We Are What We Read - Essay Example

We are what we read, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes romantic, sometimes principled, sometimes pragmatic, but almost always a consumer Anthropology would describe humans as social animals depending on each other for the fulfilment of their needs. Thus, at whatever social, financial or intellectual level we are in the society, we will need goods for consumption. This makes us a consumer of products of various types depending on our needs. Companies that produce goods have always been targeting people for consumption of their goods. Depending on the product they target different consumers. However, the way different consumers are approached depends on how the consumers will react to the advertisements based on their knowledge and experience of the product or their own mental aptitude. We will look at some of these aspects of consumer research in our ensuing sections. So far consumers were associated with individuals or groups that use goods and services. But this is an information age. We are no more consumers of just products but of the vast variety of information surrounding us all the time. A famous post modernist philosopher, Jean Baudrillard, says that “we live in a hypereality of simulations in which images, spectacles, and the play of signs replace the logic of production and class conflict as key constituents of contemporary capitalist societies” (Mickey 1997). Today advertising and public relations have the power of influencing not only the consumer of a product but the entire culture of the society. These two key elements of consumerism see consumers of information in every aspect of life and use the images they produce about a concept to influence outcomes in a very sophisticated way. These could be political consumers, social consumer, and scientific consumers and so on. This field has given rise to a new thought process called postmodern thinking. As per this thinking process, “public relations can be called symbol production in so far as communication strategy is an integral part of the work, whether that work be a speech, a news release, or a press conference” (Mickey 1997). Information on its own does not form a consumable product unless it is filtered and re-adjusted by passing through the technical packaging by the media. Thus, symbols are produced and these symbols and not the reality guide our perception of a product. The product itself has been transformed into the symbol and this symbol assumes more significance than the reality. People today have become very smart consumers. They tend to be selective about what they want to look at. For example, they do not always look at all the commercials that are shown on the television. Channel surfing while commercials are on is a common phenomenon. If they are watching a recorded program on a VCR or cable TV, they tend to zip the commercials. This means fast forwarding the advertisements (Stout and Burda 1989). Thus, as consumers we tend to zip and zap the advertisements and spare us the download of unwanted information. Why advertising has been able to influence us to the extent that it is even shaping our culture can be attributed to the fact that communications and media studies have moved their focus towards the consumers as the main actors rather than mere receivers of advertising information. The focus of all advertising activity so far was the type of advertisement rather than the consumer. Advertisements were designed to ensure maximum attention from the consumers who were always the focus of attention for sales of products. But now the focus has shifted from building advertisements for the customers to “understanding the relationship between the consumer and the advertising information and imagery they choose to interact with” (Aitken Gray and Lawson 2008). The two branches of studies “have prioritised the psychological, social and cultural contexts within which consumers relate to commercial information and the roles that advertising media play in their lives” (Aitken Gray and Lawson 2008). As per these studies, people get influenced by advertisements based on their cultural background and hence the consumer is actually the focal point of an advertisement and not the advertisement itself per se. A lot of studies have been conducted to understand how advertisements impact different customers under different environmental conditions. For example, in a string of commercials, too many advertisements (called clutter) tend to leave very little impact on the consumers. It has been observed that usually commercials placed in the early position in the commercial string tend to have more involvement from the consumers as compared to those in the middle of the string (Webb 1979). Advertisers are today finding it difficult to hold attention of consumers due to the vast variety of the information sources available. This is both good and bad in itself. The good part is that wider the diversity of media, better the reach for the advertisers. However, the negative aspect of this is that the advertisements or the way a message is being sent out needs to be adapted based on the type of media. This poses a major problem for the advertisers as the adaptation might require specialized skills. For example, as today most of the people are