Advertisement may be conveyed through a variety of media to inform consumers of
brand existence. However, as the amount of marketing information in the environment
increases, consumers intentionally avoid and do not readily intepret accidental exposure to
marketing information. With the marketing communications techniques facing a decline,
advertisers are forced to find alternative ways for communicating with consumers. This paper
investigates the potential of washroom advertising as an alternative mean of communicating
with the consumers. Advertising in washroom maybe an interesting application since
washroom advertising is able to catch consumers’ attention at an unique time and during
advertisement exposure, consumers are physically idle and yet mentally engaged without
interruptions or distractions.
Although there is no previous academic literature on the effectiveness of washroom
advertising setting, this study refers to some previous studies on advertising related issues
focusing on the processing of advertisements by consumers in a washroom setting and their
effects of those advertisements on consumers’ responses. Specifically, this paper investigate
the effects of different levels of product involvement and the types of advertisement that
appeal to consumers’ responses, namely the cognitive responses, affective responses and
behavioral responses when viewing advertisements in washroom by incorporating a 2 X 2
between subject factorial design conducted on the university students. The high involvement
product is represented by an electronic dictionary while the toilet roll represents the low involvement product. On the other hand, the two types of advertisement appeal are
represented by rational appeal ad format and emotional ad format. Other variables such as
attention, memory, ad-evoked feelings, attitude toward the advertisement, attitude toward the
brand and purchase intention represents the dependent variables.
This study has adopted and found support from theories such as the Elaboration
Likelihood Model, Affect Transfer Hypothesis and Dual Mediation Hypothesis. By using
statistical analysis such as exploratory descriptive analysis, factor analysis, reliability
analysis, independent samples t-test, linear regression analysis, confirmatory factor analysis
and structure equation modeling, the results show that different levels of product involvement
and types of ad appeal may lead to different kinds of consumers’ responses. Specifically, for
the high involvement product, results suggest that rational appeal ad format should be
adopted to enhance the attention and advertising recall. On the other hand, in the case of low
involvement product, results suggest that emotional appeal ad format should be adopted to
enhance the consumers’ feelings, ad attitude and brand attitude. However, both types of
appeal can be used to enhance consumers’ purchase intention. The study result will be very
meaningful and important for marketers to design appropriate advertising to customers in a
washroom setting. Besides that, the result of this study can also be provided as a reference
point for further academic or theoretical validation.

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