The effect of third-person perception in suggestive advertising on the purchase intention of hedonic and utilitarian products: A cross-cultural study

Consumers are heavily exposed to various types of advertising messages every day. Many factors like personal, psychological, and societal ones have role when evaluating those messages. On the other hand, advertisers (firms, public institutions, and non-governmental organizations) are trying to increase recall and effectiveness of the ads by applying different strategies to make ads more memorable and attention-grabbing. In this context, appeals used in the ads and the way they are perceived are of vital issue for the advertisers. A 2x2 factorial experiment was designed by using four fictitious ads to compare reactions to two different product types across two different cultures (Canada and Turkey). Data were tested using AMOS and SPSS softwares. Findings indicated that the third-person phenomenon was supported in the scope of sex appeals in ads; the third person perception may depend on the product type; hedonic or functional, and attitudes toward sexual stimuli moderated the third-person perception and its behavioral consequences depending on the product type and respondents' cultural background. The study offers considerable contributions to the theory by proving an alternative way to measure third person perception phenomenon as well as this phenomenon's effect on purchase intention as a behavioral outcome. Furthermore, it is another contribution of this study that the effect of model and respondent sex on the third-person perception and purchase intention is examined across different product types and cultures. Keywords: Suggestive advertising, third person perception, hedonic, functional, culture