How Airlines Companies Use Propaganda Techniques in Advertising - Research Paper Example

?How Airlines Companies Use Propaganda Techniques in Advertising Introduction There is some controversy regarding the nature of and relationship between advertising and propaganda. The more traditional authors consider advertising as a special form or specie of propaganda, the purpose of which is to gain the allegiance of a mass market (McGarry 131), implying the indoctrinating nature of propaganda. More modern theorists see propaganda as a legitimate tool of ethical advertising (Rutherford 184; Marlin, 336), differing only from other forms in that propaganda makes use of implicit as well as explicit messaging and creates strong images and cues to engage the target audience (Lopez & Thompson 38). McGarry sees propaganda as undermining the will; Lopez & Thompson see it in the context of engagement. Others go further to equate propaganda with marketing dictatorship (Brady, 15). By clarifying and redefining the nature of propaganda in the modern context of advertising, it is possible to conceive of the ethical use of propaganda by a firm to market its product. Businesses that produce intangibles such as services would benefit most by the creative use of propaganda. Context/Problem The global market for air passenger transport has grown exponentially, averaging 5% growth each year for the past 30 years. There are more than 2,000 airlines that operate more than 23,000 aircraft, serving over 3,700 airports, making 28 million scheduled flights and transporting over 2 billion passengers (IMAP, 2011). At the same time, demand for passenger flight has significantly decreased as a result of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks in September 11, 2001, involving the hijacking and crash of three commercial aircraft, although the market has somewhat recovered since then. The increase in capacity for flights and fluctuations in demand due to political concerns has constricted the market for airlines and heightened competition among the industry players. At the same time, the cost of aviation fuel has been rising, putting further pressure on airline companies’ already narrow profit margins. Already, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has predicted a “gloomy picture” for the global aviation industry from 2012 and beyond, due to the weak global economy and high jet fuel prices (Ciuci Consulting 16). In order to attract customers, airline companies, would resort to a number of solutions to increase sales, such a low-cost air travel and no-frills flight (Lyth 1). Among the solutions any business would explore is creative advertising, which includes propaganda. The difference between propaganda and the regular advertising is that propaganda tends to be more persuasive and others say more invasive, making use of imagery to aggressively forward a specific message, and playing more to human emotion rather than intellectual reasoning in delivering that message. In the course of striking an emotional chord, it is implied by many that the message delivered stretches the truth and takes advantage of the psychological soft spot in potential customers. The problem therefore that this dissertation seeks to resolve is to determine how airline companies use propaganda techniques in advertising, the effectiveness of propaganda in enhancing enplanement, and whether such practices are perceived as being within or outside the boundaries of business ethics. The study’s contribution to academic literature is its determination of where the demarcation lies between ethical and unethical advertising practice with regard to propaganda techniques, as applied to the airline industry. Key Terms Propaganda – The term propaganda used in its generic sense refers to “ideas, facts or allegations spread to further one’s cause or damage an opposing cause” (Merriam-Webster). On the negative extreme propaganda is taken to mean “ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc.” (Merriam-Webster). When applied to advertising, propaganda is “the deliberate attempt by the few to influence the attitudes and behavior of the many by the manipulation of symbolic communication” (Rose 63). In this study, propaganda leans more to the definition by Rose, which means the use of symbols of communication to influence attitudes and behavior towards a desired position. Advertising – Advertising is “the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the media” (Taflinger quoting Bovee 7). Airline industry – Airline industry refers to the business of transporting paying passengers and freight by air along regularly scheduled routes. Denotation – Denotation refers to the literal description of a thing. Connotation – Connotation refers to the meanings that are associated to a thing. Enplanement – Enplanement is an indicator of airline performance that pertains to the number of passengers who actually board the aircraft. Statement of Hypotheses Hypothesis 1: The use of propaganda advertising is significantly related to subsequent increase in enplanement. Hypothesis 2: The use of propaganda advertising is significantly related to subsequent increase in airline revenues. Hypothesis 3: There is no significant difference in the perceptions of airline company management and those of the flying public regarding