Retargeted advertising and fear of missing out in young people : towards the development of a scale

Abstract

We report the first part of a two-phase study designed to develop and validate a scale to measure the fear of missing out (FoMO) in the context of retargeted advertisements among young people. We commenced this study after conducting two systematic literature reviews (SLRs), one focusing on the factors that affect the attitude of young people towards retargeted advertisements and the other concentrating on FoMO and young people. It was revealed that FoMO is an area that is poorly understood in the advertising context, evident from a general lack of studies. More importantly, it was determined in the FoMO-related SLR that studies on the link between FoMO and retargeted advertisements are inexistent. Specifically, we look at the fear that others might encounter when coming across repeated online advertisements displaying products that are associated with scarcity or urgency. These advertisements appear on users’ screens after they show interest in a product by, for example, previously visiting a product website. The themes derived from both SLRs relate to fear and lost opportunities, retargeted advertisements, scarcity, and urgency. The SLRs also identified that few studies focus on early and middle adolescence. We then further analysed the derived themes among young people aged between 13 and 21 through focus groups discussions. The findings fielded out a battery of items that emerged from the themes observed in the focus groups discussions. During the second phase, this battery will be deployed in two surveys with different samples. All data will be subjected to diverse factor analysis and tests to construct a robust instrument.