MEASURING TRUST IN

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Term paper
Marketing management-ii

GROUP - 10

Submitted To: AMIT SRIVASTAVA (09-0077)

Mr. Venugopal Rao ANUSHREE SINGH (09-0151)
ARUN CHAUHAN (09-0169)
KUNAL AGARWAL (09-0047)
UPASANA KANANI (09-0350)

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We would like to place our grateful and respectful thanks to PROF. K S

VENUGOPAL RAO who has guided us in our project, which helped us
in the successful completion of the project undertaken.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………
2. MULTIDIMENSIONAL………………………………………………………..
3. TRUST DIMENSION…………………………………………………………..
3.1. COMPETENCE……………………………………………………….
3.2. INTEGRITY…………………………………………………………...
3.4. DEPENDABILITY……………………………………………………
3.5. OPENESS & HONESTY……………………………………………
4. LATEST DEVELOPMENTS……………………………………………….
5. LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………………………
6. OBJECTIVES………………………………………………………………..
7. RESEARCH DESIGN…………………………………………………………..
7.1 EXPLORARY RESEARCH……………………………………………
7.2 DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH…………………………………………
8. SURVEY……………………………………………………………………….
8.1 SAMPLING TECHNIQUES………………………………………….
9. QUESTIONNAIRE…………………………………………………………….
10. ANALYSIS……………………………………………………………………
11. CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………….

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INTRODUCTION
Trust has been a widely studied concept both by itself but, most importantly, as a component of
the quality of relationships. In psychology and interpersonal communication, trust has been one
of several dimensions identified in relationships. It also has been studied extensively in business
management and organizational communication—sometimes as a single concept but, again, most
often as a component of relationships. In psychology and communication, the emphasis has been
on interpersonal relationships among spouses, friends, relatives, and the like. In business
management and organizational communication, Emphasis has been on relationships among
managers and between managers and other employees.

Only recently have researchers began to use similar concepts to Study Trust in Advertising. The
research was undertaken to produce a valid and reliable measure of trust in advertising.
Understanding consumer trust in advertising is as important as ever. Social media are expanding
consumers’ positive and negative influences regarding brands. Two-thirds of the global internet
population visit member communities online. Economic pressure is driving greater attention to
ROI, and advertising have a vested interest in marketing investments, underscoring the
importance of trust and engagement in advertising like never before. Beyond earning their trust,
advertisers and media companies want consumers to understand the value of advertising -- a less
concrete sentiment that can broadly affect consumer receptivity to advertising. It is universally
agreed that trust is a multi-dimensional concept.

MULTI DIMENSIONAL:
Trust consists of multiple factors at the cognitive, emotional and behavioral levels, all of which
affect individual’s perceptions of trust. has been one of several dimensions frequently included in
measurement of relationships. Since its measurement is intrinsic to measurement of
relationships, we include relationship definitions with our definitions of trust.

TRUST DIMENSIONS:

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COMPETENCE:

The belief that an ad has the ability to do what it says it will do. It includes the extent to which
we see an ad as being effective; that it can compete and survive in the marketplace.

INTEGRITY:
The belief that an advertisement is fair and just.

DEPENDABILITY/RELIABILITY:
The belief that an ad will do what it says it will do; that it acts consistently and dependably.

OPENNESS AND HONESTY:

This dimension involves not only the amount and accuracy of information that is shared, but also
how sincerely and appropriately it is communicated.

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
An Advertising Avoid Being Cynical?

By Charles H. Green on Wednesday, April 15, 2009

I saw a TV ad the other night that intrigued me.

It showed a mother who had clearly been called to the police station about her son, who
apparently had been hauled in for street racing in the family car. The kid was clearly remorseful
and ashamed, not wanting to talk about what had happened. She was emotionally there for him,
but also firmly asking him to tell her exactly what had happened.

The tag line was something like, “Responsibility. Liberty Mutual.”

Not your everyday ad

Now, I like to think I’m as cynical as the next guy, but I have to say, my first reaction was not
cynicism. Instead, I thought, ‘Well that was gutsy. I wonder if they can back it up?’

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Turns out the ad is part of a broader campaign highlighting the notion of individual
responsibility , which in turn is the 2009 version of the company’s broader campaign several-
year campaign about responsibility, begun back in 2006 and run by Hill Holiday. It comes
complete with website, www.responsibilityproject.com, which has had several million visitors
since opening in 2008.

Without having looked deeply into it, I have to say I like this. It’s a relevant issue. It’s an issue
they’ve done a nice job of framing, without overtly anchoring it to a particular political point of
view. And while they do say they’re about responsibility, it still has the flavor of sponsoring a
dialogue, rather than of wrapping themselves in the flag.

