Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Advertising Complaints

Abstract

This paper studies consumer satisfaction, dissatisfaction and complaining behavior in the field of advertising, posing the questions how CS/D & CB on advertising can be understood in relation to CS/D & CB on goods and services, who are the complainers on advertisements and to what extent consumers are satisfied with the advertising system. To answer these questions we use statistical material from the Norwegian Consumer Ombud as well as data from several surveys representative of the Norwegian adult population focusing on attitudes towards and experiences with advertising. We argue for the importance of studying advertising system dissatisfaction, and point out that the consumers are dissatisfied with the advertising volume, they lack information in the advertisements and they dislike advertising that it offensive. Still, only a minority of consumers have ever put forward a complaint on an advertisement. Most of the complaints that are handled by the Consumer Ombud deal with the information content in advertisements.