 16% to over £6 billion (AA/Warc, 2013; eMarketer, 2013), which is
nearly $10 billion (according to global currency exchange rates at the time of this writing).
Whereas earlier marketing was confined to only billboards, magazines, newspapers, radio,
and television, the Internet now offers marketers an increasingly higher number of platforms and
digital capabilities in which to reach their consumers. The Internet is more than one more
medium—it is customizable, dynamic, interactive, and growing. Since the beginning of Web 2.0
where the Internet became even more interactive, marketers have ever increasingly unique
opportunities to reach their clientele. Parise, Guinan, and Weinberg (2008) define Web 2.0 as
“the set of tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and
collaborate on projects online…[which] includes blogs, wikis, social-networking sites and other
online communities, and virtual worlds” (WSJ online). According to these authors, marketers
are largely behind the power curve and lend evidence to the growing need to reform the
discipline, especially in this new Internet age where digital advertising is on the rise.
Digital advertising potential is still largely untapped and the opportunity is ever increasing.
US adult consumers will spend more time this year on digital media than they do on TV (WSJ
online). As TV viewing time in the US remains flat at 4 hours and 31 minutes in 2013 and 4

hours and 38 minutes in 2012, consumption of digital media surpassed these numbers for the first
time in 2013 to 5 hours and 9 minutes.
Addressing growing digital advertising trends are emerging in marketing academia. Parise
(2008) specifically cautions marketing managers to understand the search goals of their
consumers and carefully select effective search engines in which to target their campaigns.
When this is not achieved, they find that consumers are easily frustrated with online
advertisements because they view them as irrelevant and a waste of their time. Consumer search
goals are more obtainable on digital platforms and more studies like this one need to be
conducted to advance marketing knowledge in the ever changing digital arena.
Marketing Reform and the Ethics of Advertising
Many scholars do not feel that intentionally annoying consumers in order to increase sales is
useful or helpful to society. They advocate for marketing reform. Hyman, Tansey, and Clark
(1994), for instance, call on academics to “develop theoretically and psychometrically sound
scales for measuring the public’s attitude about the ethicality of some advertising practices” (p.
14).
In our current paradigm of expansive opportunities and endless virtual touch points,
advertising is a unique sociological tool with inherent psychological risks (LaTour & Zahra,
1989; Zinkhan, 1994). Ducoffe (1995) contends that the marketing ethics will be upheld if the
advertisement’s value is apparent and delivered in a meaningful way, such as through
entertainment, to consumers. He writes,
Were a consumer benefit measure like advertising value accepted as part of a general
theory of how advertising changes attitudes, promoting its use in the design and
evaluation of campaigns could help the profession defend itself against criticism that it is

primarily about manipulative communication strategies limited to servicing the needs of
organizations (p. 14).
Since Ducoffe (1995) wrote that, marketers, through societies such as the American Marketing
Association (AMA), continue to strive for industry-wide ethical best practices, but many scholars
are still working hard to reform the discipline. Values of “respect” and “citizenship” as well as
norms like “do not harm” and “embrace ethical values” (AMA, 2011) are credos encouraged by
the AMA that protect consumers and society from damage.
Marketers have an obligation, by these values, to act responsibly and not purposely harm or
annoy the consumer. One such instance of adherence to these principles is when companies
collectively discontinued their use of subliminal advertising in the 1950s. In addition to a
defensive public reaction, Saegert (1987) proves that such tactics are only effective in extreme
circumstances when consumer thought is exactly aligned to the subliminally advertised
message’s content—a rare enough case that makes the effort far from fruitful. However, Saegert
also admits that marketers will use whatever means will make them money (p. 119).
Despite proclaiming to adhere to ethical standards, the opportunity to maliciously influence
consumers is still available and in greater capacity than ever before. Additionally, the reach of
marketing promotions is widening with advances in technology, allowing marketers to enjoy an
even greater impact on, and reach throughout, society. Not only do advertisements reside on all
consumable mediums, they stretch into applications and appear on top of programming,
distracting consumers and interrupting their focus, which leads to specific consumer reactions
that can be measured. When these reactions are negative, aggressive and violent occurrences are
possible, which presents an ethical dilemma on society: if it is discovered that people are angered
by advertisements and advertisements are encouraged to be shown even more frequently through

existing market research on their positive effects of brand recall, then marketers are directly
contributing to a more aggressive society.
Still seeing the need to reform marketing as a discipline, but also appeal to the business of
marketing, Rayport (2013) advises advertisers to:
Think less about what advertising says to its targets and more about what it does for
them. Rather than conceive ad campaigns with a beginning, a middle, and an end that
hammer home a point, they must think about advertising—as well as the offerings it
promotes—as a sustained and rewarding presence in consumers’ lives (p. 78).
Goldsmith and Lafferty (2000) also found that advertising should be reevaluated and improved
since marketers generally fall short of connecting their online advertising to other channels in a
cross-platform study they conducted. A study by Dahlen and Lange (2005) also concluded that
marketers often miss the mark with their advertisements and need to reevaluate their strategies to
maintain or improve purchase intention.
Ethics of Using Sex and Violence in Ads. In addition to poor marketing execution,
advertisements can be very powerful and could inflict great harm on society. To garner more
attention and gain the competitive edge, businesses are still quick to deploy edgy material—such
as sex and violence—on purpose. This comes even after Bushman and Bonacci (2002) found
over 10 years ago that sex and violence do not actually sell anything. To the contrary, they find,
sex and violence impair the memory of consumers in retaining messages after seeing graphic and
sexual content. To explain this, they write that “people pay attention to sex and violence, thus
reducing the amount of attention they can direct toward other stimuli” (p. 561).
In a later study, Bushman (2005) not only reaffirms that sex and violence on TV hinder
consumers processing of commercials, but also defines the negative impacts they have on society

as a hole, stating that “televised violence increases societal violence” (p. 706). This finding
advances the work of Zillmann and Weaver (1999), who earlier found that too much exposure to
media violence increases hostile behavior and that this is not good for society. “It appears that
media violence plants concepts of hostility that can be activated by any ill feelings and can foster
mean-spiritedness toward the person’s social environment at large” (p. 160). Marketers,
therefore, should be obligated to carefully review their messaging in order to prevent
unnecessarily inciting or instigating hostile behavior from their consumer base.
Models for Marketing Reform
Many studies show that businesses do not benefit from advertisements that are not well
received by consumers (Greyser 1973, Hustad & Pessemier 1973, Lundstrom & Lamont 1976,
Aaker & Bruzzone, 1985, Stayman & Aaker, 1988, Longman, 1997), but Singhapakdi and Vitell
(1990) find that they enjoy high return when using manipulative marketing practices. So, there
is little incentive for marketing managers to follow a tactic other than annoying, disruptive, and
invasive advertising if it serves their ultimate sales needs. Much to Hyman, Tansey, and Clark’s
(1994) advice, scholars continue to question whether or not consumers are, in turn, positively or
negatively affected from an ethical standpoint (Zinkhan, 1994; Hyman, Tansey, and Clark,
1994). Pollay (1986), for instance, writes that reputable scholars from the fields of humanities
and social sciences who deeply examined the moral effects of advertising on society regard it as
“intrusive and environmental and its effects as inescapable and profound” as well as “reinforcing
materialism, cynicism, irrationality, selfishness, anxiety, social competitiveness, sexual
preoccupation, powerlessness, and/or a loss of self-respect” (p. 896). Others (LaTour & Zahra,
1989; Kohn & Smart, 1984) re-state the persuasive power of advertising and caution marketers

