Impacts Of Marketing On Consumers' Choices - Term Paper Example

Impacts Of Marketing On Consumers' Choices Abstract Advertisements have been an important phenomenon for the success or failure of a business. Proper marketing helps businesses in building the brand image, increase sales, achieve consumer awareness about the product/service and a place in the business world. Marketing affects the behavior or choices of consumers. The more attractive an advertisement is, the more appealed the consumers get to buy it. The use of celebrities, overwhelming results, tastes or messages in the advertisements and the use of cultural, moral and social messages to attract consumers are some factors which affect the consumer choices. This paper refers to these factors in order to prove that consumer behavior, indeed, is affected by the way a product is marketed. Advertising Affects Consumer Behavior Constantinides (2004) in his article clearly tells about consumer behavior as being affected by many factors which are related to the purchase of the product or good. He tells as to why and where the consumers would buy the product and what would probably be their reasons for buying it. He tells that consumer behavior is the behavior of consumer with regard to the purchase of good which is affected by the products quality, the use of the product and alternative choices of the products. He puts forward a broad phenomenon which tells as to how the consumer behavior can be affected by many different factors of the society. He also tells as to how a company can excel to alter the consumer behavior and force the consumers to buy the product. The example of 4 Ps of marketing is given by the author to tell as to how the company can affect the consumer behavior. Henry (1976) in his article also provides with information regarding consumer behavior about the factors which can affect the consumer behavior and can lure them to buy a particular product or service. He tells that culture has an important link with the consumer behavior and it is because of this factor of culture that many consumers buy products from a particular brand or company. Furthermore a research has been conducted also to link the relation of consumer behavior to that of cultural dimensions. Advertising these days can easily be criticized for its extreme exaggeration of the effects of products or services being marketed. The marketers give misleading outcomes of the products being offered, use unethical ways to promote the product, uncalled symbols are employed to attract viewers, immoral messages are exposed and unnecessary exposure is eminent in the advertisements today. The work of many researchers is in line with the current conditions of our marketing society. The concepts used by authors which are, still relevant to the modern advertising strategies adopted include the stereotyping and gender exposure in the advertisement. It is, however, not necessarily a moral or social issue until one of the gender is being portrayed as unnecessarily weak, unimportant, less honorable or symbolized as a sex object. The psychological marketing and gaining customer confidence using emotional marketing is still relevant. Marketers pay particular attention to this aspect as the competition has led to a tightly knitted market where prices are not the direct determinant of public choices. The use of current affairs or famous personalities in order to grab the attention of the targeted population regardless of the impacts of such advertisements on the reputation of the specific person or event. The works of Bernays (1928) and Packard (1981) are still relevant in the modern society. The widespread use of false advertisement, unnecessary emphasis on insignificant matters, creative manipulation of ideas and categorization of products to target customers is still in practice. However, both the writers affirm the positive impact on the sales of the products being marketed using false promises, extraordinary exposure to the outcomes or quality of the products and use of cultural and moral messages in the advertisements. The TV advertisements, internet marketing and banners often carry messages which provide an overwhelmingly overstated quality or outcome of their products. Such marketing messages grab the attention of the customers and they often get trapped and purchase the product. However, this exaggerated picture is not an ideal marketing technique as it gains the company with one time buyers who remain dissatisfied and often spread their feelings about the product. One may criticize such advertising and promotional campaigns for their moral, social and ethical consequences. The situation is even worse today as the marketers face some restrictions on the exposure of ethically inappropriate messages and subjects. The marketers now use more creative ways to spread out their unethical or unhealthy ideas like promoting junk food, cigars, cigarettes, alcohol etc. The research papers give an extensive debate on the hidden promoters of such behaviors and choices made by people and give an insight to the effects of such persuaders’ comments on our views and thoughts. Both Bernays (1928) & Packard (1981) are perfect in their own sense as both the methods are perfect for certain