KOREASCHOLAR

Digital advertising is one of the most crucial medium of communication and marketing (Berner and Kiley, 2005). Digital advertising brings with itself several benefits such as increase in reach, low advertising cost, and high degree of customer engagement. However, along with benefits it also brings several challenges for the marketers such as comprehending consumer attitude, consumption and behaviour towards digital advertisements. According to prior literature attitude towards internet consists of factors such as information, entertainment, irritation, and trustworthiness (Aaker & Bruzzone, 1985). Ad blocking has become one of the most important concerns for advertising industry globally. This paper has attempted to understand the series of actions that leads to ad blocking. This series consists of consumer response and consumer attitude towards digital advertising where the constant ad delivery creates ad intrusiveness which leads to ad irritation which in turn leads to ad avoidance and ultimately results in ad blocking. Ad blocking further has serious consequences in brand image and brand valuation, because as more number of users opt to download and use ad blockers, advertisement instead of increasing brand valuation results in brand devaluation, not to mention wastage of ad spend. Through literature review it was found that reports discuss ad blockers and its operations but there is little understanding on the process that leads a consumer to install ad blocking software on his digital device. The research objective of the study is therefore, to understand cognitive process of consumers that leads them to take a decision of installing an ad blocking software on their digital device. The study therefore proposes four research questions,
1. What aspects of online advertising irritate users?
2. How do consumers avoid advertisements?
3. What causes a consumer to use ad blocker?
4. What cognitive process lead a consumer to install ad blocking software?
A mixed method research is adopted for the purpose of this paper. In the first stage a qualitative research was conducted through semi-structured interviews in order to understand consumer opinion on what leads them to install an ad blocking (Jagani and Panda 2016). Thematic analysis of transcripts was conducted from which 81 items on ad irritation, ad avoidance and ad blocking were identified for second stage of the study which consists of online survey using quantitative research methods. The items for the quantitative survey are \categorised in three main categories viz. Irritation, Avoidance and Action. The sample consists of 18 to 35 year olds who are active users of internet and have been exposed to digital advertisement, spends more than two hours per day on internet through various digital device and are aware of ad blockers or have used them in the past. Non-probabilistic sampling method was selected for the study and quota sampling was implemented. The study aims to comprehend the process that leads a consumer to install an ad blocking software on his or her digital device.

• Khyati Jagan(FLAME University, India)
• Bijal Mehta(Ahmedabad University, India)
• Rasananda Panda(MICA, India)