The Practice and Impact of Advertising on Consumer Perception of Body Shop Plc Company - Research Proposal Example

Table of Content 3 Aim 3 Objective 3 Justification 3 Advertising Drives 5 Perception: Creating Shopping Power 5 Theories of Advertising 6 AIDAmodel 6 What the Media can do Differently 7 Retail Advertising 8 Research Philosophy and Approach 8 Research design and strategies 9 Interview 9 Questionnaire 9 Sampling 10 Sample Size 11 Limitations 11 Secondary research 11 Data Analysis 12 Dissertation timetable 12 WORD COUNT: 3,267 (including titles, contents and references) 13 References 14 Design Proposal Title An investigation into the practice and impact of advertising on consumer perception of Body Shop Plc Company. Aim To establish the theory, practice, drives and impact of media advertising in the case of Body Shop Plc Company. Summary The Body Shop Plc Co., was founded in 1967 by Dame Anita Roddick. It owns 2,265 stores the world over with a factory in Glasgow. It has about 10,034 people as employees. The crux of its marketing and persuasive strategy will be based on the following elements: Price Product and service Physical Distribution Promotion Objective To define the concept, drives and practice of media advertising in the context of Body Shop Plc. To establish current models and reported best practice in the advertising of Body Shop Plc’s brand. To investigate consumer perception of Body Shop Plc’s advertising strategy, it’s impact and persuasiveness. To offer conclusion and recommendations as to the current situation and the future changes which could be made to improve the effectiveness of advertising activity by high street retailers. Justification The main reason for choosing this topic was, very limited studies have been done on the impact of advertising on high street retailing sector. Another reason is for advertisements a lot of money is invested but does it really increase the sales or it just due to time, name, or even due to brand loyalty the sales are increasing. Moreover every year the rates of advertisements are increasing but at the same time the customers increases as well. Lastly these topics are really interesting to do the research on, such as impact of advertising, consumer perception, and retailing. Critical Review Literature Advertising Definition Coca-cola, Kellogg’s, McDonald’s, Kodak, Marlboro, IBM, American Express, Sony, Mercedes-Benz and Nescafe are generally in the world’s top ten brand in the market , and they have reached and retained in such position mainly because of the efforts of marketing and advertising departments ( Stanley, 2003). So exactly what is an advertisement or what can we understand by the term advertisement. Their have been different views regarding the concept of advertisement. According to John Burnett, “Advertisement is a non-personal communication of marketing related information to a target audience, usually paid by the advertiser and delivered through mass media in order to reach specific objective of sponsor”. However according to the critic of advertising, Judith Williamson (1978, p.57) states that it’s “the most ubiquitous form in which we encounter commercial photography” which means advertising is the ‘official art’ of the advanced industrial nation of the west. It occupies the newspapers and is covered all over with urban environment, it is highly systematize organization involving many artist, writer and film directors, and consist of a large amount of output of the mass media. Advertisements promote and affect the idea and value which are crucial to a particular economy system. Thus a good advertisement is that, which we should not lose interest in their ideological functions, which is connected to their economic functions (Dyer, 1995 p.2). Another definition by (Longman, 1971) ‘Advertising attempts to inform and persuade a large number of people with a single communication’. Therefore in its simple sense the word ‘advertising’ means capturing the attention to something or telling or advising somebody of something. (Dyer, 1995 p.2). Thus advertising can be seen as a medium for communicating or providing knowledge to the customers from a recognized authority or person. Advertising Drives Perception: Creating Shopping Power When something has been perceived, then it has been noted and the message is recorded. In the words of psychologist, W. H. Ittelson and F. T. Kilpatrick, perception can’t be definite, of ‘what is’. Rather what we perceive is created by ourselves, which is mostly based on past experiences (Bogart, 1995). Also people’s perceptions of brand are governed by some factors which are personal and public (Fletcher, 1999 p.163). It is one of important challenges for an advertiser trying to reach the customers, either by any form of mass communication like newspaper, or television ad so that they could notice it. Even sometimes the consumer miss out some messages directed to them. So the main thing is to give them exposure. (Wells, Burnett and Moriarty1992, p. 241). For example if all the ads are in colors then a black and white will be noticed. So by this the customers