Business being business, some idiot had to muck it up a few years ago by buying goggle ad
words related to an advertising exec’s suicide.

And, my viewpoint is not shared by at least one critic, Jack Shafer at Slate, who calls it
pandering on the scale of Chevron’s quasi-environmentalist ads.

I’m glad Shafer is upholding the virtues of suspicion while I take a day off from it. Still, at least
Liberty Mutual doesn’t address me as “America” and claim “that’s why we at is doing something
about.

I give them credit. A dialogue about the concept of responsibility at the individual and social
level? As long as they stand back and let the dialogue roll, I think they deserve the credit they
get by associating their name with it.

Say what? 70% of consumers trust strangers’ recommendations

One of the blog posts that generated some chatter in our office this week were some survey
findings from Neilsen – Consumers Trust Real Friends and Virtual Strangers the Most.

The opening statistic reports:

Ninety percent of consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they
know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online.

The online “word of mouth” effect is a lot more prevalent than I expected, although thinking
about the findings and my personal observation of the number of customer reviews on Amazon
these days perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised. Providing customer reviews of products is central
to many online retailers’ sales strategy today – it isn’t just a “web 2.0″ feature – as customer
reviews can help to generate trust and credibility (perhaps the feeling of a busy, vibrant shop full

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of customers, instead of tumbleweed blowing through the aisles of a warehouse out in the
sticks… ).

That said, I don’t expect the range of answers to the question “Approximately how many people
have you told about this problem” to increase by huge numbers. It’s long been known that the
proportion of customers who post reviews versus those who don’t is about 90:9:1 (lurkers : one-
off contributers : repeat-contributors) although perhaps the growth of twitter will change this?

Advertising, he says, has become even hollower because of the way people now use the internet.
“I Googled ‘best razor’, found out which one got the most stars in reviews, bought that one, and
noticed that the one I had currently only has two stars. And it clicked for me; this is the way
people are going to shop. For brands to rely on advertising and marketing is a huge mistake
because people find you out, which is why we put emphasis on product and service innovation.”

As people become more internet savvy, I couldn’t agree more.

Adolescent skeptism towards TV advertising and knowledge of advertiser tactics by David M

Boush, Marian Friest and Gregory M Rose.

A longitudinal study of middle school students examined adolescents' skepticism toward

advertising and their beliefs about the persuasive tactics advertisers employ. Comparisons across
grade levels and over the course of the school year indicated that knowledge about advertiser
tactics developed in the direction of adult understanding. Skeptical attitudes toward advertisers'
motives showed no differences across grade levels; however, students generally became more
disbelieving of advertising claims as the school year progressed. The level of skepticism toward
advertising was high and was positively related to having a more adult understanding of
advertising tactics.

LITERATURE REVIEW

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES:
1) To explore the meaning and scope of the ad-trust construct and to investigate whether the
construct is different from similar constructs

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2) To develop the measure of trust in advertising by following systematic measurement
development procedures

3) To examine the role of trust in advertising in predicting other advertising-related response

variables.

Two models can be undertaken during the study

1) Cultural model

2) Rational perspective model

Here we take rational perspective model because its primary function is to inform the customers
help weighing one consumption choice to other.

STAGES:
1) Identification stage

2) Reliability stage

3) Validation stage

Whenever we are considering the advertising we need to consider three things

• Trust
• Advertising credibility (ACRED)
• Attitude towards advertising

Trust is important from two perspectives.

1) Operational Importance
Trust has been commonly measured with single-item measures or ad hoc multiple-item scales
without empirical validation and testing. Trust has typically been treated as being in the same
category as “accuracy”

2) Practical Importance
At the micro level where trust is treated as a criterion to evaluate and select ads, at the
methodological level for selecting stimuli for ad-trust studies and at the institutional level for

measuring trust.

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UNDERSTANDING
Ad Trust: A Multidimensional, Four-Factor Construct

The four ADTRUST factors sufficiently represent the proposed conceptualization of the
construct as the combination of

1) Perception of reliability and usefulness of advertising,

2) Affect toward advertising, and

3) Willingness to rely on advertising.

The results in the survey validate the multidimensional nature of trust in advertising and indicate
that the construct should be operationalized and measured as an independent, three-part structure
(i.e., reliability and usefulness = cognitive dimension, affect = emotional dimension, and
willingness to rely on = behavioral dimension).

We inferred from the survey and the article that the factors of ADTRUST scale are reliability
factor which includes integrity and reliability, usefulness which refers to information utility for
purchasing.

