Impact of Advertising on Changing Consumer Behaviour - Dissertation Example

?The impact of advertising on changing consumer behaviour: Analysis of anti smoking campaigns and their influence on behaviour Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Impact of Advertisement on Consumer Behaviour 4 Anti-Smoking Campaign 5 Influence of Anti-Smoking Campaign 10 Conclusion 12 References 13 Bibliography 16 Introduction The anti-smoking campaigns are carried out for long time at different parts of the world. Various health organizations have come up with anti-smoking fear commercials and campaigns to affect the consumer behaviour towards the concept. This in turn is affecting the tobacco industry to great extent due to the rise of consumer awareness towards the program (Slama, 1995, p. 330). Smoking habit of the people especially in Asian countries are rising at a very fast pace due to negligence of the authority and governments action for allowing smoking at public places and socially accepting the act. Every year about 1.2 million people die because of tobacco use at parts of Asia (World Bank, n.d. p. 1). In recent years with the advancement of the advertisement techniques the anti-smoking campaigns have great impact to influence the consumers to change their decision on smoking. Now-a-days health organization and governmental and nongovernmental organizations have emerged with strong actions to discourage smoking habits with various advertisement campaigns for the community linking them with the health problems associated with the habit. But still due to some legal obstruction these organizations are unable to take strong actions against the tobacco companies thus with innovative advertisement campaigns ministry of health and few other organization trying to influence the consumers to drop their smoking habits through socially and emotionally influencing the smokers and making them realize how their activity is affecting the society along with their health (Mello, Rimm, Studdert, 2003). But on the other hand the communicator also need to evaluate the ethical issues before starting these kind of campaigns as any fear appeal from the advertisement may force to manipulate the human behaviour of the person which can doubt the ethicality of the advertisement in spite of being produced for good intensions (Hasting, Stead, Webb, 2004, p. 972). Researchers have found that short term cosmetic fear appeal are more effective for male smokers while long term cosmetic fear appeal are more effective for females smokers (Smith, Stutts, n.d., p. 157). The advertisement campaigns are designed to reduce the use of tobacco but researchers are still working to quantify the effectiveness of these types of advertisement campaigns irrespective of genders and age as a whole (Liu, Tan, 2009, p. 3). Finding the effectiveness of anti-smoking campaign is a very difficult activity as it may influence the smoking habit of the people both in positive and negative manner (Rhodes, et. al, 2011). This report is concerned with understanding the impact of advertisement on consumer behaviour and how anti-smoking campaigns are carried out for the betterment of the society and how these campaigns influences people in their activities. Impact of Advertisement on Consumer Behaviour On several occasions there are many study conducted to understand the effect of advertisement on the consumer behaviour. The success of company’s product depends much on the advertisement campaigns conducted by the company to reach to the customers. But how the advertisement helps in the increase of sales for the company is a very difficult task to understand for the company. The changing natures of the consumers are strong hindrance for the firm to cope with the growing need of the market and act accordingly to grab the market share. Understanding the consumer behaviour plays a vital role in the success of an advertisement campaign for a company (Trehan, Trehan, 2009, p. 206). Influencing the people’s daily life and generating the needs for the product are the main motto of the advertisement campaigns. It acts as the main marketing tool for any company to reach to the customer and make people aware of a particular issue or product. It acts as a communication force for the company to induce the customers to do as the company wants. Liking an advertisement is not always a source of sale for the company. The advertisement campaign should be able to reach to the consumer and create the need of the product or should be able to influence the viewer to do something like awareness program from the organization (Blythe, 2008, p. 432). But on the other hand creating a positive view by understanding the behaviour of the consumer and influencing the people to stop something of their daily life like smoking is the major challenge for the advertiser. Anti-Smoking Campaign The role of advertisement has diversified impact on the mind of the viewer. It creates awareness about a fact or about a product. Advertisement communicated attributes to the consumer and the benefits of the act are transferred to the consumer within a short period of time. The reaction of a campaign can also direct negatively for the viewer thus it’s very important for the advertiser to understand the consumer behaviour on an issue and educate people about the issue in case of social awareness programs. Anti-Smoking campaigns are one of these social awareness advertisement campaigns often conducted by organization or from the government to fight against tobacco consumption. Due to some social and cultural influence the youths of the country are primarily attracted towards smoking. The tobacco companies in spite of legislative restriction advertise their products at different locations and invest in promotional activities with the messages to the consumers avoiding the effect of smoking. The Anti- Smoking campaigns are developing with high concern from different organization to cope with this critical situation. Various reinforcing motivational campaigns are developed in print and television media to show the influence of smoking from adult on their children. Children often copy their parents’ habits and activities. Thus making people aware about their habit through reinforcing motivation can be very effective (Waters, et. al, 2010, p. 3). Smoking rate are increasing at a very fast pace especially in Asian countries like China and India. Health activist are working hard to protest and make people aware of the effect of smoking. For many years World Health Organization (WHO) and Ministry o Health and Family Welfare have supported with