Advertising & Consumers - Essay Example

? Advertising and Consumers Introduction Consumer behaviour forms the basis of marketing system in any organisation and it varies in different individuals based on their inner motives. These motives would be what marketers identify so as to attract and satisfy the customer. One of the methods through which organisations use to attract customers through their inner motives has been identified by Trehan, M. and Trehan, R. (2011) as advertisement. According to Bishnoi and Sharma (2009), advertisement refers to a persuasive, normally paid for, impersonal communication on services, products or ideas through various media by a specific sponsor. The intention of the advertiser would be to spread ideas on the product and offerings, recognised by Belch, George Edward, Belch, George Eugene & Belch, M. (2006) as a marketers’ tool of communication to customers. Wang, Zhang and Ouyang (2009) categorise the effects of advertising as either intermediate, which influences the beliefs and attitudes of consumers or behavioural, which relates to the purchase and brand choice of consumers. Advertisement banks on psychological factors that influence consumer behaviour to reach out to the customer. These psychological factors include learning, personality and lifestyle, attitude, image and individual needs. Studying these factors would guide the advertiser on the message, ad-appeal, colour, illustrations, media, media scheduling and the layout of the ad-copy among other critical advertisement factors. If these consumer behaviour factors would be related to the target audience, advertisers would come up with effective advertisements. Impact of advertisements on consumer behaviour The advertising industry could be worth millions of dollars with more companies spending considerable amounts in advertising in the modern business world. The objective of these companies would be to influence people’s thoughts on their products or brands. The message, programmes and words would be critically selected to attract consumers with success measured in terms of consumers’ consumption of the organisation’s products relative to what the competitors offer. According to Kardes, Cronley and Cline (2011), advertisements involve consumer’s mental, behavioural and emotional responses hence the importance of behavioural theory in explaining its impact. Sutherland (2009) appreciates the importance of repetition in advertisements with consistency in messages so as to increase familiarity especially with the use of a catch line, an observation opposed by Chung and Zhao who noted that “ad repetition has no influence on perceived humour and overall effectiveness of advertising” (2003, p.121). Percy and Elliott (2012) add to this debate arguing that in direct response advertising, there would be no need for repeated advertising as action terminates with a single purchase. Consumer choices would be influenced by the brand and product image and their perception towards them (Percy & Elliot, 2012). Through advertisement, advertisers could change consumers’ perception through association of the product with attributes appealing to the needs of the consumer. Consequently, in their minds, consumers would associate that attribute to that particular brand more than they would for competitor’s brand, thus influencing purchasing behaviour (Sutherland, 2009). Different organisations would have differences in their dependencies on advertisement to sell their products. For example, a cereal company would have to advertise more due to the existence of varied competing products as opposed to a power company which has minimal or no competition (Yeshin 2006). A strategy that advertisers employ to influence consumers to purchase products has been noted to be the creation of a feeling of lack or scarcity (Wells & Foxall, 2012). But noting the role that brands play in influencing consumption of products, Dahlen, Granlund and Grenros (2009) introduce an important role of advertising in brand building. Defining brands as identifications that differentiate a business from another, advertisers build brands by giving them personalities that would cause consumers to have perceived knowledge on a particular product, its uniqueness and quality. Brand personality enhances the value of a brand, helps in gaining market share and commands price premium. Advertisement appeals and their influence on consumer behaviour Consumer behaviour would be influenced more if the advertisement employs appropriate appeals that match the needs of the target audience. The aim of using appeals according to Sutherland (2009) would be to create a positive image to consumers of a particular product. Appreciating the need to satisfy the personal and deep-lying desires of a customer, appeals would capture the attention of consumers and influence purchasing habits. Some of the common appeals include sex, social, music, youth, fear, statistics and humour appeals. Advertising appeal could therefore be defined as an approach in advertising aimed at attracting the attention of consumers or influence their impression of a product through the packaging that delivers particular benefits, identification or stimulation. After all, anything that moves people would always minister to their needs and cause an excitement of their interests. Lin (2011) basically appreciates advertisement appeals as the power in the advertisement message. Lin (2011) categorises advertisement appeals as either rational or emotional noting from the researcher’s study on TV advertisement that rational appeals contain more information on a product and practical content which elicits higher purchase intentions compared to emotional appeal. Percy and Elliott (2005) further include moral appeal as a third form of advertisement appeal noting that such would appeal to the sense of right or wrong among the consumers. Such appeals would mostly be employed in messages aimed at arousing favourable responses to common social causes like