Unintended Effects of Ethnically Targeted Advertising E EST CYRIL DE RUN

Although, advertising has been a major area of study in marketing, limited research investigating the unintended effects of targeted advertising beyond social and moral issues has been limited. This thesis contributes to the current body of knowledge by examining the unintended effects of ethnically targeted advertising on ethnic groups that are not targeted, but who are still likely to see the advertising. The thesis also develops a holistic model for measuring the effects of targeted advertising using four variables; emotions, attitude to the advertisement, attitude to the company and behavioural intentions. The conceptual basis of the model is accommodation theory, which allows for different levels of targeting based on the language mix used in advertisements (e.g. ranging from advertisements that are solely in the targeted group language to advertisements with a mixture of languages to advertisements that are solely in the non-targeted group's language). The model was tested on three different ethnic groups in Malaysia. Five key propositions were tested during the research: l. That targeted advertisement