many campaigns related to Anti-Smoking. Advertisement campaigns are targeted towards the consumers of tobacco showing the effect of smoking or making people aware about the causes of cancer due to smoking. These types of advertisement are generally targeted to induce fear through the message against the action of the people (Samu, Bhatnagar, 2007, p. 239). Campaigns against Cancer in most cases are related to tobacco consumption. Here are few advertisement campaigns showing people about the effect of smoking and making people aware of the damage it does to the health (Cancer Patients Aid Association, 2011). Figure 1: Anti-Smoking Campaigns (Source: Gifford, 2011) Advertisement campaigns are carried out on magazines, news papers, televisions and on internet. The ad campaigns are targeted towards the health issues of the aged persons due to smoking and the teen age group are influenced with the social behaviour and making them aware how their activities are affecting the other people and the society (Leshner, Vultee, Bolls, Moore, 2010, p. 485). The ad campaigns are based on several types of themes ranging from cessation methods, health effects of smoking, second hand smoke, quitting benefits of smoking, portraying tobacco as bad ingredient or manipulations done my tobacco industry for selling their products (Wakefield, et.al. 2002, p. 13). Figure 2: Few more Anti-Smoking Campaigns (Source: Djluv, 2011) These kinds of campaigns are of great influence as it directly affects the emotion of the person for his behaviour. Understanding the consumer behaviour thus can have great effect on the advertisement campaigns for its success. Making people aware of their wrong behaviour and forcing them to think about their own health and also for other people is the main motto for the advertisement campaigns. Influence of Anti-Smoking Campaign Influence of Anti-Smoking ad campaigns can be sometimes very effective while some might backfire due to wrong interpretation of the consumer behaviours. On several occasions in the movies smoking habits of person are shown which have immense effect on the viewers to imitate as the person on screen. For this Anti-Smoking campaigns at the beginning of the movie can be very effective as it can reach to a large number of viewers and in a very cost effective manner (Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, 2011). Before imitating the person or even if the person is a smoker the advertisement can remind the people of the adverse effect of smoking and he might leave the habit. Anti-Smoking ad campaigns can sometimes be very effective when the campaigns are focused with the social behaviour of others. Showing the nature of other people who have left smoking and the effect of smoking sometimes arose fear in the mind of the smoker and make him/her aware of the effect of his/her habit. By terror management theory when terror message of getting isolated from the society are exposed to the smoker it influences the person to great extent to control his/her behaviour and smoke less (Martin, Kamins, 2009, p. 175). When people feel that other people are listening to the advertisement and believe in the campaign it has great impact on the behaviour of the person to listen to the message and change their attitude towards smoking. But compared to the magnitude of reducing smoking habit amongst adults the change is very insignificant for its effectiveness when these are directly targeted towards the habits of an individual. Very small percentages of the total people who smoke change their habit of smoking due to individual level anti-smoking campaigns. People are more likely to quit smoking when it is associated with others in the society. But on the other hand on many occasions if the advertisement campaigns are not targeted properly it can have a very bad effect on the society. The curious nature of the youths forces them to try something new when they come across such campaigns. Instead of leaving the habit of smoking many campaigns can influence the viewer to try something as advertisement campaigns regularly does in product selling (Cancer Focus, 2007). This stimulation within the person is best handled if the advertisement campaigns are carried out in an indirect manner by showing how others are behaving to the campaign issue. From several researches conducted on Anti-Smoking campaigns it is found that when people are exposed with more number of advertisements they remember the effect of smoking and more people are likely to continue as non-smokers (China, 2002). Youths of the society are more exposed to these kinds of advertisement campaigns and are quiet aware of the effect of the smoking. Teenagers in most cases are affected by the social behaviour and the environment for their habit. Exposed to smoking habits from parents, teachers and peer group have strong impact on the teenage groups to pick the habit of smoking (Devlin, Eadie, Stead, Evans, 2007, p. 104). Teenagers with positive attitude to smoking can only be controlled by these kinds of anti-smoking campaigns for influencing the society and environment to quit smoking which has direct impact on the smokers as well as the new smoking habit developers. Conclusion Anti-Smoking campaigns are a costly tool for the purpose of health promotion. Various media like newspaper, magazine, television and print are used for the campaign process. But the effectiveness of the campaign is very difficult to scale as the changing behaviour of the consumers are not always targeted in the right manner to take successful effect of the campaign. Ineffective advertisement campaign can have adverse effect on the society thus knowing the consumer behaviour and designing the advertisement accordingly to target the right audience is the major challenge of the advertisement campaigns. Health organizations are needed to make people aware about the health risk associated with smoking and influence every age group of the society by understanding their way of acceptance. Anti-Smoking campaigns can be of great help for the health organization to reach to the people and spread the awareness program amongst them which might have little impact in the short run but can have great potential to influence people to quit their smoking habit in the long run. References Appeal: The Effects of Graphic Anti-tobacco Messages. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 54(3). Blythe, J. (2008). Consumer behaviour. Cengage Learning EMEA. Cancer Focus. (2007). UGA study explains why anti-smoking ads backfire or succeed. [Online]. 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