The Impact of Visual Strategy and Race and Gender Congruency on Source Credibility of Print Advertisements

Source credibility has been thought to have a significant impact on attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand and purchase intent. This paper expands on the traditional dimensions of source credibility (expertise, trustworthiness and attractiveness) to include similarity and likeability. It then uses these dimensions of credibility to determine how they influence a consumers’ attitude toward the advertisement. Moreover, this paper examines the relationships between a consumers’ attitude toward the ad, brand attitude and purchase behavior and proposes a model of these relationships. Results indicate that expertise, attractiveness and liking were all significant factors influencing a consumers’ attitude toward the ad, as well as supporting the hypothesized relationships between attitude toward the ad, brand attitude and purchase intent. Taking this idea of credibility one step further, this paper hypothesizes that congruency between the model’s race and that of the respondent will produce higher credibility. Results indicate that this is not entirely supported, but there does appear to be significant differences in attractiveness (i.e., respondents with the same race of the model in the ad rated the ad as more attractive). Gender was also tested, and it appears that regardless of gender, ads with female models are rated more attractive.