adult literacy, prohibition, hoarding, anti-smuggling, equal rights for both genders and social responsibility among others. They would be used in messages appealing for generous donations to victims of say floods or famine. When the advertisement appeal matches the individual inner desires, a purchase intention would be elicited. Purchase intention describes transactional behaviours that result after consumers evaluate a product followed by an emotional reaction that would reflect their attitudes towards the product. Holding a positive feeling for a product and its advertisement strengthens the purchase intention. Because these appeals have been cited as personal (Lin, 2011), they would not appeal to everyone to the same magnitude and could even prove offensive to other people; they therefore fail at times. Various moral appeals on advertisements have been largely criticized due to their sensitivity on the issues being advertised. The World Health Organisation for instance has been critical of advertisement appeals by baby food companies claiming that such advertisement appeals go against the moral principle of encouraging breastfeeding which has a myriad of benefits to the child (Wells & Foxall, 2012). On sex appeals, Black, Organ and Morton (2010) observed that nude females would be least appealing and would always be associated with low product qualities in a moderate society. In addition, highly sexual visuals hinder cognitive processing of the intended communication as the audience would concentrate more on the visuals at the expense of getting the message. Religion also plays a critical role in determining the impact of the chosen appeal. Despite being skewed towards young people, the study of Malaysian Muslims by De Run, Butt, Fam and Jong (2010) noted the negative perception that the Muslims from the country would have on adverts that do not conform to their religious standings. Similarly, excessively strong fear appeal could elicit defensive tendencies among consumers who would try to avoid such advertisements and could even consider the solution recommended through the advertisement as inadequate in dealing with the fear. On the other hand, too weak a fear appeal could also fail to arouse the required response. Therefore, advertisers should ensure that the advertisements have moderate appeals that would attract the attention of consumers and effectively pass across the intended message. Humour advertising appeal The various kinds of appeals influence consumer behaviours differently. Fear appeals flourishes on the argument that the effectiveness of a message would increase with increase in fear causing people to undertake what they should. Sex appeals on the other hand would generate a sexual attraction causing the consumer to purchase, with men being the common target with this form of advertisement appeal (Black, Organ & Morton, 2010). Emotional appeals concern one’s social and psychological needs in purchasing particular products. Humour appeal has been among the commonly used emotional advertisement appeals with Strick, Holland, Baaren and Knippenberg (2012) noting that about 30% of global advertisements encompass humour appeal. Eisend (2009) noted that out of five TV ads, one had humorous appeal. Humour has been cited as an effective tool for capturing the attention of viewers and enhancing recall, considered to be a positive aspect in products sale, with humorous advertisements on TV shows and awards that such advertisements have scooped supporting the fact that “humour in advertising has become an important part of our everyday life” (Eisend, 2009, p. 191). Dubois (2010) gives an example of Cisco which used humour appeal to attract the attention of its audience for its launch of the ASR 9000 router in 2009. The advertisement had a humour on the many ways that a man could show love to his wife which ended with a humorous conclusion where the man purchased the router. This worked for good of the company having recorded 180,000 views on YouTube, having a blog mention on New York Times and later detailing in a bestselling book by David Meerman Scott. The adaptation level theory discussed by Wells and Foxall (2012) explains this observation as it concerns the ability of stimulus to attract attention. Every stimulus encountered by an individual could be linked to an adaptation level. However, humour should be effectively used, relating it to some benefits that a consumer could draw from the product without which the humorous aspect could overshadow the intended communication. Indeed, humour has been effectively used by various organisations to influence consumer behaviour. Manipulating distraction and positive affect aspects of humour processing, Strick et al. (2012) found out from their research that humour counters negative responses in persuasive advertisements, a phenomenon attributed to the distraction hypothesis by Wells and Foxall (2012) which connotes the sub-vocal counterargument generation by individuals when persuasive communication varies from their existing views. Humour influences resistance in two steps: its distractive properties forestalls negative brand associations development referred to as the cognitive mechanism and its positive emotional outcomes sires positive brand associations referred to as affective mechanism. Brand associations serve a critical role in product elevations and choices among consumers thus critical in determining the effectiveness of advertisements. Eisend (2012) separately tested negative and positive brand formations and reported that humour in advertisements leads to positive brand associations. The researcher noted that even in situations of humorous advertisements being discounted by consumers, they still become persuasive in the long run. This observation could be explained through the dissociation that exists between implicit and explicit effects that advertisements have on brand attitudes. Irritating advertisements fail to enhance explicit attitudes since consumers