hooked onto the social networking site even while they are on the go, these sites form an excellent medium of reaching such audience. However, advertising here requires some amount of technical understanding and hence special skill set adaptation. Media today is not the same as what it used to be earlier as they are today no longer local (Soberman 2005). Looking at the difficulty of reaching out to the customers and the cost involved in acquiring new customers, organizations have started focusing on what is called “relationship marketing”. “Relationship marketing emphasizes customer retention through developing mutually rewarding exchange relationship between organizations and their customers” (O’Malley and Mitussis 2002). This was not just helpful to the organizations who wanted to sell their products but also to the customers as the long relationship reduced risk and better understanding from the companies. The companies saved on expensive marketing strategies and could use the extensive current database of customers to promote new products. The marketing function could communicate with the real customers on a one on one basis and bring out products to suit their fancies. This is where information technology has come to play a big role. Capturing and retaining customer data and later linking it with other appropriate data bases cannot be managed without a well integrated CRM Customer Relationship Management) system. These systems not only capture what the customer has to say on a real-time basis but also what has happened in the past. Call Centers and IVR systems capture customer actions into databases to be analysed later. But this kind of data warehousing has caused a lot of privacy issues to the customers. Since their personal data is moving around in the form of customer information, personal information thefts pose a huge danger to the consumers. This is a very huge negative point of using technology for advertising and communicating. However a prudent use of information technology can help in implementing relationship marketing in mass markets. Another problem that the advertisers are facing besides the technological explosion is the awareness among the consumer regarding various products and services. All consumers are not naive enough to accept what is being promoted to them. Studies have been done to understand this aspect of consumer behaviour as a part of consumer behaviour studies. Researchers have divided consumer knowledge into two components – familiarity and expertise (Elba and Hutchinson 1987). Both these aspects depend on how much exposure has the consumer had to advertising or sales persons. The decision power of the consumer in purchasing that product and the amount of usage experience of that product that he/she has had also impacts the knowledge aspect of the consumers. More the product familiarity, higher the product knowledge and hence more difficult it will be for the marketers and advertisers to convince the consumer regarding the features of a product. When familiarity with a product increases, it leads to reduced cognitive efforts and the automaticity increases. It becomes easier to give information regarding that product with which the consumer is familiar as compared to similar other products which the consumer has never used. It has also been observed that consumers tend to notice a familiar product among a heap of others without much effort. For example, if a consumer has been using a particular brand of soap, say Dove, he/ she will be able to recognize it even if surrounded by various other brands in a super store and even if the consumer is in a hurry. This is because the user has become so familiar with the cover of the soap that he/she doesn’t need to make an extra effort to search for it. Whereas for a new brand the user will have to go through the entire package details relating to rate or usage content and so on. Thus, on one side user familiarity is a blessing for customer retention but on the other side it can be a problem if say the packaging of the product has been changed. In that case the consumer will get a chance to look at other products in the same category as he/she was not able to recognise it in the first go. “The likelihood of re-evaluating the choice and possibly trying other brands will certainly increase once the identification ceases to be automatic” (Alba and Hutchinson 1987). Another significant finding of the research in this field is – “when product usage requires brand-specific skills, the costs of developing such skills inhibit switching between otherwise equivalent brands” (Alba and Hutchinson 1987). This means that if a particular product usage, like a laptop usage, requires the user to acquire some specific skills, the user finds it difficult to switch to a different brand as he/she finds it difficult to relearn the entire skill. This property of product familiarity of a consumer is very useful in keeping brand loyalty but it becomes the task of penetrating into new customer base or increasing market share more difficult if you are trying to break into the market of a product which is very old in the market. One important implication of research in this field has been on the effect of long term repetitive advertising on brand recall capabilities of the consumer. “Due to the effects of