attention can be taken. Awareness: Awareness implies that the message has made an impression on the audience or reader, who can then identify the product or the adviser. Although awareness is a low form of impact, but it is objective of a great ad. Relative low level of attention can create minimum awareness for low interest product (Wells, Burnett and Moriarty, 1992, p. 244). . Brand equity: This is a very important concept from 1990s. This refers to the use of respected brand name to add value to the product. Branding is a way to help the customer’s memory process. It identifies the product and makes it possible to position the product in compared to other brands. For example Walt Disney Company discovered that any kind of Disney film would be perceived as targeted to a young audience. So rather than looking for a way to expand the Disney name to film targeted at audience, so Disney launched Touchstone Films (Wells, Burnett and Moriarty, 1992, p. 256). . Positioning: The way the company designs their offerings and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market (Kotler). For example, for many years during the 1970s and also in 80s the Tesco supermarket chain in the UK portrait itself as low price store, whereas Sainsbury’s (with a similar range of pricing) stressed quality and value for money ( Wilmshurst). Theories of Advertising As compared to Pavlov’s theory of classical conditioning, advertising was thus seen as a stimulus, giving rise to a response. Therefore a set of consumer responses that shifts from consumer initial awareness to final action. The series of steps is called a hierarchy of effects (Wilmshurst). AIDA model AIDA is one of the oldest advertising models. It suggest that an effective advertisements is one which can command attention, then leads to interest in the product, after that a desire to own and use the product arouses and final step must be the action (Wilmshurst). THE AIDA MODEL Source: White R., 1993 This model ruled the advertising world for many numbers of years. It’s still very difficult to check how the process works as some customers take actions some did not. But sales were the only real measures to confirm the effectiveness of an advertisement (White, 1993). What the Media can do Differently Media plays a very important role in advertising any product or services. It is complex and quite technical aspect of advertising. Every advertisement has to appear in some advertising medium. Advertising in print media may be keenly consulted and sought for an editorial content (Bogart, 1995). The classified ads in the newspaper are based on this basis. In fact, it seen in UK, the regional press has more importance than the national paper (White, 1993). Advertising in print media is basically for providing the reader the information about products and services that meet their occupational demand. Advertising in radio can reach to a large amount of target audience. Until 1973, the only commercial radio available in the UK was Radio Luxembourg (Wright, 1993). However hardly any ads are placed in radio because, now a day it concentrates more into musical style (Bogart, 1995). Advertisements on television have been seen quite effective for the advertiser. It generates huge audience at the same point of time. It gives a chance to advertiser to interact with the consumer in a relaxed frame of mind (Bogart, 1995). Although TV is such a powerful medium, however it has variety of pressures like commercial, political, technological which leads to considerable change (Wright, 1993). The idea of advertisements in magazines is sometimes rejected as they would prefer to see publications without ads. However in many case it is highly acceptable, as ads are part of the total composition of what the reader try to look for. It has been seen the women magazine is highly read by the people in UK and in 1991, 14 percent of UK advertisements were taken by the magazines (Wright, 1993). Direct mail offer advertiser a creative and flexible technique of distribution. The retailers send catalogues and other promotional items to customers so that they can catch the attention and even inform them about the product. These kinds of media are rapidly growing in advertising sector. Direct mail is the largest part of the direct marketing business (Wright, 1993). Also advertisements through electronic information services were attracting advertiser interest in the mid- 1990’s (Bogart, 1995). Thus all this forms of media are essential and it depends on the kind of product and customers being targeted. Retail Advertising The purpose of retail advertising is to favourably influence the consumer perception and image about the store, its merchandise and its activities and to persuade sales directly or indirectly. For the retailer to be effective, it is important for the consumer to have sufficient knowledge about the retailer sector. Finally it is not only important to inform and persuade the customer about the retailer’s product but it is also necessary to remind about the offer to consumer (Lewison, 1994). Research Philosophy and Approach The philosophy which is