Native advertising acceptance or avoidance : the effects of personalization and trust

The growth of native advertising seems to be increasing as rapidly as the concerns about it. Growing ethical concerns may hinder advertisers from employing native advertising freely regardless of its effectiveness. Likewise, despite the many industry studies and findings on native advertising, to date, limited academic research has explored the interplay between perceived ethical concerns and consumer response to native advertising. The purpose of this study was to investigate antecedents and consequences of native advertising avoidance and examine the effects of (1) perceived deceptiveness, (2) media trust, (3) brand trust, and (4) perceived personalization on perceived privacy concerns, ad skepticism, attitude toward the brand, ad avoidance, and purchase intention. Findings from the first study revealed significant three-way interaction effects among perceived deceptiveness, media trust, and brand trust on ad skepticism and attitude toward the brand. These findings are notable because consumers’ low perceived deceptiveness appears to be able to offset either low brand trust or low media trust. As such, identifying that native advertising is indeed advertising can enhance the effectiveness of the advertising message by lowering skepticism. Experiment 2 demonstrated significant two-way interaction effects between perceived personalization and media trust on privacy concerns, ad avoidance, and purchase intention. Specifically, consumers who had high trust in the social media in which the native ad appeared generated lower levels of perceived privacy concerns and lower levels of ad avoidance when they felt that the native advertising was highly personalized. In contrast, consumers who had low trust in the social media in which the native ad appeared reacted oppositely in that they had higher privacy concerns and higher ad avoidance when they perceived the ad as highly customized to their needs and interests. The findings contribute theoretically to our understanding of Psychological Reactance Theory and ad avoidance by demonstrating the moderating role of perceived personalization in responding to native advertising. Additionally, findings from this study provide managerial implications in that personalized advertising can offset weaknesses stemming from low media trust or low brand trust.