to exercise restraint with their advertising so as not to intentionally distribute harmful
consequences on society.
Other scholars linked marketing ethics with ideology. Treise et al. (1994) found that the
standpoint of consumers is based on their relative attachment to advertising situations versus
their overall beliefs about them. They examined the ethical reactions of consumers faced with
controversial advertising to children, campaigns that unfairly target poor minorities, marketing
that encourages women as homemaker roles, fear appeals to teenagers, and how sexuality in
advertising encourages teenage fornication. Their overall results show that “consumers believe
advertising often violates broad ethical norms” (p. 59), but their ethical ideology ultimately
determines how they judge advertisers.
Studying the need for marketing reform is hardly a new practice in academia, but the need to
continue to do so could not be more apparent with the current scenario of information overload
through marketers’ use of frequent, disruptive, and invasive advertising. A compelling reason to
keep the subject of marketing reform at the forefront of academic focus is marketing’s
continuous expansion through technology. As digital breakthroughs occur, marketers continue
to be offered more platforms and formats in which to publish their advertisements, ubiquitously
replicating and transferring their all too frequent, disruptive, and annoying advertising methods.
Laczniak (1983) points out the long history of studying resolutions to unethical marketing
practices and offers improvements through his proposed framework of providing “marketing
managers with a philosophical mnemonic which serves to remind them of their ethical
responsibilities” (p. 16). Many other authors propose frameworks for evaluating marketing
ethics. Before him, Kotler, Gregor and Rogers (1977) introduced managers to a valuable
marketing audit process. Their findings “include detecting unclear or inappropriate marketing

objectives, inappropriate strategies, inappropriate levels of marketing expenditures, needed
improvements in organization, and needed improvements in systems for marketing information,
planning, and control” (p. 596). While their model seems like a panacea for eliminating corrupt
marketing practices, the need for more study on how to best reform the discipline persists since
Kotler, Gregor, and Rogers’ conclusions are taken too literally. Therefore, Hunt and Vitell
(1986) attempt to extend the traditional guidance of marketing ethics by offering a model that
guides rather than prescribes. They base it off of two widely accepted theoretical foundations to
moral philosophy—deontological and teleological theories. Ultimately, their model helps
marketing managers analyze and resolve ethical marketing conflicts in the “intrafirm setting,
where managers are interested in helping their personnel to identify, analyze, and (hopefully)
resolve their ethical problems” (p 15).
Whether this knowledge accurately advanced effective advertising sentiment to consumers
since those authors wrote their studies is evidently doubtful. Through their collection of
marketing reform articles, Seth and Sisodia (2006) offer that there are still many opportunities
and areas in which to reform marketing. On the oversaturated nature of US-based advertising,
for instance, Johansson (2006) writes that “when summed across all competitors in a product
category and across all markets, the clutter and noise is annoying to most people and an
embarrassment to the marketing profession” (p. 38).
Next, Wind (2006) challenges the mental models of marketing and elucidates the point that
“there have been dramatic changes in the environment that require us to rethink our approaches
to marketing” (p. 96). He demonstrates how 30 second television commercials, for instance, are
hardly viewed anymore (based on a survey of consumers who have the ability to fast forward

them via their DVR-enabled cable boxes) and points out that word of mouth through social
media for some of these segments are now more effective forms of advertising (p. 93).
Smith (2006) blames the marketing model as the reason for resistant consumers. He writes:
Indeed, more often than not, bad marketing is nothing but standard marketing practice
carried to an extreme. Arrogant spammers and telemarketers employ the customary
practices of interruption and intrusiveness. The only difference is that they are more
aggressive in putting these principles into action (p. 17).
To the points these authors address, there will always be marketing managers who are an
embarrassment to the profession and break ethical rules. While Laczniak (1993) is hopeful that
alternative paradigms, cross-cultural evaluations, investigations into ethical gaps, and a better
informed advocacy (p. 94) are on the horizon for marketers in their efforts to further develop the
practice, the need to reform marketing (especially since advertising) is still a much needed
endeavor for both academics and practitioners to pursue.
To further the study of marketing reform, this paper seeks to measure the effects of
advertising on consumer aggression. However, to better understand aggression in marketplace
exchanges, the exact situation of the consumer and his encounters with advertising is necessary
to review. To do so, the theory of psychological reactance is applied in this examination.
Theory of Psychological Reactance
Brehm (1966) first introduced the concept of psychological reactance as the “motivational
state directed toward the reestablishment of [a] threatened or eliminated freedom” (p. 15). He
outlines the four main components of reactance theory as 1) freedom, 2) threat to freedom, 3)
reactance, and 4) restoration of freedom. An individual must feel concrete freedom and then
realize that it is lost in order to experience reactance.

Brehm (1989) states that that “people become motivationally aroused by a threat to or
elimination of behavioral freedom” and that “impels the individual to restore the particular
freedom that was threatened or taken away” (p. 72). Therefore, freedom and the threat of losing
that freedom is the central element of reactance theory.
Several studies show the importance of freedom as it pertains to reactance. Many authors
conducted studies that show the tendency for people to gravitate towards the messaging of the
very thing that is under threat of denial (Brehm et al., 1966; Hammock & Brehm, 1966, Worchel,
Andreoli, & Archer, 1976). From these studies, it may be concluded that a “choice alternative
which is eliminated by another person will tend to become more attractive, and a choice
alternative forced by another person will tend to become less attractive” (p. 553, Hammock &
Brehm, 1966). Scholars have also found that the theory of reactance applies when the original
source is under suspicion or has reason to cause skepticism (Kohn & Barnes, 1977).
Reactance and Consumer Behavior. Reactance is seen in consumer behavior. Brehm
(1966) says that his theory may be applied to nearly every situation in which a consumer’s
freedom is threatened. In an example by Brehm (1989) where the consumer’s freedom to choose
a certain brand of a particular product type (in this case it is soda) is threatened he outlines the
consumer’s response as it relates to reactance theory. He writes:
First, the greater the number of products or services from which to choose, the more
reluctant the consumer should be to select any given one. Second, the greater the number
of products or services from which to choose, the greater will be the consumer’s
resistance to high pressure tactics to make a particular selection (p. 74).
When consumers are faced with a loss of freedom, their reaction to do anything in order to
restore it is heightened. In these situations, consumers feel they must reassert their freedom.