businesses. Some businesses adopt an aggressive approach towards advertising whereas some do not but altogether every business does adopt these advertising techniques in one way or the other. Hence it can be concluded that these two articles are still relevant in the society of today. With the increase in marketing these days it has been noted that different new techniques have arrived which further help in boosting the arenas of marketing. One such technique is the involvement of celebrities while marketing products and is known as celebrity endorsement. Celebrity endorsement is an important arena of marketing as it defines consumer behavior and choice and forces them to try products of the company because of the trustworthiness of the endorser. Secondly consumer behavior is also an important aspect of marketing as it determines as to when a consumer would buy a product and what techniques should be used. This consumer behavior can help the company to increase its sales if on the right track (Czinkota & Kotabe 2001). Van Der Waldt et al. (2009) classifies two types of endorsements which are Celebrity Endorsement and Created Spokesperson Endorsement. Celebrity Endorsement in this article is defined as a variable which can greatly affect the marketing techniques of a company and can greatly enhance or lower down the sales of a company. Celebrity Endorsement is classified as an endorsement in which celebrities are hired to advertise for specific products or goods for the company which they are planning to sell. These celebrities then are usually used in advertisements so that they can advertise the products and can get their message to the consumers that this product is worth using. According to this article when a celebrity is used it is made sure that he has connections to the product and has a good consumer base. The celebrity is relied upon by his image in the market and is then asked to advertise for that product. This helps in creating brand image for the company. The positives and negatives of celebrity endorsement are also given in this article in relation to endorsement by spokespersons (Erdogan 1999 & Mccracken 1989). Silvera and Austad (2004) in their article have done a research so as to see the consumer inferences regarding Celebrity endorsements. It was done to find out if the consumers are really affected by celebrity endorsements because of their inferences regarding the celebrity or not. Celebrity Endorsement by Silvera and Austad is defined as the endorsement of products or goods by a celebrity for a certain amount of endorsement fees. These celebrities then do the endorsement even if they like the product or not. And according to the article the consumers tend to get attracted towards the product because of the trustworthiness and the likeliness of the celebrity. These consumers also consider that the product that is being endorsed is being used by the celebrity himself (Ohanian 1990 & Ohanian 1991& VanderWaldt et al 2007). In conclusion, we can say that advertisement does impact consumer behavior and choices whether the marketers use exaggeration as their key tool to attract consumers or involve celebrities to grab their attention. A powerful marketing campaign may get the business more consumers for its products. People believe in what is shown in the advertisements or purchase products in order to maintain their social status by brand purchasing. Top of Form Bibliography: Bernays, Edward L. Propaganda. New York: H. Liveright, 1928. Print.Bottom of For Top of Form Packard, Vance. The Hidden Persuaders. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981. Print. CONSTANTINIDES, E. (2004). Influencing the online consumer's behavior: the Web experience. Internet Research: Electronic Networking Applications and Policy.14, 111-126. HENRY, W. A. (1976). Cultural Values Do Correlate with Consumer Behavior. Journal of Marketing Research. 13, 121-127. Czinkota, M.R. and Kotabe, M. (2001), Marketing Management, 2nd ed., South-Western College Publishing, Cincinnati, OH. VAN DER WALDT, D., VAN LOGGERENBERG, M., & WEHMEYER, L. (2009). Celebrity endorsements versus created spokespersons in advertising: A survey among students. SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC AND MANAGEMENT SCIENCES.12, 100-114. ERDOGAN, BZ (1999) “Celebrity endorsement: A literature review”, Journal of Marketing Management, 41(3): 291-314. MCCRACKEN, G (1989) “Who is the celebrity endorser? Cultural foundations of the endorsement process”, Journal of Consumer Research, 16(3): 310- 322. SILVERA, D. H., & AUSTAD, B. (2004). Factors predicting the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement advertisements. European Journal of Marketing. 38, 1509-1526. OHANIAN, R (1990) “Construction and validation of a scale to measure celebrity endorser’s perceived expertise, trustworthiness, and attractiveness”, Journal of Advertising, 19(3): 39: 52. OHANIAN, R (1991) “The impact of celebrity spokespersons’ perceived image on customers’ intention to purchase”, Journal of Advertising Research, 31(1): 46-54. VAN DER WALDT, DLR; SCHLERITZKO, NEA & VAN ZYL, K (2007) “Paid versus unpaid celebrity endorsement in advertising: an exploration”, African Journal of Business Management, 1(7): 185-191 October. Read More