Does explicit comparative advertising affect Indian consumers’ attitudes towards low and high-involvement product?

Purpose – With increasing use of explicit comparative advertisement to get share of consumers’ mind and influence their purchase decision in western context, the same is now used extensively in emerging markets like India. However, there has not been sufficient research to understand the effectiveness of explicit comparative advertisement in low and high-involvement product categories. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to attempt to understand the effectiveness of explicit comparative advertising on consumers’ attitude and purchase intention (PI) towards high and low-involvement products. Design/methodology/approach – The study carried out experimental treatments with 2 × 2 factorial design among 200 Indian young consumers who were in the age group 18-25. The independent variables were product categories and type of advertising (comparative and non-comparative) and dependent variables were consumer attitude and PIs. Findings – It was found that the comparative form of advertisement developed favourable response towards the advertisement, rather than towards the brand or PI. Research limitations/implications – The study found that comparative advertising is effective for high as well as low-involvement product category in changing the consumer’s attitude towards the advertisement. The research has used print media for conducting the experiment. Practical implications – It can be inferred that comparisons should be supplemented with additional information in the form of the unique features and associated emotions and feeling of the product in order to develop favourable attitude towards the brand and PI. Originality/value – Comparative advertising is a growing domain and there has been very little contribution by the researchers specially on high and low-involvement product categories.