Growing Relationship between Culture and Advertisements - Essay Example

Advertisement and Shopping. Advertisement is a form of communication in the field of marketing through which a targeted audience is persuaded to take up or continue with certain actions/products usually in respect to commercial offerings or for political/ideological support. The modern globalised economy has come with its own consequences. Giant multinational organisations are increasingly transcending national and political boarders to market their products and services to people’s o different cultures. Even with local settings cultures are fasting changing and advertisement organisations have to fast change their strategies and focus on appealing to the emerging cultures. Children and the youth for instance are the focus for modern advertisement. In this paper I will be looking at the growing relationship between culture and advertisements. M According to (Lin, Karoglu and Olson, 2012) “In most cases, consumers’ attitudes, awareness and behaviour are largely driven by the framework of their own culture, which is not only communicated to people but also forms and modifies the communication among the people of a society.” Marketing strategies today are not free of the influence of culture. It is over that culture’s influence on the behaviours and perceptions of consumers when it comes to marketing communication are particularly profound and powerful. Collectivism and individualism have for a long time offered a framework for understanding cultural communication. Individualistic cultures highly regard independence of the individual while collectivistic cultures emphasize on social ties as being paramount. Advertisements today are being tailored with messages for certain market segments. One area of advertisement that has experienced exponential growth in the past few years is the children segment. According to Eric Schlosser, whereas children may not have money to spend, they have “Pester Power.” Just a few companies in America focussed on kids in their advertisements 25 years ago. Things have changed and today many firms are interested in the kinds segment of the market. The 1980s saw many parents begin spending more dollars on their children so as compensate to compensate for the time they do not spend with them while working. This resulted in an explosion of advertisements target for children hence the decade was referred to as “the decade of the child consumer.” Madison Avenue and other advertisement started scrutinising and pursuing children as consumers. There are now many adverting firms with divisions specifically dealing with children while a number of others solely focus on advertisements for kids. This is a testimony of how culture tremendously shapes marketing and advertisement communications. As a result of long working hours a new culture cropped where parents wanted to spend more money on their kids as they were spending less time with them. Marketers and organisations took advantage of the situation to market more for kids in their promotions with an intention of increasing future consumption. The assumption in the increasing kids’ advertisements is that the nostalgic memories of childhood can promote a lifelong loyalty to the brands. “Indeed market research has found that has found that children often recognise a brand logo before they can recognise their names” (Schlosser, 2011). With increased focus among advertisers being directed at kid Kustomers, a lot of research is also going on in the area. Advertisers need to gain knowledge about children’s tastes and preferences as well as how to appeal to them. Many agencies are now carrying out surveys, organising kids’ focus groups, analysing artwork by children and even recruiting children to run some focus groups. Agencies go to the extent of deploying cultural anthropologists to restaurants, retail stores and other places known for children gatherings. An understanding of behaviour can then be gathered about the children after which products and services can be designed and advertised to their needs. It will be remembered that advertisements aim at persuading potential buyers into buying products and purchasing behaviour is largely influenced by culture. Behaviour of families as influenced by the culture of working parents has greatly informed the growing number of advertisements targeting children customers. There is wide consensus in literature that there is a lot of association between advertisement and shopping. Most advertisements have messages are packaged in a manner that convinces target consumers and more importantly influence their perception towards certain brands and products. Advertisements therefore significantly impact on the decisions made by individuals when it comes to purchasing certain brands. Shopping malls and catalogues for instance indirectly encourage the development of identity. Shopping malls regulate human behaviour and public discourse as they are indeed sources of the commodities through which people speak of identities. Marketing of shopping malls as appropriate suburban shopping areas has seen many customers prefer shopping in the malls for the cultural identity associated with the same. Many people would even just want to prowl the mall and as such end up spending more time than money. But as they hand around malls, the individuals immerse themselves in what has come to be known as the American culture. According to Norton (2011) the mall “is the source of those commodities through which we speak of our identities, our opinions, our desires.” By walking around from one shop or display to the other and observing the manner which others behaviours behave, the astute shoppers and especially adolescents who are observant develop a language of commodities. Window displays at shops deploy strategies of irony, inversion, allusion and sarcasm to appeal to shoppers. Shopping practices also differ along cultural aspects of gender, literacy, socio-economics class and many others. Women who are housewives for instance go out shopping with intentions of spending time out of their families, hanging with other women and being away from their husbands. Through construction of identity and deriving joy from friendships in the absence of husbands women have been effectively created as consumers. The desire for shopping obliges women to submit to their husbands as they are dependent on them for funds. Advertisers take advantage of this to package their messages in a manner that promotes the shopping culture of women. Advertising and marketing researchers look for human characteristics that influence purchasing decisions among consumes and respond relevantly. Identity is one such consumer characteristic. Consumers tend to identify with certain cultures such as pop among the youth and will purchase within the cultural dictations. Armed with such information, the advertisers design product promotion messages in a style that is supposed to particularly appeal to the behavioural identities among consumers. They realize the points of weakness among consumers and target just those areas. In essence advertisers therefore sell to the consumer identities and not necessarily the needs. It is about generating sales and therefore advertisers will do everything possible within their capabilities to convince consumers into taking up or continuing to use their brand and products. In conclusion therefore, there is a lot of association between advertising and shopping not only in America but the world over. It is also acknowledged widely in literature that culture is important in the entire field marketing. Culture influences the manner in which people communicate and perceive things and many people make their decisions based on their cultural background. Consumer behaviour is a product of their cultural making and therefore advertisement agencies & firms must relevantly respond in their promotional messages. The culture of children, the youth culture, adults and many others are subject for research and at the same time target for advertisements. Culture promotes the development of unique identities which strongly influence purchasing behaviour among individuals. Women, children and youth are identified with certain purchasing behaviours as well as identities and these are influenced to a large extend by culture. Advertisers on the other hand design their messages in manners which sell products and services to these constructed identities. Advertisement is therefore a product of culture. Works of Cited. 1. Anne Norton. “The Signs of Shopping” (2011). 2. Eric Schlosser. “Kid Kustomers.” (2011). 3. Ye Lin, Didem Koroglu & Lyle Olson. “The Influence of Cultural Values in Advertising:Examples from China and the United States.”South Dakota State University, 2012. Read More