This also means that products that were not previously desired (but ones that become hard to
obtain) become increasingly interesting to consumers when their freedom to choose them
becomes threatened. Thus, the consumer’s freedom is the crucial aspect of reactance theory.
It does not matter if the object or product is highly desired; rather, the level of freedom to
choose to purchase it or not is what matters (Brehm, 1966). Clee and Wicklund (1980) write that
freedom “acts as a mediator of reactance effects in a manner similar to presence versus absence
of freedom: the more important the freedom, the more reactance is generated due to personal or
impersonal threats” (p. 391). Their review of reactance theory applies primarily to consumer
behavior. They review several areas of consumerism where reactance may be generated:
promotional influence, product unavailability, pricing, political behavior, environmental
protection, altruism and helping behaviors, reference groups, and self-imposed threats to
freedom. They find that reactance leads to engaging in the threatened behavior (p. 401) and that
it manifests itself as “aggression or hostility directed toward the source of the threat” (p. 402).
The above-mentioned point is particularly relevant to the purpose of this paper, but the next
step must be taken to understand how this theory applies to consumers exposed to frequent,
disruptive and invasive advertising in the marketplace in order to understand the relationship
between advertising and reactance.
Advertising as a Possible Cause of Psychological Reactance
Information Processing and Overload. Many scholars find evidence of reactance when too
much information is forced upon them. Johnson and Russo (1984) point out that the overload
effects of advertising negatively impact the ability of consumers to choose between product
types. This is consistent with other studies (Clee &Wicklund, 1980) and draws from Brehm’s
(1966) theory of reactance. Similar to this, Ha and McCann (2008) found that consumers react

by avoiding advertising—an attributable behavior to reactance—when it is perceived as too
cluttered in online media. Finally, Gourville and Soman (2005) and Markman and Loewenstein
(2010) also attribute over-choice to consumer reactance.
While this supports the notion that advertising overload leads to reactance, Rains and Turner
(2007) find that the magnitude of the request in a message is the most significant variable that
contributes to reactance. To their point, Stol, Baecke, and Kenning (2008) show that attractive
packaging does, in fact, make a difference because it increases influence on consumers. “The
external appearance of a product at the point of sale can influence the decision-making process
of the consumer to a high degree” (p. 355), they write. Therefore, the need to force more
impactful information onto consumers is a constant objective in advertising, but has the potential
to incite reactance.
Indeed, the messaging in advertisements is very important to a consumer’s freedom, which
impacts their expression of reactance. Johnson and Russo (1984), in fact, prove that
advertisements lead to information overload for consumers and that this impacts their ability to
choose between products and learn new information. Ostensibly, this result is reactance because
their freedom of choice is under threat.
As previously mentioned, influential scripts also impact consumer choice by limiting their
freedom to only certain communications. More recent scholars fine-tune this knowledge through
their study of cognitive processing of reactance in order to affect persuasive messaging. Dillard
and Shen (2005) tested reactance on four different models of reactance processes. Rains and
Turner (2007) later expand upon their study to find the best fitting cognitive model in which to
predict reactance processes. They conclude that the magnitude of the request in messaging is the
variable that has the most significant impact on reactance. Finally, Miller et al. (2007) applied

reactance theory to the lexical aspects of the messages, finding that controlling language has the
most significant impact on reactance.
Reactance with Online Advertisements. As this paper aims to offer uniqueness by
focusing on online advertising, these concepts of reactance are explored in the virtual setting. At
the height of the Internet’s boom in popularity in the 1990s when online advertising was just
beginning, Ducoffe (1996) found that people were not annoyed by online advertising. Because
they offered greater entertainment value when viewed online, the consumers he studied had high
overall opinions of web-based advertisements. In a later study, however, Peterman et al. (1999)
found that acceptance of online advertising is low, if a consumer has had a previously poor
online experience. In these situations, disdain for online advertisements are high because
consumers have an overall negative attitude toward online advertising.
As online experiences improved, Novak, Hoffman, and Yung (2000) showed that consumers
are more likely to embrace online advertisements on sites that contain the right balance of
challenge, information, and entertainment. The marketing effectiveness seen on these sites are
very high. They write that “the ‘interactivity metrics’ of duration time and browsing depth [that]
measure marketing effectiveness on advertising sponsored websites will be highly positively
correlated with compelling online customer experience” (p. 40).
Similar to an offline, traditional commerce situation, positive online consumer experiences
are attributable to higher consumer engagement and less reactance. By the end of the 1990s,
Goldsmith and Lafferty (2002) found that Internet ads were liked less than all other channels
measured (which were television, magazines, and newspapers) with the exception of radio being
the least liked of them all. But, consumer recall of brands and products from online ads were

high and ranked second, only behind TV advertisements. This indicates that online
advertisements are valuable to marketers even if they increase consumer reactance.
As was the case with Peterman et al. (1999), Goldsmith and Lafferty (2002) found that
consumers who already like the website will have a positive response to Internet advertising and
caution marketers to keep consumer sentiment in mind based off of the results of their study.
“More care and attention should be devoted to creating Internet advertising to give it the qualities
that make it more likable” (p. 325), they write. Cho, Lee, and Tharp (2001) agree. They found
that banner ads contributed to higher opinions and more positive attitudes of Internet banner
advertising. With this, they correlate banner ads to increased purchase behavior. They write:
Unexpectedly, however it was found that the banner ad presented in the format of the
highest forced exposure also yielded the most desirable advertising effects (i.e.: favorable
attitude toward the banner ad, favorable attitude toward the brand, and high purchase
intention) (p. 53).
Even though banner ads were forced upon their subjects (e.g.: consumers), they favored the
advertisement and brand and, thus, were much more likely to purchase the product.
Later studies of Internet advertising do not find as much support from consumers and find
areas where reactance is high. Li and Meeds (2005) find that consumers avoid online
advertisements, for instance. Pop-up ads, in particular, they find, annoy consumers. This
indicates that consumers ignore a large portion of online advertisements altogether as well as
demonstrates one way in which consumer reactance is manifested in an online environment.
“The occurrence of pop-up ads is believed to interrupt consumers’ cognitive processes and,
therefore, should be perceived as an intrusion in individuals’ goals” (p. 44), they write. With
pop-up advertisements, the consumer’s field of view is restricted and their freedom to pursue

their objectives is threatened, so they seek to regain that lost freedom by avoiding the
advertisement.
Goal impediments by online advertisements represent a clear opportunity for consumer
reactance. Ho and Cheon (2004) agree that perceived goal impediments are the most significant
reason to avoid Internet advertisements. Their study also supports the notion that consumers are
now conditioned to pop-up ads and easily close the window to avoid them without even seeing or
engaging with the advertisement.
From that study, it appears that Internet advertising only serves to pester and annoy
consumers. A later study by Li and Meeds (2005) more clearly attributes online advertising to
reactance. They used Brehm’s (1966) theory of reactance to test consumer responses to pop-up
and interstitial web advertisements, finding that these types of Internet advertisements lead to
immediate reactance situations. This is because the immediate response of consumers to Internet
advertising is negative and they automatically seek to close the pop-up or interstitial in order to
restore their freedom. “The overall perception of ad intrusiveness” they write, “could be
considered high, which suggests Internet users tend to have a negative feeling toward [the ad]”
(p. 206).
Purpose of this Study
This study extended the findings of Li and Meeds (2005) (as well as others who studied
reactance and online advertising (Li, Edwards, & Lee, 2002)) to investigate how online
advertisements arouse psychological reactance as well as how that leads to aggressive consumer
reactions to them. Specifically, it aimed to undercover the link between reactance and
aggression. Similar to the studies just mentioned, this one was also based on the theory of
psychological reactance; however, where these authors leave off, this study sought to determine

