Korean People`s Skepticism toward Advertising in Korea

Abstract

Our objectives were to examine ad skepticism toward several media such as television , cable television, radio, newspaper, magazine and the Internet in terms of demographic variables. With respect to the former, we found some evidence of differences in demographic variables for skepticism toward advertisingOne of things we found was that advertising Skepticism appears stronger for print media such as newspaper and magazine than for broadcasting media, television and cable TV. This is different from the previous view that print media is more reliable than television. This could mean that as Korean consumers see more television, they begin to place more faith in the reliability of television-based advertising. Currently, the Korean newspaper industry is suffering because of poor advertising revenue. As young adults begin to avoid reading print media, the ad expenditures of newspaper and magazine will decrease. Therefore, the Korean newspaper industry needs to do seek ways to solve this problem. The second finding was a relationship between ad skepticism and demographic characteristics of consumers. We found that men were more skeptical of advertising than women for magazine ads. Older people were more skeptical of advertising than younger people for every media except radio even though there were significant differences in the statistical tests. Younger Korean consumers tended to accept advertising messages and believe in them. High school graduates were more skeptical of advertising than college graduates