Media multitasking, advertising appeal, and gender effects

Abstract Despite the knowledge that women engage more frequently in multitasking than men when using media devices, no study has explored how impacts brand attitude of this target audience. The investigation gender effects context would not only provide a better understanding individual elements which influence situations but also guide marketers their targeting strategies. Likewise, role advertising appeals follows current call to concentrate on situations. To address these research gaps, conducted two experimental studies offer new perspective impact differences processing styles (heuristic vs systematic processing) and interaction with different (rational emotional appeals) single multitasking. Study 1 employs an online experiment (gender × viewing situation appeal). Results demonstrate negatively affects attitude, have lower compared tasking situation, while advertisements neither strengthen nor attenuate negative attitude. 2 controlled appeal) product category. results reveal moderating effect as mediated through attention toward ad. Hence, ad been identified underlying mechanism.