Religio-spiritual insights affecting the attitude toward advertising during religious festival: comparison between an irritating and a religious advertisement

Purpose: This study aims to measure the religio-spiritual insights of consumers during religious festivals and compare the results considering the stimuli of two advertisements, i.e., religious and irritating advertisements. When the religio-spiritual insights of the consumers are neglected in the designing of a TV advertisement for a religious festival, in particular, it can lead to irritation and affect the consumers’ attitude toward advertising. Based on the theory of reasoned action (TRA), the mediating effect of religio-spiritual insights was measured between consumers’ attitude toward advertising and independent variables (irritation, credibility, information, good for the economy, and entertainment). Originality/value: This study uses the newly developed instrument of religio-spiritual insights to measure their influence on consumers’ attitudes toward advertising and confirms the mediating effect of religio-spiritual insights between the consumers’ attitude and other constructs, such as credibility, entertainment, information, irritation, and good for the economy. Design/methodology/approach: Two hundred and fifty-five household consumers were selected using the non-probability convenience sampling techniques to collect the responses using the survey method. Each respondent was asked to fill out two questionnaires after watching the attached stimulus advertisement, i.e., one religious and one irritating advertisement. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach was used to test the hypothesis based on the bootstrapping test. Findings: The results show that religio-spiritual insights significantly mediate attitude toward advertising and other constructs when there was a religious advertisement that depicted religious cues, symbols, and visuals. Contrarily, a non-significant effect of irritation was identified on religio-spiritual insights when there was an irritating advertisement.