whether or not online advertisements caused people to act out aggressively to them in commerce
situations. It explored this consumer tendency in both the United States and United Kingdom.
By their purpose and nature of delivery, advertisements are meant to distract consumers and
steal their focus, contributing to their loss of freedom to control a situation. When consumers
experience such losses or threats to their freedom, it is understood that they will “raise hell”
(Brehm, 1971, p. 73) in order to restore that freedom because of the theory of psychological
reactance. As seen through the work of many scholars (Richins, 1983; Richins & Verhage,
1987; Harris & Reynolds, 2003 & 2004; Harris & Dumas, 2009), hell-raising consumers are
aggressive and assertive, which is only enhanced through other variables like the consumer’s
feelings, attitude, mood, and personality.
As the literature shows, marketing managers understand that over-exposing consumers to
their advertisements enhances the consumer’s memory recall for their brands and products, so
they will likely continue displaying them as frequently as possible. Also, as new forms and
mediums are realized, they will continue to expand their reach, generating even more ad wear-
out on society. With respect to online advertisements, budgets for digital marketing campaigns
are growing, insuring that the impact of online advertisements on society will grow and be
realized at greater intensities going forward. While marketing exists in all countries, some
countries have been doing it far longer (hence, providing deep-seated roots for the practice
within the culture) as well as clearly spend more money on it than others, which results in greater
exposures to advertisements. All of these trends added together create a pervasive state of online
advertising to which a given society is constantly exposed. As discussed earlier in this chapter,
the US and UK are two of the world’s richest countries with long histories of high advertising
expenditures and home to the lion’s share of the world’s marketing firms. Hence, consumers in

these two societies are exposed to pervasive advertising situations. As many marketing scholars
already believe that more reform should be applied to the discipline (Hyman, Ransey, & Clark,
1994; Ducoffe, 1995; Goldsmith & Lafferty, 2000; Pollay, 1986), the digital environment allows
for advertising manipulation opportunities never before realized due to expanding technological
capabilities. This environment is also still largely unexplored as far as the impact on consumer
aggression is concerned. Therefore, this study attempted to reveal inadvertent societal
consequences that are achieved through current pervasive online marketing practices in two of
the most marketing-intensive cultures in the world by closing the gap between reactance arousal
and a consumer’s willingness and desire to respond aggressively to an advertised brand or
product. This concept is visually depicted in Figure 1 and serves as the theoretical framework
for this study.

Figure 1. Theoretical Framework. From top to bottom, the theory of this study is shown
pictorially in this figure. Advertisements and their placements build upon each other to achieve a
pervasive state, which contributes to the perception that they are intrusive and finally leads to
reactance arousal and the desire for consumer aggression against the advertised brand and/or
product.
Traditional Advertising
Pervasive state of advertising (both online & offline) in society
Knowledge and
proof that higher
exposures to
advertising leads to
higher recall &
awareness of them
Exposure to pervasive online Advertisements
Frequent, disruptive, and invasive advertising over several mediums & platforms
Internet
Pop-ups,
Interstitials,
Social Media,
Video, Blogs,
Banners
Murals, Mobile,
Magnets, T-
Shirts, Aerial,
Guerilla, buzz
agents, Flyers,
Vehicular, etc…
Word-of-
Mouth,
Business
Cards,
Stationary,
Brochures
Radio,
TV
Newspapers,
Magazines,
Billboards,
Signs
Non-Traditional Advertising
US
Consumers
UK
Consumers
Consumer Aggression
Reactance Arousal

Scope of the Study
This study evaluated how online advertisements contribute to reactance arousal as well as a
consumer’s willingness and desire to act aggressively in commerce situations. It investigated
these situations in two cultures: the United States and the United Kingdom. First, the general
state of advertising is reviewed and understood as overly pervasive and distracting. Then,
current schools of thought on how to reform marketing through less intrusive advertising are
explored, finding unsolved ethical dilemmas associated with ads increasing consumer feelings of
annoyance and offense. After understanding this need to reform marketing by altering the
effects of advertising on society, this study reviewed the theory of psychological reactance as a
means to better understand what the consumer experiences. It explored how reactance is aroused
and reviews how aggression is seen in the marketplace. The ways in which advertisements (in
particular, online ones), cause this are then reviewed. The very aspects of online advertisements,
themselves, are then examined to form hypotheses about their contributions to reactance arousal
and eventually aggressive consumer responses.
Manipulations
The manipulations in this research design were two levels of cultural background (the US
and UK), five levels of advertisement location (the top of the screen, the bottom of the screen,
middle of the screen, left side of the screen, and right side of the screen), and three levels of
animation (no ad animation, some ad animation, and total/full ad animation). Aggressive
consumer reactance arousal was based on respondents’ motivation to directly attack the
advertised brand and product because of a heightened state of reactance. When manipulating the
ad’s location and level of animation, consumers viewing advertisements that are fully animated
and located in the middle of the screen were expected to respond with the most reactance and

willingness to be aggressive. Participants from the US and UK were given varying stimuli with
a total of 15 ad locations and five animation levels. These manipulations are further described in
Chapter III.
Objectives of the Study
The objectives of this study are as follows:
1. To determine how intrusive online advertisements are perceived by British and American
consumers.
2. To determine how much reactance online advertisements arouse among British and
American consumers.
3. To determine if online advertising locations and levels of animation contribute to greater
levels of reactance arousal among British and American consumers.
4. To determine if heightened states of reactance lead to aggressive consumer outcomes
through attacks in the online marketplace.
Research Questions and Hypotheses
This research attempts to answer the major question of whether or not online advertisements
frustrate consumers to the point where they feel compelled to act out aggressively in the
marketplace. The following research questions (RQ) and associated hypotheses (H) were
formulated to investigate this.
RQ1: Do online advertisements lead to heightened states of perceived ad intrusiveness (PAI),
reactance arousal (RA), and desire to respond to the advertised brand or product aggressively
(DCA) as a consumer?
• H1a: There is a difference in perceived ad intrusiveness (PAI) scores before and after the
treatment

• H1b: There is a difference in reactance arousal (RA) scores before and after the treatment
• H1c: There is a difference in desire for consumer aggression (DCA) scores before and
after the treatment
RQ2: Does culture affect levels of perceived ad intrusiveness (PAI), reactance arousal (RA), and
desire to respond as an aggressive consumer (DCA) when exposed to online advertisements?
• H2a: Culture (Cu) has a significant effect on the difference in perceived ad intrusiveness
(PAI) scores before and after the treatment
• H2b: Culture (Cu) has a significant effect on the difference in reactance arousal (RA)
scores before and after the treatment
• H2c: Culture (Cu) has a significant effect on the difference in desire for consumer
aggression (DCA) scores before and after the treatment
RQ3: Does the amount of ad animation (Aa) affect levels of perceived ad intrusiveness (PAI),
reactance arousal (RA), and desire to respond as an aggressive consumer (DCA) when exposed to
online advertisements?
• H3a: The amount of ad animation (Aa) has a significant effect on the difference in
perceived ad intrusiveness (PAI) scores before and after the treatment
• H3b: The amount of ad animation (Aa) has a significant effect on the difference in
reactance arousal (RA) scores before and after the treatment
• H3c: The amount of ad animation (Aa) has a significant effect on the difference in desire
for consumer aggression (DCA) scores before and after the treatment
RQ4: Does the ad location (Al) affect levels of perceived ad intrusiveness (PAI), reactance
arousal (RA), and desire to respond as an aggressive consumer (DCA) when exposed to online
advertisements?

