Flow experience as a mediator in the relationship between native advertising value and young Chinese consumers’ purchase intention

The advertising industry has undergone significant changes driven by shifting consumer behaviors and evolving marketing strategies. As present consumers have been actively avoiding commercial content, traditional advertising has become less effective. In response, native advertising has emerged as a prominent and effective format, which seamlessly integrating promotional content into its environment while minimizing disruption to users. However, most prior studies have primarily focused mostly on its covert nature, but rarely mentioned its effectiveness, such as native advertising value and purchase intention, or combining different theories to investigate the relationships between predictor variables and consumer purchase intention in native advertising contexts. Effectiveness of native advertising was often neglected. Therefore, this study examines the relationship between native advertising value and purchase intention, with flow experience serving as a mediating variable. Integrating advertising value model and flow theory, this research evaluates native advertising value, informativeness, entertainment, interactivity, and deceptiveness as influential factors affecting flow experience and purchase intention. This quantitative study employed a survey method, using stratified sampling to collect data from 487 Chinese university students, yielding 477 valid responses for analysis. The data were analyzed using SPSS and AMOS software, allowing for descriptive analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling. The results show that native advertising value, informativeness, entertainment, and interactivity positively impact flow experience and purchase intention, while deceptiveness negatively impacts both. Additionally, positive correlation between flow experience and purchase intention is established. Flow experience as a mediating variable significantly strengthens the proposed relationships. This study validates the application of flow theory in advertising research and enhances the advertising value model, as well as offering valuable implication in terms of advertisers for creating more effective and high-quality online advertising content.

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