Ad Typicality Judgments and Creative Television Ad Processing–Model Questionnaire

Abstract

The Ad Typicality Judgments and Creative Television Ad Processing–Model, developed by Peterson and Malhotra (2023), is a specialized psychological inventory designed to quantify the impact of consumers’ initial judgments of typicality on how they process and respond to television advertisements. This measurement model focuses on the perceived representativeness of a specific advertisement relative to its product category, drawing foundational support from earlier work in typicality theory. The instrument underwent rigorous development across three distinct studies, including translation into Russian using a meticulous back-translation method to ensure cross-cultural and linguistic equivalence. Extensive psychometric properties were reported, confirming strong factor structure, reliability, and various forms of validity.

Keywords

Ad Match, Ad Motivation (Social Approval), Attitude toward the Ad, External Validity, Negative Feeling Expectations, Negative Feelings, Positive Feeling Expectations, Positive Feelings, Theme Expectations (Attractiveness), Consumer Processing, Advertising Typicality.

Authors

Mark Peterson, Naresh K. Malhotra

Purpose

The primary objective of the Ad Typicality Judgments and Creative Television Ad Processing–Model is to systematically evaluate the fundamental role that consumers’ pre-existing perceptions of typicality play during the evaluation and processing of television advertising content. It specifically assesses the degree to which an ad’s themes, feelings, and presentation style align with established category norms in the consumer’s mind, thereby influencing their attitude toward the advertisement.

Construct

The scale measures several distinct but interrelated constructs centered around the concept of advertising typicality, defined as the extent to which an advertisement is representative of its product category. The core components of the model assess both cognitive expectations and affective responses.

The instrument incorporates eight primary constructs:

• Ad Match: The congruence between the perceived ad content (brand depiction, themes, and evoked feelings) and the consumer’s expectations for a typical advertisement in that product category.

• Feeling Expectations (Positive and Negative): The feelings consumers anticipate experiencing when viewing typical advertisements for the product category.

• Ad-Evoked Feelings (Positive and Negative): The actual feelings experienced by the consumer while viewing the specific advertisement.

• Theme Expectations (Attractiveness): The degree to which consumers expect typical ads to utilize specific themes, such as attractiveness or sexual appeal.

• Ad Motivation (Social Approval): The extent to which the ad appeals to the consumer’s desire for social acceptance or approval.

• Attitude toward the Ad (Aad): A general evaluative judgment of the commercial.

Validity

The validity of the measurement model was established through multiple rigorous testing procedures, including checks for convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity: Strong evidence for both convergent and discriminant validity was confirmed across all factors, successfully meeting the established criteria outlined by Campbell and Fiske (1959). This suggests that the constructs measure what they are intended to measure uniquely, while related constructs show appropriate correlation.

Nomological Validity: The relationships between the constructs aligned with theoretical predictions. Specifically, Positive Ad-evoked Feelings positively contributed to the attitude toward the ad (Aad), evidenced by a standardized path coefficient of .34. Conversely, Negative Ad-evoked Feelings exhibited a predicted negative contribution (standardized path coefficient of −.26). Furthermore, advertising cognition, operationalized through social approval motivation, showed a positive contribution to Aad (standardized path coefficient of .16), consistent with prior research in advertising effectiveness.

Reliability

The reliability of the scale was assessed using standard psychometric measures to ensure consistency and stability over time.

Internal Consistency: All measured constructs demonstrated high internal consistency, with all calculated Cronbach’s alpha coefficients meeting or exceeding the threshold of .76, indicating strong item homogeneity within each factor.

Test-retest Reliability: The stability of the measures was evaluated over a 60-day interval. The average Pearson correlation coefficient for test-retests was .50 for Ad Theme Expectations and .51 for Ad Feelings Expectations. For the specific feeling components, positive feelings showed a coefficient of .54, and negative feelings showed a coefficient of .44, indicating moderate to good stability for expectation measures over two months.