• H4a: Ad location (Al) has a significant effect on the difference in perceived ad
intrusiveness (PAI) scores before and after the treatment
• H4b: Ad location (Al) has a significant effect on the difference in reactance arousal (RA)
scores before and after the treatment
• H4c: Ad location (Al) has a significant effect on the difference in desire for consumer
aggression (DCA) scores before and after the treatment
RQ5: Do consumers experience heightened states of reactance arousal (RA) when ads are
perceived as intrusive (PAI)?
• H5: There is a correlation between post-treatment levels of perceived ad intrusiveness
(PAI) and post-treatment levels of reactance arousal (RA)
RQ6: Do consumers desire to respond to the advertised brand or product aggressively (DCA) in
the marketplace when ads arouse reactance (RA)?
• H6: There is a correlation between post-treatment levels of reactance arousal (RA) levels
and post-treatment levels of desire for consumer aggression (DCA)
Definition of Terms
The following conceptual and operational definitions of research are provided to explain how
terms are used in this study.
Aggression. Aggression is defined as hostile or violent behavior. While it is trigged by
many variables, scholars—such as Gilmore (1990); Cohen and Nisbett (1994); De Mooij (2003);
Richins and Verhage (1987); Rojas-Mendez, Davies, and Madran (2009); Chan et al. (2007);
and, Akram et al. (2011)— provide strong evidence for exploring its cultural influences, which is
the primary focus of this psychological trait in this study. Aggression is measured using Richins’

Aggression scale (1983), but updated to fit the variables of this study. This scale is scored on a 5
point Likert scale with response categories ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree.
Aggressive Consumers. Aggressive consumers are people who exhibit deviant and
malfeasant behavior in commerce situations, no matter the medium or location of the
marketplace (Harris & Reynolds, 2003 & 2004; Harris & Dumas, 2009; Groth & Grandey,
2012). These types of consumers are people who act out against commerce in a way that
negatively impacts business. Examples of this include boycotting products and services or
spreading negative word-of-mouth to social networks.
Psychological Reactance. Psychological Reactance is the “motivational state directed
toward the reestablishment of [a] threatened or eliminated freedom” (Brehm, 1996, p. 15).
Brehm (1989) states that that “people become motivationally aroused by a threat to or
elimination of behavioral freedom” and that “impels the individual to restore the particular
freedom that was threatened or taken away” (p. 72). Freedom and the perceived loss of (or threat
of loss to) it is the central element of reactance theory. Reactance is measured on a 9 item scale
that is based off of Hong’s Psychological Reactance Scale (Hong & Faedda, 1996), but updated
to fit the variables of this study. This scale is scored on a 5 point Likert scale with response
categories ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree.
Online Advertisements. Online advertisements are static or animated advertisements
displayed on Internet websites. All advertisement type names, dimensions, and characteristics
used in this study are consistent with the Internet Advertising Bureau’s Guidelines for Digital
Advertising (IAB, 2012).
Online Consumers. Online consumers are people old enough to own and operate a credit
card and capable of purchasing goods and/or services through online transactions. Various

cultural backgrounds are measured by virtue of the country in which they are involved in
eCommerce.
Chapter I Summary
The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of online advertising on consumer
aggression. This study is unique because it focuses on how the locations and levels of animation
associated with online advertisements arouse reactance in British and American consumers and
then measures their willingness to act out aggressively as consumers. With the technological
advances of the Internet, this format is yet another advertising medium that represents a
continuously growing and dynamic field where marketers are rapidly reinventing their
approaches as well as continuing to block the goals of consumers when not executed morally or
ethically. Hence, it is important to study the triggers of consumer aggression so that the
business’ bottom line does not suffer from unintentional negative reactions to advertisements.
With the theoretical framework just presented in this chapter, it is appropriate to review the
relationship between consumer reactance and aggression and then seek to understand how it is
affected by advertising. These relationships and concepts are explored in the next chapter by
first looking at the fundamental causes of aggression and the various ways in which advertising
reproduces them. Next, several external variables related to human behavior—such as
personality type, mood, attitude, and feelings—are reviewed as possible instigators of consumer
aggression. Then, consumer reactance as a result of frequent, disruptive, and invasive
advertising is examined in marketplace exchanges to illustrate the various ways in which this
psychological theory is observed. Finally, hypotheses are formed in chapter III based on how the
various aspects of online advertising lead to consumer reactance.

CHAPTER II
Literature Review
Chapter Introduction
When looking at advertisements themselves, Aaker and Bruzzone (1985) found that
consumers respond negatively to them when they contain irritating qualities. They tested the
advertisements of sixteen different products (through 524 commercials) in order to measure
consumer irritation levels in three areas: product class, market segmentation, and copy execution.
From this, they found that many factors increase irritation. Their study uncovers that consumers
are annoyed by advertisements when a sensitive product is involved, the situation in the
commercial is obviously fake, someone in the ad is disrespected, relationships are threatened,
graphic physical discomfort is seen, uncomfortable tension is shown, an unsympathetic character
is portrayed, there is a suggestive scene, or the advertisement is generally not executed well (p.
55-56). Furthermore, it supports the evidence gathered in the previous section that marketing
needs to be reformed to limit the amount of aggression it causes.
Marketers should not purposely create ads that contain irritating and annoying qualities, as
Anker and Bruzzone (1985) point out, because they lead to higher levels of annoyance levels
amongst consumers. When consumers are annoyed, they have the tendency to act defiantly and
with malfeasance (Harris & Reynolds, 2003; 2004), lending toward aggressive behavior in the
marketplace. Therefore, this section will start by exploring the very nature of aggression and
then investigate reasons why it occurs amongst consumers. Next, it will review how advertising,
in particular, is an instigator of aggression in the marketplace. The theory of psychological
reactance will be explained as the basis of the reason for such aggressive consumer reactions to
advertisements. Finally, this section will further investigate the various qualities of the

advertisements themselves in order to provide validity for the research questions and hypotheses
proposed in this study.
Exploring Aggression
To study aggressive consumer reactance in the marketplace, this study first examined
aggression in its most basic, primal forms. Then, it reviewed cultural reasons as causes of
aggression. Next, aggression in commerce situations where flourishing advertising scenarios
dominate the focus of consumers was explored.
Basic Aggression: Insights from Animals. Many scholars believe that aggression is
instinctual and used by humans when it is convenient. Zing Yang Kuo’s (1961) experiment with
cats and mice and long-term observations made on chimps and bonobos demonstrate that
aggression in animals is “modified by experience” and “does not need to be learned” (p. 24). He
also expresses that “Aggression is an optional strategy” which is “determined by the animal’s
previous social experiences, as well as by the specific social context in which the animal finds
itself” (p. 24).
This suggests that aggression is not learned and is a tool that may be used to affect a desired
response. As Darwin (1861) writes that only the strongest and fittest survive, Lorenz (1966)
points out how animals purposely act aggressively as a means of survival. He writes about the
utility of aggression through several species. With rats, for instance, larger clans dominate
aggressively through numbers. Also, sexual competition among some pheasant species leads to
eradicating members unnecessarily. Therefore, there is a clear natural utility of aggression in
animals, which is to, among several other things, raise their young in the wild and reveal the best
leaders and pack masters to ensure the longevity of the group.