A comparison of the relative strength of the dimensions of the ADTRUST scale indicates that the
cognitive dimension is the backbone of the ADTRUST.

IMPLICATONS
1) ADTRUST scale represents one more tool for investigating, advertising processes and effects

2) Development of ADTRUST scale brings interdisciplinary research in to advertising research

providing scholars the opportunity to understand and explore trust from the respective of other
disciplines

3) Introduction of the ADTRUST scale should help advertising researchers develop a more in
depth understanding of consumer response to advertising

LIMITATIONS

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 • Convenient samples were used in the identification and reliability stages of the research
• The research tested internal consistency, the items, but not the stability of the scale.
• The research did not used test retest method
• Fictious ads were used to test the nomological validity of ADTRUST scale
• Since the relationship among trust components might be casual (i.e. Trusting belief s
predict trusting intentions) so the reliability and the usefulness might affect willingness to
rely on.

OBJECTIVES
To find out the importance of trust factors in advertising and also find out the factors affecting it.

Hypothesis

1) To find out whether there is any impact of the gender while scoring on the factors of trust.

2) To find out whether the scoring of the factors depend upon the type of advertisement that is
being shown.

RESEARCH DESIGN:

EXPLORATORY RESEARCH
It is usually conducted during the initial stages of the research. The main aim here is to narrow
the scope of the research topic and to transform discovered problems into defined ones,
incorporating specific research objectives.

Here we are clear with the nature of the problem but still to check whether we are on the right
track we went for pilot studies.

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It is basically collect data from the ultimate subjects of the research project to serve as a guide
for the larger study. While we are discussing pilot studies in context of exploratory research we
mean to collect the data informally and whose findings may lack precision.

In our pilot study we met 20 friends and divided into 2 groups of 10 each. With first group we
divided them in people with work experience and fresher and conducted the research and test.
With other group we divided them into males and females and then conducted the research.

And after the pilot study we came to conclusion that the division of the people in first group on
the basis of the work experience does not matter and we have to focus on the gender differences
in our study.

Also we divided the advertisements into rational and emotional ads and then found out that the
responses are different for each of them. So at the end of our pilot study we came to conclusion
that we have to focus on gender differences and types of advertisements.

DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH
The descriptive research is basically taken because we have some kind of knowledge of the
research problem. Accuracy is of utmost importance in descriptive research although it cannot be
eliminated completely, good researchers strive for descriptive precision. Descriptive research
will attempt to determine the extent of differences in the needs, perceptions, attitude and
characteristics of subgroups.

SURVEY
We basically wanted to find out the scores of the various factors of ad trust for the
advertisements we have shown. Here we have shown two types of ads

1) Emotional ad 2) Rational ad

For both types of ad we took a sample of 50 people each. Out of which 25 were female and 25
were male. We went to canteen, reading room, classroom, hostel and mess and showed the ads to
students after which they filled up the questionnaire.

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In all, the sample for the whole survey was 100. Out of which 50 were for emotional ad and 50
were for rational ad

SAMPLING TECHNIQUES
The sampling technique used in the study is Convenience sampling. More specifically
judgmental sampling technique which lets the researcher judge whether the respondent will truly
give his response without any bias. Convenience Sampling has been administered on 100
respondents. Data was analyzed on the survey conducted on the ICFAI Hyderabad Campus.

QUESTIONNARE:
The Questionnaire designed is for the trust in advertising. There are mainly four factors on the
basis of which it has been calculated

1) Reliability
2) Usefulness
3) Affect
4) Willingness to rely on

Here we have used Likert scale to measure the responses from the respondents.
The Scale has been numbered from 1 to 7
Here 1 = Strongly Disagree
And 7= Strongly Agree
Here the sample size taken is total of 100

The sample consists of the Students of Icfai University pursing M.B.A. so the factors to
differentiate within the samples can be only the Gender as here income, age, etc is almost same.

Further we have selected the range on the basis of the responses and then the sum of the
responses of all the factors has been taken and the measure of the dependence of the Reliability,
Usefulness, Affect, willingness to rely on. Then further we have calculated the total responses of
the rational advertisement and the emotional advertisement on the basis of which the final
conclusion has been made.

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The four factors can be further explains as follows:

• RELIABILITY

1) Honest: It shows that how much honest is the advertisement. The content or the thing
shown in the advertisement is honest or not.

2) Truthful: The advertisement shown to the respondents is showing the truth or there is
some fake things or concepts are used.

3) Credible: Advertisement is it believable or not has to be judged by this factor.

