Attitudes of college students towards online advertisement in social networking sites: a structural equation modelling approach
Social media and social networking sites (SNSs) are now considered to be an integral part of the marketing mix of firms and organisations across the world. Advertisement in SNSs takes a growing part of the advertising budget, replacing traditional media, due to its characteristics in terms of ROI and interactivity. However, the attitudes of consumers towards advertisement affect the efficiency of advertisements in SNSs as well. In this paper, we are examining the attitudes of 512 college students in the region of Western Macedonia towards advertisement in the SNSs. In accordance with relevant literature, five main categories of attitudes towards SNSs advertisement are identified, namely information, entertainment, credibility, irritation, value corruption through confirmatory factor analysis, and the effect they have on the attitudes towards advertisement and advertisement value is assessed with the use of a structural equation model. Our results validate the positive effect that entertainment, information and credibility have in advertisement value.