By these studies, aggression is instinctual and necessary for survival. The next section will
contrast the need to be aggressive in humans and review the specific variables that directly
contribute towards it, which possibly reveals a distinction in willingness to respond aggressively
to advertisements when reactance is aroused.
Human Aggression: Cultural Insights. Beyond animals, Berkowitz (1993) finds that
humans are ingrained to respond aggressively to certain types of attacks. Many authors cite
various cultural aspects as the causes for sociological change in stances on aggression. Gilmore
(1990), for instance, explores the way masculinity affects a culture and finds that it contributes to
the warrior culture, which continues to reinvent itself around the world and throughout history.
He writes:
This cultural hypostasis of the male image, which I believe exists to a degree in many
societies, led me to believe that the manhood ideal is not purely psychogenetic in origin
but is also a culturally imposed ideal to which men must conform whether or not they
find it psychological congenial. That is, it is not simply a reflection of individual
psychology but a part of public culture, a collective representation (p. 5).
The Iroquois Native American tribe is a culture in which scholars continue to study the
sociological changes for their drastic turn toward violence. These people changed their long-
standing peaceful behavior to a highly aggressive one after seventeenth-century Europeans
introduced competition in the expanding fur trade industry. This pitted the Iroquois against
neighboring tribes and ultimately resulted in many bloody wars of which the Iroquois won
through their transition to aggressive combat. On their shift toward this violent stance, Anker
(unknown year) writes that “warfare was not for territorial gain but for the no less real but more

ephemeral goals of revenge, retribution, and establishment of manhood” (p. 10). Here,
aggression was instigated by many outside variables, one major reason being cultural influence.
Cohen and Nisbett (1994) further explore cultural attitudes towards aggression by comparing
various indicators of violence between southern and non-southern US citizens. They actually
find varying levels of testosterone in people from that region (compared to people from northern
and western states) when they are frustrated or threatened. This is encapsulated in the “cultural
of honor” phenomenon, which is widely seen in the south and a possible differentiator of
aggressive motivation between southern and non-southern cultures. On this, these authors write:
If individuals believe that they must own and even carry weapons for protection, and if
they respond to insults with sufficient anger to occasionally cause them to use those
weapons, this will tend to affect the entire local community. Its members may respond
with heightened consciousness of the need for protection, more vigilance concerning
threats, and a consequent greater likelihood of violence (p. 449).
By this research, it is clear that aggression is intrinsically motivated and then enhanced through
obligation to conform to omnipresent cultural motifs as well as external pressure from society.
When reviewing the impact of culture on aggression towards advertising, several authors find
that marketing opinions differ throughout the world despite advances in globalization and
technology. In fact, De Mooij (2003) reviews universal advertising approaches around the world
to find that cultural variables impact consumer purchasing behavior and responses to advertising.
The author writes, “Global advertising…does not appeal to universal values because there are no
universal values” (p. 196). This illustrates that marketers should customize their campaigns
across the globe to achieve greater advertising effectiveness. Rojas-Mendez, Davies, and
Madran (2009) agree. They compared advertising avoidance behaviors in different countries and

found that culture is a significant predictor of overall attitude towards advertising and explains
behavioral avoidance. Earlier research on marketplace assertiveness and aggression also
supports the notion that culture impacts the consumer’s level of aggression in marketplace
exchanges (Richins & Verhage, 1987) and international perceptions of advertising (Chan et al.,
2007).
Despite this evidence for marketers to deploy culturally-focused and locally-sensitive
advertising, other authors explore the effects of acculturation (the process of cultural and
psychological change that results from the meeting of two cultures) from globalization and the
emergence of global brands and global consumers. Akram, Merunka, and Akram (2011)
accounted for consumer ethnocentrism in their review of how consumers perceive global
products, yet still uncover a preference for global marketing approaches by consumers of all
nations. They found that “Consumers tend to prefer global brands because of higher perceived
quality and higher prestige and fundamentally because of brand globalness which is defined as
the degree to which the brand is perceived as having multimarket reach and thus is believed to be
globally available, desirable and demanded” (p. 293). At the same time, Douglas and Craig
(2011) review new global trends with consumers. They find that new segments of global
consumers are warm to common marketing approaches that span borders when heterogeneous
economic and cultural exchanges exist. In their study, they review concepts such as global
brands and global consumers, noting the advertising utility therein. The advancing
communications capabilities of the Internet offer an even further chance for this type of
convergence to flourish, bringing somewhat different conclusions to earlier research on common
advertising approaches to different cultures throughout the world; therefore, cultural differences
and their various views on advertising must be understood.

Geert Hofstede’s (1984) theory of cultural dimensions categorizes people in various societies
from one another in four distinct ways: individualism/collectivism, power distance, uncertainty
avoidance, and masculinity/femininity. In his later work, Hofstede (1991) also includes long-
/short-term orientation as a fifth category. These dimensions are the basis of many cross cultural
studies, including ones where aggression towards advertising is measured. In their reactions to
advertising, Chan et al. (2007) states that and individualist cultures, where societal beliefs are not
as commonly shared, such as case in the United States and United Kingdom, are more liberal in
their acceptance of offensive advertisements (Fam et al., 2013). Here society is more reliant on
laws and regulations, versus social norms in high-context societies, in order to restrict offensive
qualities of advertisements. As many authors (Richins & Verhage, 1987; Chan et al., 2007)
reveal that assertiveness and aggression vary between cultures of different dimensions, few (if
any) authors effectively measure advertising levels across similar countries as instigators of
aggression.
It is still necessary to investigate consumer aggression in order to understand other likely
causes. The next section will explore the ways in which consumers demonstrate aggression as a
result of advertising. This is based off of the theory of reactance, so aggressive reactance to
advertising is also reviewed.
Consumer Aggression toward Advertising
Harris and Reynolds (2003) explored the consequences of dysfunctional consumer activity
from the firm’s point of view. Through their study, they determined that the customer is not
always right, contrary to the ostensible Western corporate slogan for improved customer
satisfaction and loyalty. In fact, they outline several negative consequences on employees who
must deal with deviant customers, other customers exposed to the deviant behavior, and the

