Marketing Overload? : Investigating the effect of antecedents of marketing avoidance on social media advertising effectiveness

Recent developments in internet technology have ushered in unprecedented change when it comes to communication. This change has also given rise to social media, which has significantly changed the way modern communication occurs (Rosengren, 2000; Evans & McKee, 2010; Tuten & Solomon, 2015). While social media has gained enormous reach in recent years, with millions of new users joining social platforms every year, it has changed company-consumer relations as well (Akar & Topcu, 2011; Fan & Niu, 2013; Tuten & Solomon, 2015). Marketers are continuously turning towards social media to distribute advertisements and gather information (Akar & Topcu, 2011). As such, consumers today are bombarded by vast amounts of promotions and advertisements on social media. However, consumers are no longer passive observers and are increasingly becoming more and more able to edit and control what they choose to see online (Kelly, Kerr & Drennan, 2010). This has led to the decline of social media advertising effectiveness, as consumers choose to avoid and ignore more advertisement than ever before (Wen, Tan & Chang, 2009; Kelly et al., 2010; Chang, Chen & Tan, 2012; Khan, Dongping & Wahab, 2016). As such, in order to be able to overcome consumer avoidance of marketing messages, it is now more important than ever for advertisers and marketers to understand what drives consumers to avoid advertising in the first place (Cho & Cheon, 2004; Wen et al., 2009; Akar & Topcu, 2011; Chang et al., 2012). Therefore, as there is a significant lack of research on these subjects, the authors constructed a model based on Cho and Cheon’s (2004) theory that describes the antecedents of online marketing avoidance, and sought to test a number of hypotheses about the relationships between the antecedents of social media marketing avoidance and social media advertising effectiveness. To be able to do so, the authors constructed and utilized a survey method and a questionnaire. However, while the initial results of the data gathered by the survey were encouraging for the model as a whole, it was ultimately found that only one hypothesis was acceptable. Keywords Antecedents of marketing avoidance, social media advertising effectiveness, advertising effectivenes