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The emerging digital technologies and various web applications have paved a way for the various social media sites that have intensely changed the manner that individuals communicate with each other (Ham et al., 2022; Petrescu & Korgaonkar, 2011). In the present e-tailing scenario, marketers associate various behavioral tracking software with SNS such as Instagram, YouTube, Google and Twitter SNS to design customised ads (Jamil et al., 2022; Lee et al., 2022; Jung et al., 2016; Clark & Çallı, 2014; Bleier & Eisenbeiss, 2015). Online marketers are focusing on these platforms to publish their ads, because the total time spent on advertisements by adults (18+) averaging 12 hours, 9 minutes per day globally (Statista, 2020). Statista (2021) has found Instagram to be the biggest SNS with 2.8 billion active monthly users that’s almost a third of the world’s population. There are 340 million Instagram active users in India, which was considered to be the leading country. There are around 65 million businesses and more than seven million advertisers using Facebook Pages for promotions (Statista, 2020). Furthermore, personalized ads are often used for pulling than for persuading the customers to buy products and brands (Chen & Liu, 2022; Chung et al., 2015). As consumers are conscious of marketers’ strategies they react or avoid ads (Fransen et al., 2015; Huo et al., 2021; Back et al., 2010; Luna Cortés et al., 2013; Malhotra et al., 2021). Where several studies implicitly assumed reactance as situation-specific towards a certain disconfirming stimulus that is not in line with their thought process.
Reactance and Ad Avoidance
Many of the reactance pieces of literature have claimed that there is a clear sign that individuals respond in different ways based on their personalities (Lee et al., 2015a; Quick et al., 2011; Dinsmore et al., 2017). Furthermore, Bleier & Eisenbeiss (2015) and Moore and Fitzsimons (2014) have suggested that the effects of personality traits, feelings, and attitude on consumer reactance. Finally, the literature have explained that ad reactance has a significant association with consumer attitudes, personality traits ad irritation (Ham et al., 2022; Akestam et al., 2017, Quick et al., 201; Wang & Zuo, 2017; Johnson, 2013). Beak & Morimoto (2012) have recommended exploring the effect of consumer reactance with ad skepticism and have stressed exploring consumers’ ad irritation, skepticism and avoidance in the context of personalized advertising. Due to the advancement in technology, marketers can track the user’s searching and browsing behaviour to provide more personalized ads. Many research studies on reactance implicitly assume that the concept of reactance is situation-specific and it happens in response towards specific disconfirming stimuli or an event which is not according to the individual's thought process (Sharma et al., 2022; Jinyoung et al., 2023;Fransen et al., 2015).