Advertising Avoidance: A Consumer Socialization Perspective

The current study adopts the consumer socialization framework to assess the socio-economic factors influencing advertising avoidance across newspapers, magazines, radio, and television via an online survey of 2,002 U.S. adults. Results show that attitude toward advertising in general is the strongest predictor of advertising avoidance, and that greater peer communication about consumption and amount of media usage are overall inversely related with this behavior. The data also demonstrates no gender differences, but that Anglo-Americans and those of higher age, income, and education avoid the most advertising across all four media.