developed in the research process that dominates much of the literature is interpretivism. This philosophy takes the view to understand the difference between human in their role as social actors (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2007). Since the environment is constantly changing therefore, any conclusion reached can only be based on the immediate study conducted. An attempt to reorganize the study will not necessarily produce the same kind of results. As, the research, will be looking into the aspect of, consumer perception of high street retailer. In this the emphasis is on consumer perception which is being investigated, so as their unique nature suggests generalisation are not applicable. They have highly needed to explore and discover details of the situation inside the reality (Saunders et al. 2003; Jankowicz 2005). Therefore, the participant’s frame of reference is used in order to understand human behaviour as “social reality is viewed as dependent on the mind” (Saunders et al, 2007). Thus interpretivism is chosen as the research philosophy because it will give us an in-depth knowledge to understand the consumer behaviour and to explore their views about media advertising on high street retailers. Research design and strategies In the study of Salltiz et al. 1981 (cited Jankowicz 2005, p. 196), design has been defined as the deliberately planned “arrangement of conditions for analysis and collections of data in a manner that aims to combine relevance to the research purpose with economy of procedure”. So the main data collection strategies selected for research are interviews and questionnaires. According to (Robson, 2002) the research project is an exploratory study because lead to finding out, what is happening; to seek new insight by asking question. Interview Interview has been selected as the method of data collection in which semi-structure interview with a series of open-ended questions will be asked from the customers who purchases cloths from high street retail brands. This kind of interview will also provide more discussion and openness which will lead the consumer to talk about more issues and give their views regarding media advertising. The semi-structure interview will include a list of themes and questions which need to be covered, although these may vary from interview to interview (Saunders et al. 2003, p.246). Some interviews will also be tape recorded in addition to note being taken. Questionnaire It is a data collection technique in which each person is asked to respond to the same set of questions in a predetermined order by deVaus, 2002 (cited Saunders et al, 2007, p.354). The semantic differential scale is that, which allows the respondent to indicate his or her attitude for a particular concept defined by two opposite adjective or phases (Saunders et al, 2007). So semantic differential scale is used, as the research project is measuring the attitude of the customers or how they perceive media advertising. Due to limitation of questionnaire, both the interview and questionnaires are used so that interview can cover the gap. In this way, it will make the data collected becoming more rich and have more value. Data quality issues must also be addressed if the research is to prove a credible and a useful addition to the existing theory. So reliability, validity and generalising must be considered. Reliability is mainly concerned with the repeatability of the research by other researchers. Thus the questionnaire will be designed and structured with various controls to ensure non-repeatability, but the findings from using semi-structured interviews are not necessarily indented to be repeatable since they reflect the individual’s reality and uniqueness. To reduce this problem and the threat of interviewer bias some standard questions will be asked of the interviewees and detailed notes will be taken along with a tape recording of the interviews where agreed to be participants. Even in questionnaires test-rest or the split-half method can be used to check the stability of the questions. Validity is concerned with whether the research findings are really what they aim to measure. So the questionnaires will be checked by using the criterion-related validity, which reflects the success of measures used for prediction or estimation (Cooper and Schindler, 2001). This can be further obtained by using correlations methods. Generalisability refers to the extent to which findings can be generalized. The limited size of the subject used, sampling techniques are factors that may limit its generalisability. In addition, for similar reason and by the very nature of interview method, and the sampling method used will be low in their ability to be generalized. However, as the world is constantly changing what is true today may not be necessary be true tomorrow, generalisability was never to be one of the primary aims of this part of the research rather an exploration of the issues (Saunders et al, 2007). Sampling Taking a large sampling is really important in order to avoid a skewed data. At the same time it will take far longer