The consumer's response of the utilitarian and hedonic sports products to sell-hard and soft-hard

The purpose of this study was to investigated the effect of soft and hard-sell appeals on the attitude toward advertising and the purchase intention of sports products. The statistical population of the study consisted of all undergraduate and postgraduate students of Physical Education in University of Kurdistan who used sports goods. A sample of 180 students was selected and a simple random sampling method was used for collecting data. The research method was semi experimental and 2 * 2 factorial design. In order to measure the variables of attitude toward advertising and purchase intention of sports products, a questionnaire was used, and descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean) and inferential statistics (Multiple ANOVA) were used for data analysis. The research findings showed that both advertising ads of hard-sell and soft-sell are influence on the attitude toward advertising and the purchase intention of products, but the effect of soft-sell advertising ad is greater. The results also showed that the product type acts as a moderator in this relationship. So that the participants known More suitable hard-sell ad for utilitarian product, and soft-sell ad for hedonic and recreational product. Based on this, it is suggested that the marketing managers of the companies choose the particular advertising appeals of the product, depending on the product type they offer.