recency on recall, such advertising may also diminish expert/novice dif­ferences that otherwise would occur” (Alba and Hutchinson 1987). Advertisers use this property of repetitive advertising to enter into customer base of competitors and hence flood consumers with information about their brands and products through various channels. This repetitive advertising makes a novice consumer familiar with the brand and hence would go for the product as that name would pop up first in his mind when s/he goes for purchasing it. Though this may not work for an expert user of a product, it definitely helps influencing the purchase decision of a novice consumer. Clutter or too many ads are actually a stress on the consumer’s memory and they tend to remember only a few (Brown and Rothchild1 1993). To ensure that consumer behaviour is understood well enough to develop commercials that are effective enough to generate sales, a number of factors that are considered to impact consumer reception of information have been studied. Let us look at some of them, which if adhered to can help in attracting maximum attention from the consumers. Five major factors that have been found to affect consumer behaviour in a study by Gronhaug Kvitastein and Gronmo (1991) are - size of an advertisement, sex of the audience, product interest of the audience, number of colours used in an advertisement and environmental changes. It has been observed that longer advertisements are recognized better by the consumers as compared to the shorter ones. Number of colours used also influences the recognition of the advertisement as it automatically captures attention of the consumers. In continuation to this, contrast effects also are positively correlated to audience recognition. In today’s technologically advances society, audio messages attached to the newspaper have also been used by Volkswagen in India. As the reader opens the paper, the audio device starts talking about its new model. This kind of technique can be a major attention grabber. Product interest is a very important factor in attracting an individual’s attention. Thus, if one is looking for a particular product, say a laptop, then s/he is bound to scan through the newspaper or internet only for that product. This will automatically attract him to only those advertisements and not any other. Sex of the audience also makes a lot of difference in their attention to an advertisement of a product. For example, most of the women in the age category of 30 to 45 years would be interested in age defying cosmetic products. Similarly women with kids would be more interested food products for children. Men on the other hand would be more interested in cars, electronic gadgets and men related cosmetics like perfumes or deodorants. Thus, individuals from different genders will naturally get attracted to advertisements of product categories of their interests. Environmental changes impact the advertisement effectiveness greatly over time. In the example of the audio device used by Volkswagen if, over time, other companies also start imitating the same technique then Volkswagen would lose its leverage of the method employed. This is because with time the replication of advertising style will make the audience get used to the advertisement method. The environmental impact will again have a negative correlation with the audience attention for the audio advertisement in the newspaper if a new style is introduced to advertise. This is the reason why we see so many innovative ways of reaching out to the consumers. With increasing competition in the various product categories, advertisers are employing all research outcomes for practical solutions to their problems. Another important aspect of consumer behaviour is its relation to the mass media. As we had discussed earlier, consumer background and knowledge levels greatly influence what they interpret from an advertisement vis a vis what is the intended purpose of the advertisement. Consumers have started viewing advertisements very differently. Consumer research has shown that “consumers often process advertisements for meaning rather than infor­mation” (Hirschman and Thompson 1997). They not only look at the advertisements as promotional events but also enjoy the beauty of the setup by using them in their everyday lives. What a consumer interprets from a commercial depends on the frame of reference from which it is being observed (Hirschman and Thompson 1997). Though consumer research and advertising have always been considered as distinct from mass media studies, they are very much interlinked. This is because advertisements are embedded in the various programs on televisions or other mass media sources like motion pictures. Many a time, popular television soaps are prepared with inputs from advertisers of particular products to give subtle message about the product to the audience (Hirschman and Thompson 1997). Celebrities are used as campaigners to promote certain products. These celebrities have their social appeal because of their association with the entertainment channels. They also symbolize certain characteristics which people associate themselves with or want to be part of their own persona. Hence, promotion of a certain product by these idols hits the right cord with the consumers. These