organization receiving the consumer’s aggressive actions. They write, “not only are customers
‘not always right’, in fact, they can frequently lie, cheat, act abusively, and even physically or
psychologically harm customer-contact employees” (p. 157).
In a later study, these two authors (Harris & Reynolds, 2004) state, “the majority (and not the
minority) of customers exhibit jaycustomer behaviors” (p. 351)—which means that customer
deviance and malfeasance is highly likely in the marketplace, no matter the medium or location.
Harris and Dumas (2009) look at this behavior in an online environment. They find that
consumers justify and rationalize online misbehavior when they are sharing content in a peer-to-
peer fashion. Rather than paying for software online, for example, people view themselves as
victims of commerce and do not claim any injury or responsibility for the legal ramifications of
pirating such goods. Other techniques studied are when consumers claim normalcy, relative
acceptability, justification by comparison, and appeals to higher loyalties (p. 384-385).
Nevertheless, these are deviant, dysfunctional, and selfish characteristics that have serious
business consequences.
Groth and Grandey (2012) also found that aggressive consumer encounters lead to negative
consequences. They reviewed such encounters from both the employee’s and customer’s
perspectives to find linkages between the two. When the situation starts bad and continues to
escalate, they call them “negative exchange spirals” and describe them as open-loop scenarios
where each exchange feeds the other (p. 210). The only end, they write, is a “dyadic” model,
which is an exchange spiral where one party (either the customer or the employee) breaks the
negative back-and-forth (p. 210). To learn from them, such encounters must be studied as they
occur and all of them seem to differ slightly (p. 225).

By these studies, it is obvious that aggressive consumer situations vary and must be dealt
with in a manner that is issue-specific. To understand this, Richins (1983) measured consumer
responses to dissatisfaction by looking at the nature of dissatisfaction, perceptions of blame, and
perceptions of the retailer’s responsiveness as variables for spreading negative opinions and
information. She discovered that firms are most likely to turn a bad situation around when it has
not escalated too far where heightened levels of dissatisfaction are realized. From this study, it is
understood that consumer aggression is mostly seen from increases in frustration and
dissatisfaction.
On frustration and dissatisfaction, Aronson (2008) distinguishes between hope and
deprivation, similar to Brehm’s (1966) theory of psychological reactance to explain how these
two aggressive-producing feelings may be reduced. He writes, that “frustration is most
pronounced when the goal is becoming palpable and drawing within reach, when expectations
are high, and when the goal is blocked unjustifiably” (p. 273). A child who has never seen a
certain type of toy before will not respond aggressively if he does not get a chance to play with
it. But, if the child expects to play with the toy at a certain time, then he (as seen through the
theory of reactance) will aggress if that freedom to do so is denied. As this applies to commerce,
if a consumer understands that a product is not for sale in a store or from a website, she will feel
as though her freedom to choose that product is under threat and, therefore, arouse reactance.
Consistent with the theory of reactance, Harris (1974) studied the timing of aggressive
provocations. She analyzed the frustration levels of patrons who were standing in line waiting
for tickets and then cut off by rowdy teenagers, finding that frustration levels increased the closer
the patron was to the front of the line. This is another study on aggression that is consistent with
Brehm’s (1966) theory of psychological reactance: the higher the threat to removing freedom,

the likelier a consumer is to demonstrate reactance. This is supported by Twenge et al. (2001)
who reviewed the effects of rejection on frustration, only to find that it undoubtedly increases a
person’s hostility.
Increases in Exposures to Violence Leads to More Violence. Marketers constantly seek
new opportunities to interact with consumers and architect specific emotional responses aimed at
generating high interest and awareness of their products and services. Lutz, MacKenzie, and
Belch (1982) found that the consumer’s mood has a significant effect on his attitude toward
advertising and Aaker, Staymann, and Hagerty (1986) found that ads evoking positive feelings
generate more positive impressions of advertising. Therefore, marketers aim to incite positive
feelings like happiness, enthusiasm, excitement, and love in their advertising because sales
opportunities are then at their ripest.
While this logic seems sound from a business standpoint, it is appropriate to further explore
the psychological effects of aggressive feelings in order to determine the utility (or lack thereof)
in aggression-inducing advertisements. Many studies look into the effects on aggressive
tendencies due to prolonged exposure to aggressive situations and encounters. Liebert & Baron
(1972) find that watching violence on TV increases one’s violent tendencies in their real life
actions. Josophson (1987) then finds that TV violence, in particular, is the greatest predictor of a
child’s tendency to act violently.
Shrum (1999) expands on these previous studies by reviewing the desensitizing effects of TV
through several existing memory recall models. For both positive and negative programming, he
found that people are more tolerant of the mood the TV program aims to achieve. For instance,
people tolerate violence more after having just viewed it on TV. Johnson et al. (2002) finds that
the more exposure to television during adolescence, the more prone someone is to act

aggressively. These correlational studies lend support to the notion that when people are
exposed to higher amounts of violence and frustration, they are more likely to become
aggressive, even if they were not originally prone to violence to begin with. Hence, the bottom
line implication is that their tendency to act violently is increased when the violence is viewed on
a desensitizing medium, such as TV is increased.
Rose and Neidermeyer (1999) similarly find that when an encounter prevents consumers
from achieving their shopping goals or violates their normal activity, then they are more likely to
respond aggressively, which is another manifestation of psychological reactance. They find that
goal-blocking and norm violations are the biggest cause to consumer aggression. Therefore,
consciousness of aggressive stimuli in advertising should be understood by marketers so as not to
provoke it amongst their audience and cause them to engage in psychological reactance.
How Aggressive Responses to Advertising Result in Consumer Reactance. Consumers
respond to freedom threatening advertising aggressively. They do this through two means: either
by ignoring the advertisements passively (Clancy, 1994; Krugman & Johnson, 1991) or by
actively acting out against them (Abernethy, 1991). Speck and Elliot (1997), for instance, find
clear predictors of overt ad avoidance by consumers. Therefore, it is necessary to review the
relationship between frustration and aggression and Brehm’s (1966) theory of Psychological
Reactance in order to better understand how aggression manifests itself in a consumer setting
when reactance is high.
Aronson (2008) writes that “frustration is increased when a goal is near and your progress
toward it is interrupted” (p. 273). This is even further enhanced when the interruption to the goal
is unexpected. When a goal seems attainable and the expectations to achieve it are high,
blocking it or distracting someone from it results in the emotion of extreme frustration, which

leads to a greater need to act aggressively. This is demonstrated by Worchel (1974) who shows
that when authority figures block the goals of their subjects, the subjects respond by derogating
them since their freedom is restricted. Clee and Wicklund (1980) describe this as “aggression, or
hostility directed toward the source of the threat” (p. 402). To further explain the frustration and
aggression theories behind this, Aronson (2008) writes, “Thus, frustration is not the result of
simple deprivation; it is the result of relative deprivation” (p. 273). Therefore, it is also the
perception of someone’s freedom being threated or the goal that is blocked (which is the
definition of reactance) that also leads to anger and frustration.
In line with Aronson’s implication just mentioned, the opportunity for consumers to
experience reactance theory is abundant when their freedom is threatened, or perceived to be
threatened. Clee and Wicklund’s (1980) explanation of this is an accurate portrayal of how
consumers experience reactance:
Reactance theory is applicable to any situation in which the following elements are
present. First, a consumer must expect a measure of freedom to act in a given situation.
Second, some threat must arise that infringes upon that freedom….the sources of such
threats are varied; they may stem from social influence attempts by other people, from
impersonal barriers to action, such as product unavailability, or may even be self-
imposed. As long as the basic two elements are present—expectation of freedom and
threat of freedom—the stage is set for a reactance theory interpretation of resultant
behavior. Reactance is then manifested [and]…moderated by such variables as the a
priori importance of the threatened freedom (p. 403).