to complete and cost more to collect and analyse data for many more subjects which is unfeasible. Now in semi-structured interview and questionnaires with the customers, through our aim and objective it is possible to define the population which will be conducted in Bournemouth. Even though this choice was made due to the researcher’s geographical constraints, it would be beyond the researcher’s capabilities to interview the entire population and so a sample will be chosen using convenience sampling. Sample Size A sample size of 80 customers with mixed nationality will be taken for the interviews and questionnaires. These customers are specifically purchases from any high street retailing brands, irrelevant of the fact that how much they earn or not. Limitations The three main limitations are time, access and finance which are discussed below. The research is time crucial due to the deadline placed on the submission of the final research findings. So starting from sampling till data collection everything need to done as quickly as possible. A timetable outlining the expected timescale for completion of various components of the research is offered in Appendix 1. Access to customers may be an issue if none choose to volunteer for the interview. Still that wouldn’t be much problem as the researcher has contact and also work in BHs that is itself a high street retailer brand. Although the researcher is a student so she is also undertaking paid employment ensuring that although finances are limited there is enough available in reserve to support unexpected eventualities. Secondary research Secondary data include both raw data and published summaries. Most organisation collect and store a variety of data to support their operation: For example, payroll details, copies of letters (Saunders et al. 2007). Even information from other student and some research done before. Moreover, there is related information about exporting that useful for this research in the Internet, journals and articles. Data Analysis Data from semi-structured interviews will be recorded and analysed. This data will be then categorized based on prevailing themes and according to aims and objectives previously outlined. A researcher’s dairy will be kept in order to monitor and record notes or interviews and data will be analysed as it is collected in order to safe time and build on themes revealed during interviews. Findings from the interviews will be compared and contrasted in a matrix or tabular form to shift out the relevant ideas which will answer the research question and meet objectives. The questionnaires will be then analysed after calculating the statistical data. Then the interpretation of the results will be made. In this way the researcher will relate the findings directly to the aims and objectives in order to answer the researcher questions. Dissertation timetable Time Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Action Explore literature Writing literature review Reading and writing of methodology Semi-structured interviews UK Questionnairs UK Data collection from secondary material Analysis of interviews Analysis of questionnairs Compare and analyse data from both sources Writing conclusion chapter Complete of dissertation Draft to Supervisor Final correction - submit WORD COUNT: 3,267 (including titles, contents and references) References BOGART. L., 1995, Strategy in Advertising : Matching media and messages to markets and motivations . – 3rd ed. Lincolnwood, IL : NTC Business Books COOPER, D.R. AND SCHINDLER, P.S., 2001. Business Research Methods. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. DYER G. 1988, Advertising as Communication, London: Routledge EVANS M., JAMAL A. AND FOXALL G., 2006, Consumer Behavior, England: John Wiley and Sons Ltd. FLTCHER W., 1999, Advertising Advertising / London: Profile Books. GHOSH A., 1994, Retail Management, 2nd ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers GILBERT. D., 2003, Retail Marketing Management, 2nd ed. London: Financial Times Prentice Hall HUSSEY, J. AND HUSSEY, R., 1997. Business Research: A practical guide for undergraduate and postgraduate students. Great Britain: Macmillan press Ltd. JANKOWICZ, D.A., 2005. Business Research Projects 4th ed. London: Thomson Learning LEWISON D. M., 1994, Retailing, 5th ed . - New York : Macmillan LEVY M. AND WEITZ B.A., 2001, Retailing Management / 4th ed. Boston: Mass, Irwin/McGraw-Hill McGOLDRICK, P. J., 2002 Retail Marketing, 2nd ed. London: McGraw-Hill ROBSON, C. 2002. Real World Research. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. SAUNDERS, M., LEWIS, P., THORNHILL, A., 2003. Research Methods for Business Students 3rd ed. Essex: Prentice Hall STANLEY A., 2003, Careers in Marketing, Advertising and Public Relation, 8TH ed. London: Kongan Page WELLS W., BURNETT J. AND MORIARTY S., 1992, Advertising : Principles and Practice / - 2nd ed. - Prentice Hall WHITE R., 1993, Advertising : What it is and how to do It, 3rd ed. - London : McGraw-Hill WILMSHURT J., 1992, The Fundamentals of Advertising, Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann Read More