How to advertise Approapriately on the World Wide Web? A Multi-Congruity Analysis Approach

As a popular and important advertising style, Internet advertising has drawn substantial amount of scholarly attention. Previous studies have contributed to the understanding of the independent effects of various factors, such as product, consumer, website and ad per se, but few studies consider the impacts of the congruities between these factors on consumer’s attitude toward the ads. In this paper, we propose an integrative model, product-consumer-website-ad model, to articulate how the congruity between factors exerts its effect. We propose that ad appeal (emotional vs. informational) should be designed consistent with the nature of the advertised product (hedonic vs. utilitarian), the nature of the website (hedonic vs. utilitarian) and the thinking styles of consumer (intuitive vs. rational). Personalization plays an important role in the process to achieve the congruity. We also propose that the ad on the website with high reputation will generate more favourable attitude toward it. Implications and future research are also discussed in the paper.