celebrities or entertainment programs thus form the frame of reference for the consumers. Various experiments have been conducted to understand the relationship between media and consumers and three modes of relationships have been identified. These are – motivational interpretation of media images, critical interpretation of the images and personalizing interpretations (Hirschman and Thompson 1997). All three levels of relationship characterize a different frame of reference for the consumers and hence advertisers need to keep in mind this relationship before targeting a certain group of consumers using a particular media platform. Let us look at how consumers under each relationship category interpret the media and images associated with it. In motivational inspiration relationship, the consumer idolizes the media icons. They look up to them as their idols and they want to become like them. To achieve what the media idols symbolize, they start working towards that goal and do not find it frustrating when they see those goals as unachievable targets. In contrast they actually make every effort to reach that goal as they consider it the best. The consumers do not consider these idols as artificial and hence believe in their reality. For example Arnold Schwarzenegger inspires the cultural symbol of masculine idol (Hirschman and Thompson 1997). His association with masculinity will generally not be looked at with distrust. In the second form of relationship, consumers tend to use their image of media as artificial and hence do not trust the imagery used by it to propagate something. For example, repeated airing of images of underprivileged people in a country without showing the developmental aspect of the economy by the news channels can be considered as a negative propaganda by the media. Here the image of the news channel as one associated with a particular motive (in this case negative publicity of a country) can lead to a belief of mistrust. Thus, the consumer tends to reject what is propagated by this channel. From a consumer perspective this jugglery with the numbers and images by media to represent things in their favour is a breach of ethics (Hackley 1999). This kind of over representation of one side of the story can greatly impact consumers who do not understand the intricacies of advertising. This is especially true with kids who fall prey to false claims by advertises. In the final relationship, media icons are considered as better reflections of one’s better qualities (Hirschman and Thompson 1997). There is an empathetic relationship with these images and the consumers tend to de-contextualize the images and re-contextualize them as per their own suitability. “Rather than "buying" the image in toto, they focus on specific aspects that seem plausible within their own life situations, self conceptions, and the social constraints posed by their everyday lives” (Hirschman and Thompson 1997). Consumers today want to be understood. Whether they are buying a complex product like a high tech mobile or a simple food item, they do not want to be bombarded with information. IMC (Integrated Marketing Communications) is the latest concept that aids organizations in understanding consumer expectations and provide relevant solutions (Kliatchko 2008). This brings us back to where we started. Advertisers see us all as consumers of information no matter what thought process we possess. For the pragmatic and thoughtful people, they present images which are realistic in association with the world they are representing, for the romantic they use idols that symbolize romance and for the principled they use the images of people thought to have high values in the current social setup. References Aitken, Robert, Gray, Brendan and Lawson, Robert (2008) “Advertising effectiveness from a consumer perspective”, International Journal of Advertising, 27(2), pp 279-297 Alba, Joseph W and J. Wesley Hutchison (1987), “Dimension of Consumer Expertise”, Journal of Consumer Research, 13, pp 411-454 Brown, Tom J. and Michael L. Rothschild (1993) “Reassessing the impact of television advertising clutter”, Journal of consumer research, 20, pp138-146. Gronhaug, Kjell, Olav Kvitastein and Sigmund Gronmo (1991) “Factors Moderating Ad Effectiveness as Reflected in 333 Tested Advertisements”, Journal of Advertising Research, pp42-50. Hackley, Christopher, E. (1999) “The meanings of ethics in and of advertising”, Blackwell Publishers ltd, 8(1), pp42-53. Hirschman, Elizabeth C and Craig J. Thompson (1997) “ Why Media Matter: Towards a Richer Understanding of Consumers’ Relationships with Advertising and Mass Media”, Journal of Advertising, 26 (1), pp43-59. Kliatchko, Jerry “Revisiting the IMC construct – A revised definition and four pillars”, International Journal of Advertising, 27(1), pp133-160 Mickey, Thomas. I (1997) “A Postmodern view of public relations: sign and reality”, Public Relations Review, 23(3), pp271-284 O’Malley, Lisa and Darryn Mitussis (2002), “Relationship Marketing and Technology: strategic implications”, Journal of Strategic Marketing, 10 (3), pp225-238 Soberman, David (2005), “The complexity of media planning today”, Henry Stewart Publications, 12(6), pp 420-429 Stout, Patricia A. And Burda, Benedicta, L. 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