By this explanation, consumers respond in aggressive and assertive ways when they experience
reactance. Therefore, it is necessary to review the nature of those two behaviors in commerce
situations.
Previous research on market place exchanges examined assertiveness and aggression together
(Fornell & Westbrook, 1979; Westbrook, 1981), but later ones classified the two interaction
styles separately (Chiazzi, Heimberg & Doty, 1982). Westbrook (1981) found no relationship at
all between aggressiveness and assertiveness when a consumer is dissatisfied. Hollandsworth’s
(1977) research suggests that assertive responses are more adaptive than aggressive ones in
handling anger and interpersonal conflict, whereas Richins (1983) develops an entire scale to
measure aggressiveness on its own. As they relate to reactance, assertive and aggressive
behaviors preserve the consumer’s right to choose, but in different ways. Richins and Verhage
(1987) write that “Assertiveness involves standing up for one’s rights without infringing upon
those of others, whereas aggression involves the use of noxious stimuli to maintain rights” (p.
94).
The Boomerang Effect. These notions in the previous section are consistent with Brehm’s
(1966) research on threats to consumer freedom and are better explained through the Boomerang
Effect. This is a term born out of psychological reactance and formalized by Clee and Wicklund
(1980). They write:
If all potentially informative features of the communication could be deleted (i.e., all
persuasive arguments), and if the communicator was not a source of reference group
opinion, then the introduction of pressure-laden statements should indeed produce an
absolute boomerang effect (p. 402).

The Boomerang Effect refers to when a consumer is coerced and he responds with an equal, but
opposite reaction in order to restore his freedom. As the term implies, this could mean that the
consumer purposely behaves in the specific way that is under threat of loss. For instance, if a
consumer is presented with an overabundance of advertising for a product and experiences
reactance arousal, he may choose not to buy it because his freedom is blocked by the invasive
ads. Furthermore, these authors specify that if the consumer does not change his behavior, then
it could be that he, at least, changes in attitude.
To provide further detail and background, the Boomerang Effect is a part of psychological
reactance that refers to a person’s tendency to engage in behavior that is associated with a
threatened freedom in order to restore that freedom (Brehm & Sensenig, 1966). It contributes to
the many reasons consumers reject messaging seen in advertising and is seen in several ways.
First, while not calling it as such, Wicklund and Brehm (1968) found a significant evidence of
the Boomerang Effect in their experiments regarding attitudinal freedom among highly
competent people. Then, when attitude toward a position is high, Worchel and Brehm (1970)
found that reactance is carried out. In their study, subjects were exposed to speeches containing
freedom threatening communication and moved away from the promoted position because of
reactance. Next, Heilman and Toffler (1976) found the level of intensity is a determinant on the
amount of reactance with which people are motivated to respond when their freedom is
threatened. The more intense attempts to restrict her subjects’ freedoms, the more vehemently
they wanted to engage in what was being threatened, they found. Finally, Clee and Wicklund
(1980) coin the term “Boomerang Effect” when heavily loaded “pressure” statements are
introduced under circumstances where the communicator is not the source of the reference
group. They write that “threats to freedom that emanate from social-influence attempts increase

strength as the externally-imposed pressure to change increases” (p. 390). This explains the
motivation for how the consumer wishes to respond with an equal, but opposite reaction to the
initial encounter of coercion.
In-store Experiences. Consumer frustration is caused by a variety of marketing and
advertising sources that, as Brehm (1966) postulates, limit their freedom or threaten to take it
away. Rose and Neidermeyer (1999), for instance, identify specific precursors to consumer
aggression as a result of their research on negative in-store experiences. They find the
following-freedom inhibiting reasons as causes of consumer frustration:
• Blocking the goal. This is when a product is out of stock, excessive wait times are
experienced, or stores fail to perform somehow.
• Disagreement or Misinformation. When the marketer and the customer disagree or
when the consumer realizes that the information he is reviewing is incorrect, they
become confused or experience a sense of misunderstanding. During these times,
consumers also feel deceived.
• Violation of Norms. This occurs when someone’s expectations are inhibited, such as
another patron cutting in, experiencing poor personal hygiene while shopping, and
deviations in behavior are observed. Similar to reactance, violating the consumer’s
norms is a form of threatening her freedom to choose according to her expectations.
• Proactive aggression. This is when someone acts with direct aggression (p. 14).
These authors observed that the consequences of frustrating shopping situations are changes in
emotional states and expressions, use of verbal aggression, and direct or indirect physical
aggression (indirect physical aggression is seen through passive-aggressive acts, such as littering,
defacement, or stealing). They determine that the majority of aggressive marketer-to-consumer

acts occur during a service encounter or shopping experience. Therefore, they conclude that
marketers should understand the antecedents of aggression to identify how it is instigated and
then correct marketplace designs to “minimize aggression triggers” (p. 14).
Yi and Gong (2008) extend the understanding of in-store aggression by proving that
customer satisfaction is an important link between what a consumer learns from an employee
through his behavior and how customers behave as a result. They use a comprehensive
framework to investigate the relationship between employee and customer behaviors as they
relate to acts of citizenship and dysfunction. They prove that service employees teach consumers
behavior through their interaction, which results in a level (which could be high or low,
depending on the employee’s behavior) of customer satisfaction. This in turn generates an
equivalent level of customer response (p. 977). As it relates to aggression, customers act with a
similar level of hostility as what they learn from their interaction with employees.
Negative and Positive Word-of-Mouth Communication. Given the importance of
analyzing consumer frustration from Rose and Neidermeyer’s (1999) findings, it is then
important to understand how they will react aggressively. Wetzer, Zeelendberg, and Pieters
(2007) analyze the goals of consumers when they socialize negative-word-of-mouth (N-WOM)
communication and the business effects it has on firms. They found that anger, irritation,
disappointment, dissatisfaction, frustration, indignation, and hate are the emotions felt after a
negative consumption experience, which causes people to act aggressively via N-WOM
communication for the purposes of venting or seeking revenge. They prove that these emotions
result in N-WOM communication about a firm and advise marketers to “pay attention to the
specific emotion that is felt by a consumer who communicates about a negative experience” (p.
675).

The Effects of Online Advertising on Consumer Aggression - Chris Lobus

The Effects of Online Advertising on Consumer Aggression - Chris Lobus

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