Factor Analysis

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA): Confirmatory Factor Analysis was employed using the maximum likelihood method of extraction (Hair et al., 2019) to confirm the underlying structure. The analysis indicated that each construct accounted for over 54 percent of the explained variance, thereby confirming the unidimensionality of each construct (Gerbing and Anderson, 1988). The overall model fit indices demonstrated a good fit to the data, highlighted by a Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) of .97, a Comparative Fit Index (CFI) of .98, and a Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) of .07.

Common Method Variance (CMV): To rule out bias due to Common Method Variance, Harmon’s single-factor test was conducted on the relationship between feeling expectation constructs and their corresponding ad-evoked feeling constructs (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). In all analyses, two distinct factors consistently emerged—one for expectations and one for ad-evoked feelings—confirming that CMV biases were not a significant concern in the resulting data.

Instrument

Test Type: Original Inventory/Questionnaire

Format: The “Ad Match” construct is operationalized using agree-disagree scales. Other constructs utilize similar scaling formats, assessing feelings, motivations, and expectations.

Language Available: English, Russian

Population Group: Human (Male and Female)

Age Group: Adulthood (18 years and older), Young Adulthood (18–29 years)

Population Details: Study participants were consumers located in Kyrgyzstan, providing a specific cultural context for the scale validation.

Test Methodology: Comprehensive psychometric development involving Test Validity (Convergent Validity, Discriminant Validity, Nomological Validity), Test Reliability (Internal Consistency, Test-Retest Reliability), Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, and the development of a structured Measurement Model.

Authors (Detailed)

Author ORCID Identifier: No data is Available

Affiliation Email addresses: Naresh K. Malhotra: [email protected]

Correspondence Address: Naresh K. Malhotra: Georgia Institute of Technology, Scheller College of Business, Atlanta, Georgia, United States, [email protected]

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Permissions: Contact Publisher

Fee: No

Test Year: 2023

Reference’s

Peterson, M., & Malhotra, N. K. (2023). Ad typicality judgments in the processing of creative television ads. International Journal of Advertising: The Review of Marketing Communications, 42(2), 288–316. doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2022.2129331

Items of the Ad Typicality Judgments and Creative Television Ad Processing–Model Questionnaire

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

This measure consists of 10 items. The constructs measured include: Positive feeling expectations; Negative feeling expectations; Theme expectations (attractiveness); Positive feelings; Negative feelings; Ad motivation (social approval); Ad match; Attitude toward the ad.

Ad Typicality Judgments and Creative Television Ad Processing—Model

Items

Positive Feeling Expectations

To what extent do you typically expect to experience the following feelings during TV ads for compact automobiles: alive, active, cheerful

Negative Feeling Expectations

To what extent do you typically expect to experience the following feelings during TV ads for compact automobiles: critical, skeptical, suspicious

Theme Expectations (Attractiveness)

To what extent do you typically expect TV ads for compact automobiles to utilize the following themes: attractiveness of a clearly sexual nature contributes to a pretty or handsome appearance fun

Positive Feelings

Please tell us how much you agree or disagree that each word listed below describes the feelings you experienced during the ad you have just seen: alive, active, cheerful

Negative Feelings

Please tell us how much you agree or disagree that each word listed below describes the feelings you experienced during the ad you have just seen: critical, skeptical, suspicious

Ad Motivation (Social Approval)

Tell us how much you agree or disagree that the ad used the following themes: owning the automobile would appeal to one’s desire for social approval using the automobile would help one feel less apprehensive in social situations one would be considered more fashionable by using the automobile

Ad Match

The brand as depicted in this ad met my expectations for a typical depiction of a compact automobile.
The themes used in the ad were identical to my expectations for a compact automobile.
The feelings experienced during the ad were the feelings I had expected to experience during an advertisement for compact automobiles.

A ad

Indicate how you rate the preceding commercial – very unfavorable/very favorable dislike very much/like very much very bad/very good