would have negative explicit thoughts; however, a brand with positive implicit association could be formed. The differential decay of implicit and explicit attitudes with time could cause the prevalence of positive implicit attitude causing a sleeper or rebound effect. The increasing consumer resistance challenges the ability of advertisers to reach out to their target audience. Adding humour in advertisements disrupts counter-arguing political monologue. Such findings were also recorded by Skalski, Tamborini, Glazer and Smith (2009) who observed that when public service announcements were presented with some humour, there was less psychological reactance among the perceivers. For advertisements with weak arguments, humour interrupts critical processing of arguments and decreases any negative cognitions and affect. In fact, Chung, H. & Zhao (2003) argue that humorous advertisements increase attention among customers citing the existence of association between perception of humour appeal in an advertisement and arousal of positive attitude towards the same, though the author did not describe the causal flow direction. The researchers also noted that attitude towards brand would be determined by the perceived humour but did not find any relationship between purchase intention and the related humour. Humour appeals have been credited for their long lasting impact on consumers, long after communications considered to be less creative would have vanished from memories of such customers. For example, the advertisement by Trojan that advocates for use of condoms paints a hard-to-erase memory using pigs as male patrons in a bar and encouraging ladies to pick those men who use condoms always (Moncada, 2011). The humour of using pigs as men in a bar creates a humorous picture that sticks in the audience’s mind for long. This recall and recognition effect of humour appeal has been attributed to operant conditioning theory by Chung and Zhao (2003) who observed that the occurrence of operant conditioning would be as a result of alteration of the probability of individual emitting behaviours through changing the consequential events following the specific behaviour. As opposed to information processing theory, this theory perceives humour as a reward that comes as a result of listening to an advertisement. As such, a humorous advertisement would be better recalled than a non-humorous similar advertisement since humour acted as a positive reinforcement. The discussion on effects of humorous advertisements would be incomplete without the mention of provocation categorised into three: ambiguity, transgression and distinctiveness (Woo, Morris & Lee, 2004). According to these scholars, ambiguous advertisements with factors considered as being irate or those that challenge social standards and norms would be considered as provocative. The Pepsi advertisement as documented by Moncada (2011) where a creature urinates from the Pepsi bottle into a glass could provoke public outcry of lack of morality since urinating has been largely considered as a private as opposed to being a public affair. The Listermint Mouthwash advertisement where medics in an ambulance sneer at a patient because of what would be perceived as mouth odour (Webdesigner Depot, 2009) could conflict with social dictates that require people to sympathise with patients no matter the condition that such patients could be in. In humorous advertisements, a combination of provocative and humour appeal amounts to provocative advertisements. Humorous provocative advertisements would have significant negative impact on arousal and dominance and considerable negative impact on the brand name. Dubois (2010) adds onto this argument of humour appeals that do not work by noting that too much humour information could cause the advertiser to lose the audience hence net minimal achievement of the intended effect. Conclusion Advertisements have been used to a large extent to influence consumer behaviours with the major intention being to inform consumers on a particular product. Through advertisements, organisations influence consumer perceptions towards target products thus increasing purchasing of the products because of the psychological aspect of advertisements that affect the cognitive nature of consumers. This would be accomplished through use of emotional, moral or rational appeals that describe the deep-lying personal needs that a consumer would look forward to satisfying. Among such appeals include humour, a type of emotional appeal, with humour advertisements noted to constitute a considerable portion of the total advertisements. These appeals wear out consumer resistance, increase attention and create a long lasting impression of the advertised products. While the adaptation level theory explains the attention generated by humour appeals, the operant conditioning theory explains how behaviour would be changed to conform to certain stimulus hence promoting recall and recognition. However, if wrongly applied, such an advertisement could have negative effects on consumer behaviour. Implication The relevance of humour plays a critical role in humour appeal in advertisements. Therefore, in all organisations that seek to use humour appeal to advertise, expected and relevant humour would be greatly essential in ensuring effective communication to the target audience. It would be important to also note that viewers would more proficiently understand and relate the premeditated advertisement significance when the advertisement maintains a correlation between the message and the method. Similarly, possible undesirable outcomes resulting from inaccurate association of brand claims and extraneous humour appeal could lead to poor consequences as opposed to withholding the concept. Understanding the appropriateness of strength and relevancy of humour would direct advertisers in coming up with the rightful humour appeal that would yield positive results. 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