Linking bank advertising to customer attitudes: The role of cognitive and affective trust

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of affective and cognitive trust in bank advertising toward its potential customers. An advertising experiment was conducted by creating two bank advertisements focusing on affective and cognitive trust in bank advertising. SEM analysis is conducted with a sample of 254 customers who banked with the Central Bank of Ghana using STATA 14.1. Results showed that customers of a bank are more drawn to affective advertising than cognitive advertising. Results also showed that cognitive trust is a stronger predictor of anticipation towards future interactions with a bank than affective trust. Uncertainty and commitment had insignificant relationships with affective trust. Cognitive trust had a positive relationship with commitment, while affective trust had no significant relationship with commitment. Managerial implications and future research of the findings are discussed.