4) Reliable: This factor shows that how much reliable is the advertisement

5) Dependable: This factor calculates the worthiness of being depended on.

6) Accurate: It shows how much free from error or defect or how much consistent with a
standard or rule.

7) Factual: The product advertised should have a verified existence, it should not be
illusionary

8) Complete: The advertisement should be having all the required or customary

characteristics

9) Clear: The advertisement should not leave any doubt or confusion In the mind of the
customer.

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 • USEFULNESS
1) Valuable: The advertisement should be admirable and should have esteemed qualities
or characteristics

2) Good: The advertisement should be likable by the people

3) Useful: the advertisement should be useful.

4) Decision Making: It should help the customer in the purchase decision of the product
or service.

• AFFECT

1) Likable: It means for a customer to be likable or agreeable

2) Enjoyable: It should be giving or capable of giving joy or pleasure to the customer.

3) Positive: The advertisement should certain or hopeful

• WILLINGNESS TO RELY ON

1) There are four factors which show that whether the advertisement will be helpful in
making purchase decisions.

2) It will also be helpful for making important purchase decisions.

3) The customer will consider the information conveyed in the advertisement for
purchasing.

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 4) The product or service that has been given in the advertisement, the customer will
recommend it to their family and friends.

ANALYSIS
EMOTIONAL AD

Reliability

H0:- scores of reliability do not depend upon gender.

H1:- scores of reliability depend upon gender.

Observed value:- 1.625

Calculated value:-8.33

Reject the null hypothesis.

As the calculated value of the chi square is greater than the observed value therefore we reject
the null hypothesis concluding that the scoring of the reliability depends upon the gender.

Usefulness

H0:- scores of usefulness do not depend upon gender.

H1:- scores of usefulness depend upon gender.

Observed value :- 1.625

Calculated value:-2.122

Reject the null hypothesis.

As the calculated value of the chi square is greater than the observed value therefore we reject
the null hypothesis concluding that the scoring of the usefulness depends upon the gender.

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Affect

H0:- scores of affect do not depend upon gender.

H1:- scores of affect depend upon gender.

Observed value :- 1.625

Calculated value:-2.122

Reject the null hypothesis.

As the calculated value of the chi square is greater than the observed value therefore we reject
the null hypothesis concluding that the scoring of the affect depends upon the gender.

Willingness to rely on

H0:- scores of willingness to rely on do not depend upon gender.

H1:- scores of willingness to rely depend upon gender.

Observed value: - 1.625

Calculated value:-8.33

Reject the null hypothesis.

As the calculated value of the chi square is greater than the observed value therefore we reject
the null hypothesis concluding that the scoring of the willingness to rely on depends upon the
gender.

RATIONAL AD

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Reliability

H0:- scores of reliability does not depend upon gender.

H1:- scores of reliability depend upon gender.

Observed value :- 1.625

Calculated value:-0.000

Accept the null hypothesis.

As the calculated value of the chi square is lower than the observed value therefore we reject the
null hypothesis concluding that the scoring of the reliability depends upon the gender.

Usefulness

H0:- scores of usefulness do not depend upon gender.

H1:- scores of usefulness depend upon gender.

Observed value :- 1.625

Calculated value:-0.059

Accept the null hypothesis.

As the calculated value of the chi square is lower than the observed value therefore we reject the
null hypothesis concluding that the scoring of the usefulness depends upon the gender.

Affect

H0:- scores of affect do not depend upon gender.

H1:- scores of affect depend upon gender.

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Observed value: - 1.625

Calculated value:-0.117

Accept the null hypothesis.

As the calculated value of the chi square is lower than the observed value therefore we reject the
null hypothesis concluding that the scoring of the affect depends upon the gender.

Willingness to rely on

H0:- scores of willingness to rely on depends upon gender.

H1:- scores of willingness to rely does not depend upon gender.

Observed value :- 1.625

Calculated value:-2.599

Reject the null hypothesis.

As the calculated value of the chi square is greater than the observed value therefore we reject
the null hypothesis concluding that the scoring of willingness to rely on depends upon the
gender.

CONCLUSION:

As we have seen that for emotional ad all the hypothesis have been rejected so we came to the
conclusion that the scoring of all the factors of trust depends upon the gender. So our general

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perception that women are more inclined towards emotional aspect of the advertisement is
proved correct.

For the rational ad all the hypothesis have been accepted and so we came to the conclusion that
the scoring of the factors of trust in advertising does not depend upon the gender. So we can say
that the attitude of males and females towards the rational ads is same.

Also we have seen that the responses of the people depend upon the type of ad you are showing.

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