Empathy toward Social Media Advertisements: The Moderating Role of Ad Intrusiveness

Abstract As social media platforms have evolved to be superfluously prevalent, social media advertising comes out as an appealing avenue for expanding promotion viability. Hence, the study investigates the impact of the identified social media advertising antecedents namely, perceived uniqueness, perceived herd behavior, perceived vividness, and perceived customization on consumer’s attitude toward empathy expression. Furthermore, the impact of consumer’s attitude toward empathy expression on the intention to express empathy and consumer’s brand engagement with the moderating role of intrusiveness were also studied. The results largely supported the influence of all the social media advertising antecedents on consumer’s attitude toward empathy expression except the perceived uniqueness. Intrusiveness acts as a moderator between the attitude and intention to express empathy and attitude and brand engagement. Thus, the study offers a noteworthy contribution by providing the marketing practitioners with a framework for social media advertising to help them utilize their marketing penny in optimal and best rewarding terms.