the ethical use of propaganda techniques in airline advertising. Method of Data Collection Data collection for this study shall involve both qualitative and quantitative techniques in garnering both primary and secondary data. Data on propaganda used in advertising by airlines may be obtained by a scan of advertising campaigns launched by airline companies, by conducting interviews with the marketing staff of these companies, and by survey among the consumers. Performance information such as enplanement would be obtained from the annual report of the firm concerning the number of passengers transported. Data on the perception of airline managers and the flying public shall be obtained by conducting a survey among a representative sample of both groups. Items in the survey are closed questions that are answerable by a finite choice of responses. Scores are assigned to the survey responses in the form of a Likert scale, which creates quantitative data out of what are essentially qualitative assessments (Peterson 75). In this manner, the results of the survey lend themselves to quantitative calculations, enabling the wider dissemination of the questionnaire because larger volumes of data may be processed by quantitative methods. The survey shall be administered online through Survey Monkey, a commercial survey service which also collates the data and organizes it for analysis. Method of Analysis: Quantitative data shall be analyzed, first by providing descriptive statistics such as sums, averages, percentages and rank, to create a fundamental understanding of the nature of the data. The data shall also be subjected to inferential statistics to determine the significance of the values obtained. For Hypotheses 1 and 2, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis shall be used to determine whether variations in instances of propaganda advertising are significantly related to variations in enplanement, and variations in airline revenues, respectively. For Hypothesis 3, the Student’s T-test for hypotheses shall be used to determine whether perceptions of airlines’ managers differ significantly from perceptions of the flying public. On the other hand, qualitative data shall be analyzed by Qualitative Data Analysis techniques (Gibson & Brown 6; Miles & Huberman 10) and shall be used to corroborate and triangulate with data gathered from the records and databases, and data gathered from the surveys. Summary The aim of the study is to determine the effectiveness of propaganda in airlines’ advertising, and the perception of the airline companies’ stakeholders as to whether or not the propaganda advertising employed by their firm is considered ethical. To determine effectiveness, research shall address the relationship between propaganda advertising and the firms’ enplanement statistics and the size of airline sales. To determine the ethical level of the propaganda, responses shall be gathered from the companies’ managers and its customers, and then compared for agreement. Data shall be gathered by scanning official reports and databases of these companies, conducting a review of advertising campaigns, and conducting a wide area survey to determine the sentiments of managers of the companies and the flying public. References Brady, A-M (2008) Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China. Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Ciuci Consulting (2011) Flights or Plights: Reviewing the Performance of the Nigerian Aviation Industry. Retrieved 10 October 2013 from http://www.ciuci.us/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Flights-or-Plights.pdf Gibson, W & Brown, A (2009) Working with Qualitative Data. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. IMAP Aerospace Global Report (2011) Retrieved 10 October 2013 from http://www.imap.com/ Lopez, E. & Thompson, P. (2013) Propaganda, Messages, and Rhetoric in Advertising. Library Media Connection, August/September, pp. 38-39, EBSCO Lyth, P. (2009). 'Think of her as your mother': Airline advertising and the stewardess in America, 1930-1980. Journal of Transport History, 30(1), 1-21. EBSCO Marlin, R (2013) Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion, 2nd edition. Toronto: Broadview Press McGarry, E.D. (1958) The Propaganda Function in Marketing, The Journal of Marketing. 23(2):131-139. EBSCO Merriam-Webster Online (2013) Dictionary and Thesaurus. Retrieved 10 October 2013 from http://www.merriam-webster.com/ Miles, M B & Huberman, A M (1994) Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook, 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publication Peterson, Robert A. (2000) Constructing Effective Questionnaires. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Rose, Jonathan W. (2000) Making “Pictures in Our Heads”: Government Advertising in Canada. Greenwood Publishing Group Rutherford, P (2000) Endless Propaganda: The Advertising of Public Goods. London: University of Toronto Press Inc. Squalli, J. (2010). Advertising Expenditure, Enplanement, and Market Concentration. International Journal Of The Economics Of Business, 17(2), 147-166. doi:10.1080/13571516.2010.483084. EBSCO Taflinger, Richard F. (1996) “A Definition of Advertising” Washington State University. Retrieved 10 October 2013 from http://public.wsu.edu/~taflinge/addefine.html Read More